Sunday, 17 January 2016

A520.1.4.RB_Manglona, Matthew-Napu_ Self-Awareness Blog



 A520.1.4.RB_Manglona, Matthew-Napu_ Self-Awareness Blog




My level of self-awareness has slightly changed since I started my MSLD courses. I will start with emotional intelligence; which is the ability to manage oneself and to manage relationships with others. (Whetten, D. A., & Cameron, K. S., 2011) I was given a brief glimpse of self-awareness in my previous course and its subcomponents were discussed when the assignment was given. “Leaders who have the ability to perceive their emotions and understand their impacts on their actions and on those of others should have a greater probability of providing effective leadership” (Goldring, E., Cravens, X., Porter, A., Murphy, J., & Elliott, S. 2015). When I first entered the leadership role in the Army as a 2nd Lieutenant I did not know how to engage my soldiers as I was a hard charging leader not being aware of the mental and physical capacity of my soldiers, too include myself. The MLSD program has provided me that “taking a step back” approach and realizing the emotional needs of my soldiers and myself. I was able to look from the outside in and notice my patterns, attitudes, and training habits and tweak them into providing and syncing them for a better atmosphere for my soldiers.
My Personal Values didn’t quite change as I was raised from what I would call a good family household. Respect, loyalty, honor, and humility were the core of me growing up. My personal values at times allowed me to know what was right in attempting to influence my soldiers where my decisions followed the “the hard right versus the easy wrong” mentality in my decision making process. My cognitive style was able to change as well. My ability to assess situations at a critical thinking standpoint has increased. My ability to provide recommendations, continuing to learn, and have the ability to maintain communication has provided me continuous growing potential in the eyes of my superiors and separation of intellect from my peers.
My attitude towards change since taking this MSLD program has allowed for me to create and maintain an open mind. I am also able to adapt to change as well which I believe is a great asset to my abilities in leadership. In my line of work, the Army consistently changes, from leadership roles, policies, rules and regulations. A lot of people surrounding me are negative and cause friction when it comes to change. By having “the ability to adapt and utilize knowledge as a source of competitive advantage” (DiGiovanni, M. 2013) is something at a young age I was able to be introduced too. As a leader in the military you usually are the first to know about a certain change within the organization and are expected to implement the change whether subordinates like it or not. My job is to influence them and have them commit to that change and enforce it ( i.e uniform change, leadership, and policy changes).
The final core aspect of Self-Awareness is Core of Self Evaluation. This concept in regards to change in self-awareness is something that I believe is still ongoing. In the aspect of positive self-regard in relation to self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, neuroticism (emotional stability), and locus of control (Whetten, D. A., & Cameron, K. S., 2011). I still am trying to fix myself on this aspect. I tend to bottle things up although I can adapt to negative situations. I would like to be able to just accept things for the way they are because at times my emotions will get the better of me at the end of the day.



DiGiovanni, M. (2013). Leadership forum to focus on adapting to change. Credit Union Times. Breaking News,

Goldring, E., Cravens, X., Porter, A., Murphy, J., & Elliott, S. (2015). The convergent and divergent validity of the vanderbilt assessment of leadership in education (VAL-ED): Instructional leadership and emotional intelligence. Journal of Educational Administration, 53(2), 177-196. doi:10.1108/JEA-06-2013-0067

Whetten, D. A., & Cameron, K. S. (2005). Developing self-awareness. In Developing management skills (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall

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