Reflecting on Identity, Values and Strengths
Who am I? What are my values? What am I good at? It's something we either think about too much or not enough. For me, it's a topic that can make me go down the rabbit hole. I'm a introspective person at the best of times, with a tendency to anlyse and try and understand what is going on in other peoples heads.
Sometimes, I try to stay clear of mine for that reason. It's easy to analyse other people. You can only deal with the aspects that are out there, in the 'real world', make conjectures based on the evidence of their actions, and then rest in the satisfied self assuredness of the clueless.
But looking at yourself is more complicated, more confronting. You can easily see the whole picture: the conflicts between your values, how you see yourself and your actions. You can see where your motivations don't match up with the values you claim to have, even more clearly than if you are looking at someone else.
Because of that I thought perhaps using an online tool to help identify my values might be useful. It wasn't. Values mean different things to different people and I realised it's not about lining up my values and scoring them.
I know that there are clear things I value. I know that I value honesty, justice, perserverance, personal responsibility, independence and integrity. I also value kindness, which is a funny in a way because I don't see myself as a kind person. But I think it's important to try and behave in a kind way and to practice empathy for others. I definitely value my family and base a lot of my decisions around whether something will be good for them. Including coming on this course!
An ethical decision
When I first began to think about ethical decisions I struggled a bit at first. I found myself thinking of the big stuff – the decisions which I don't get a say in, or the cliched finders-keepers scenario.
But I can't say I've found anyones wallet on the ground recently!
As I thought a bit more, I realised that a lot of the small decisions we make everyday have a component of ethics. As adults our sense of right and wrong is so engraved in ourselves that we often don't stop to think about our decisions, or the ethical aspect of them. In many ways, whenever a decision causes us to weigh our values it can become a question of ethics.Culture, people and influence
Growing up I was always shown by my family that if you worked at something, you could achieve it. It's been clear influence to my values around personal responsibility and perseverance today.
Strengths and limitations
It was really interesting using the tools to identify my strengths because while there was many similarities in the results there were also conflicts. It is also interesting to see how my strengths line up with my values.
According to the D.O.P.E test I am an Owl. The desciption for owl is:
Logical, mathematically minded, methodical and sometimes seen as a perfectionist. They can be slow to make decisions and inflexible if rules and logic says otherwise. They are not big risk takers but love detail … that doesn't seem too far off!
Something I need to be aware of on this journey is that sometimes I get too caught up in the details. I need to be care not to get fixated on getting things perfect. I also need to realise that it's ok to seek help from others. I'm usually self-directed in searching for solutions independently but I need to make sure that this doesn't stop me reaching out if I'm having trouble or even just to learn from others.
Working productively as a team
When I was completing my degree there was a time when both strands of the course had to come together to work on a group project. There was a lot of tension as there were preconceived ideas about what each group roles should be, and neither wanted to feel like the personal monkeys of the other group. There were also problems as the loudest individuals didn't seem to even understand what we were meant to be doing. We had a number of meetings to discuss and I grew frustrated as people tried to plow on with the project without understanding around the assignment. We realised quickly we needed to get on the same page and decided to go back to basics. Those of us who understood the project had to take the lead on explaining it, piece by piece to those who didn't.
Once we had a clear understanding we could all begin to assign roles based on the project, rather than our groups. Looking back now I think I would want to establish that understanding from the start. It took many hangry lunch time meetings and a few lost tempers before we all managed to get on track.