Becoming More Self-aware
Put simply, self-awareness is to do with knowing more about ourselves. It is a lifelong process that happens gradually, but it is helpful to put effort into raising our self-awareness. There are many ways of doing this. These webpages focus on a popular and powerful method for raising self-awareness – using psychometric assessments – but the process is most effective when information from many sources are used together.
Some ways to develop your self-awareness and apply your findings to your personal development are explained here.
Strengths, skills and preferences
Self-awareness leads to an understanding of your strengths, core skills and preferences. These cover a wide range of capabilities (what you know, what you can do and what you have the potential to do) and preferences and motivations (what interests and motivates you, how you do things and how you relate to others).
Capabilities and applications
When you know what your strengths and preferences are, you need to think about how you can apply these in different situations. This is particularly important when applying for jobs – it helps you make career choices, gives you something concrete to say about yourself in applications / interviews, and to find a job that is right for you.
Areas for development and weaknesses
As well as showing us our strengths, self-awareness can identify areas we may want to develop. These areas may be related to academic abilities, skills such as planning and time management, or personal characteristics such as how we work as part of a team or deal with difficult situations.
Development activities, new strategies
When you know what you want to develop, there are usually many ways of going about this. Generally no one approach is best – the approach depends on what you want to develop. What is important however is that you plan your development carefully, set yourself small, manageable targets and check your progress against them regularly.
Use the menu on the right-hand side to find out more about different aspects of self-assessment, including your learning style, personality and aptitudes.
*material reproduced with permission.
Copyright: `Profiling for Success´ - Author Angus McDonald