Tourism and Emotional Intelligence

This assignment examines the intersection of tourism and emotional intelligence. It investigates how emotional intelligence skills, such as self-awareness and empathy, are crucial for effective leadership in the tourism industry. The discussion also explores the influence of emotional intelligence on professional development within tourism and its impact on creating positive tourist experiences.

Running head: TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Tourism and professional development
Name of student
Name of University
Author note

1
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Executive summary
The purpose of the report was to develop an insight about how could I advance in my career and
develop my professionalism by increasing my self-awareness and considering my peronsal strengths
and weaknesses. This willhelp me to emerge as a successful leader and bring out positive
outcomes for the organization where I would be working. The skills that I had achieved while
going through this report included greater self-awareness skills, an understanding of management
of personality and an appreciation of how theoretical perspectives can influence my decision-
making and problem-solving methods. The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator and Big Five personality
traits had helped in gaining and understanding of personality traits and how to achieve positive
attitudes and behaviors to succeed in my professional life. The values and motivators helped in
influencing the decisions made within my career. The emotional intelligence skills and
leadership skills had allowed me to understand the various ways by which I could become a
successful leader in the future. Lastly, the use of decision making and problem resolution
theories had helped me to understand how I could remain successful and progress towards the
future in my professional career.
Content

2
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
s
Assessment 3: Report......................................................................................................................4
1.0 Introduction................................................................................................................................4
2.0 Self-awareness...........................................................................................................................4
2.2 Values and Motivators...............................................................................................................8
2.3 Emotional intelligence...............................................................................................................9
2.4 Leadership................................................................................................................................10
2.5 Power and Politics...................................................................................................................11
3.0 Decision making and planning................................................................................................12
4.0 Conclusion...............................................................................................................................12
References......................................................................................................................................13

3
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Assessment 3: Report
1.0 Introduction
The focus of the report is on a self-reflection of self-awareness and development of
professionalism within the tourism and hospitality sector. The topic will discuss the various ways
understanding and evaluation of theoretical concepts of problem solving and decision making
help in gaining wisdom and planning for obtaining employment position within the tourism
industry of Australia. Further comprehension will help me to progress in my career with ease and
effectiveness. The report will also focus on the self-awareness skills, determine the career related
strengths and weaknesses to understand how I can progress in my career, and work at a
sustainable position within the business organizations (Baum 2016).
2.0 Self-awareness
The report is designed for enhancing self-awareness to make progress in their career within the
tourism and hospitality industry. The self-awareness report is not only developed for enhancing
the efficiency of practical activities but also can help to gain personal benefits to form real life
self-management strategies. This can further assist me to gain a good employment position as
well as ensure career growth and development with convenience (Bunakovet al. 2015). Success
in a career requires specific knowledge and self-awareness skills to create a good position of
employment within the organization and furthermore ensures career growth.
2.1 Personality

4
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Personality of a human being represents the character and how they manage daily activities.
Personality provides an in-depth analysis of individual behaviors and how maintenance of good
values can allow individuals to perform to their potential within the organization.
Overview of the personality theories
The Myers Briggs-Type Indicator or MBTI is considered as an effective career development tool
for evaluating the personality of human beings and understand the benefits of such kind of
personality trait. This would not only help in developing own career, but could also allow the
individuals to progress in their academic field within the tourism sector (Kabilan 2013). It can
enable proper development of career and professional growth as well as enhance the potential of
team to perform efficiently while working as an employee within organizations in the future.
According to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the four major psychological preferences are
sensation, feeling, intuition and thinking that are considered as the most dominant characteristics
of human beings. By studying this Indicator, I have gathered enough experiences and skills, but
also experienced few major psychometric issues including poor validity and reliability (Little
2012).
The Myer Briggs model has been applied by me to give attention and focus on myself and even
determine my inner thoughts through reflection while the extraversion ability has allowed me to
communicate with people and provide my opinions and responses properly. My intuition power
is increased and this can effectively improve the sensing ability to collect relevant data and
information, manage practical approaches and focus on reality more than fantasy. Thus by
gaining the skills of better thinking and feeling, I could also make effective decisions in business
while working in an organization in future (Maci 2013).

5
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Among the two models, Myer Briggs and Big Five models of personality, Big Five model of
personality dimensions is more useful because it has influenced my ability of openness to
experience by making me become imaginative, artistic and more curious about learning and
gathering new information and knowledge. The conscientiousness has increased and this made
me become more responsible, persistent and manage activities in an organized way. I will be
able to maintain cooperation with workers as well as build trust among them. This would make
me calm, self-confident and avoid stressful situations, thereby maintain positive attitude in
stressful situations as well (Mersino 2013).
Therefore, these two models have helped me to understand the different phases of personality
and advancing in my career can help in achieving these to obtain a good position. My personality
is linked with the choice I make to progress in my career, because maintaining a positive
personality and behavior can help in understanding what can be the most suitable choice to
advance in my professional career with ease and effectiveness (Bunakov et al. 2015). The
personality has helped me to think critically and even make innovative thinking to understand the
benefits of the career choice, because it can improve my professional career and enhance my
skills and knowledge level to perform efficiently as well. An awareness of the personality test
results can enhance the performance of individuals largely. Self-awareness of personality not
only identifies the areas of weaknesses but also can help me to see everything positively and
develop a sense of trust and credibility among individuals (Dochyet al. 2012).

6
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
ISFJs have been categorized to find out the various personality conditions and determine the
person’s own behavior and attitudes. The results from the personality test showed that the person
had preference of introversion over extraversion. Within the hospitality industry, It is important
for me to focus more on the customer satisfaction rather than becoming more and more socially
connected, which can make them loose my focus from the actual objectives that are needed to be
achieved (Mersino 2013). Due to my analytical skills, I would be able to emerge as a leader and
system to others patiently while playing the role of a supervisor. It would allow the individual to
progress in the traditional career as well through teaching, social work and even managing the
human resources properly within the hospitality sector. The leadership abilities would help in
becoming loyal to the employees. From the personality test, it could be understood that the
individuals who are more introvert have few close friends and they do hold the ability to find out
critical issues and take initiative for discovering the issue with ease and effectiveness (Capps,
Crawford and Constas 2012).

7
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
2.2 Values and Motivators
Business organizations within the tourism and hospitality sector do not function by focusing on a
single area of expertise, but on various areas, which need constant monitoring and assessment.
Thus, for gaining a good position of employment within the organization, it is important for me
to become self-aware, self-disciplined and even more focused on the mission statement and
vision of the organization, where I will be working in the future (Mor and Mogilevsky 2013).
The organizational culture defines values as essential attributes and behaviours that are
maintained by us to determine the existence of state and make judgmental decisions about what
is right and wrong. The terminal values are the desirables and states of emotions perceived
whereas the instrumental values include the various approaches of achieving the terminal values
efficiently. Good values can influence one’s behavior and even create negative mindset among
people sometimes. Values can help me to understand attitudes, behaviors of own self and
manage interpretations of what is right and what is wrong. Hofstede’s framework encompasses
the values maintained across cultures including the power distance, individualism vs
collectivism, masculinity vs femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long term and short term
orientation and finally indulgence vs self restraint. Power distance index makes a statement
regarding the less powerful members of the organization who believe that power has been
distributed unequally (Carmody 2013). The individualism vs collectivism enables people to get
integrated into groups while the uncertainty avoidance index determines the ability and tolerance
level of society to handle ambiguity. The masculinity refers to the act of heroism, dominance
within the society while the femininity refers to the cooperation and weak quality of life. The
long term and short term orientation refers to the present and future actions and challenges that

8
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
may be faced while advancing in career while the indulgence vs restraint include fulfilling the
desires of human beings and allowing them to lead a peaceful life (Cochrane and Narayan 2013).
The terminal values include the existence state and the approaches followed by a person to
accomplish the goals and objectives during the life cycle. The instrumental values could help the
individual to gain the behavior for achievement of terminal values with ease and effectiveness.
By obtaining these important values, it would be easy for accomplishing the goals and objectives
and get motivation, which is an essential aspect for performing to the potential. As the results of
the personality test show more preference over introvert rather than being extrovert, so the
terminal values are achieved (Dochy et al. 2012). These kinds of values can help in providing
equal oprotunities to everyone and create a sense of harmony for ensuring freedom from internal
conflicts. The social recognition would allow for gaining the respect of others and obtain a
mature understanding about the meaning of life. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory acts as an
effective motivation theory that can help in keeping the individuals motivated all throughout by
fulfilling their needs at different levels such as the safety needs, social needs, psychological
needs, esteem, self actualization. An individual pursuing career in the field of tourism and
hospitality can make him fulfill his needs and gain both personal and financial security,
furthermore maintain good relationships with people and remain motivated all throughout
(Cochrane and Narayan 2013).
By maintaining a good culture, there would be less discrimination, and a healthy workplace
would be created that would influence my behaviors and attitudes to perform to my potential and
enhance the organizational performance largely (Schoemaker, Krupp and Howland 2013). When
the attitudes and behaviors of leaders are positive, it will also encourage and motivate me to

9
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
enhance my potential and bring out the best in terms of my performance. The other motivators
include good leadership skills, reward systems and maintaining a positive attitude within the
organizational premises. To succeed in my career and ensure that I gain a good employment
position within the industry, I will talk politely with my seniors and even ask for any help during
critical situations, so that the issues are clarified properly (Scott, Cortina and Carlisle 2012).
The power values reflect the ability to control other and gain respect by providing them with
enough support during the accomplishment of career objectives (Smith et al. 2012). I have also
seen that visual perception not only gives us access to relevant information but also provide own
response for representing a sense of data in a graphical format. According to me, providing
rewards and praising performances could also motivate the person to work more efficiently and
gain a positive mindset to ensure development in the career (Van Driel and Berry 2012).
2.3 Emotional intelligence
Emotions are defined as the feeling of human beings that have been directed at someone or
something. Based on behaviors and attitudes, emotions exist. The emotions are derived from
personality traits, behaviors, attitudes and achievement of something. Emotional Intelligence is
the ability to ‘carry out sophisticated information processing about emotions and emotion-
relevant stimuli and to use this information as a guide to thinking and behaviour’ (Mayer,
Salovey& Caruso, 2008, p.503).
1. Recognising/Perceiving emotion
2. Using emotion

10
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
3. Understanding emotion
4. Managing emotion
With the help of emotional intelligence abilities and skills, it would be easy to manage the
individual career on which I should be working on and even improve the performances largely
(Visser, Evering and Barrett 2014). The employers within the organisations consider the
emotional intelligence skills and abilities valuable for enhancing the workplace outcomes and
also improve the performance of employees with ease and effectiveness. The employers make
investments in Emotional Intelligence training and testing Emotional Quotient for improving
their skills, knowledge and expertise level and allow them to perform to the extent that they have
been capable of (Zepeda 2012). The personal skills are self-awareness, self-regulation and
motivation while the social skills are empathy and social skills including abilities to handle
conflicts, develop bonds with others, communication and act like a leader. The self-awareness
skills would help me in gaining self-confidence and manage self-regulation and control through
motivation and encouragement to commit fully to the organization (Zionts 2012).
From the results of EI questionnaire, it could be understood that the self awareness, self
management, social awareness and relationship management skills had remained similar. I need
to improve my social awareness to improve the social status and ensure that good relationships
are developed while working within the organization within the hospitality and tourism sector.

11
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Self-awareness has allowed the individual to understand own strengths and limitations, and then
make a proper decision regarding the choice of career (Capps, Crawford and Constas 2012). The
perceived emotions and adaptability skills have helped in grabbing the scopes and opportunities
to overcome obstacles and furthermore meet the internal standard of excellence for becoming
successful in the future. The self-management skills are good, which can help in achieving
orientation and manage own roles and responsibilities to enable transparency. This would further
enable the person to manage honesty and respond to the needs and preferences of customers with
ease and effectiveness (Bunakov et al. 2015).
I need to improve the persuasive strategies for managing conflicts, leading the people in the right
direction and ensure proper cooperation between the team members for developing a team
effectively. By managing relationships with individuals, it would help to consider their responses
and make a final decision in the end properly (Baum 2016).
2.4 Leadership
Leadership is a personality trait that allows a person to guide the subordinates or employees in
the right direction and allow them to understand their roles and responsibilities properly too. This
would help in making the employees skilled and knowledgeable and make them perform to their
potential too. Here the charismatic leadership has been talked about that can not only help
individuals to gain a proper sense of vision but also will help in maintaining a positive attitude or
behavior to make the business function properly (Bunakov et al. 2015).
The charismatic leadership is essential here for creating a vision, gain ability to take risks and
accomplish the objectives with ease, overcome environmental issues, provide guidance to the

12
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
followers and maintain a positive behavior that is unique, though effective for achieving good
business outcomes. Transactional leaders motivate and encourages workers in the right direction
to achieve objectives by making clarification of task requirements while the transformational
leader makes decisions according to self interest and cerate positive effect on the followers too.
The ethical leadership theory shows how leaders could create positive attitudes among workers,
make them socially constructive and manage proper methods to achieve the goals and objectives.
This would also build trust and loyalty among the leader and his followers (Carmody 2013).
I would someday like to become a leader within an organization where I would work in the
future. I would progress in my career with the help of my social, interpersonal and emotional
intelligence skills and try to move to various levels within the organisation. This would not only
create enough opportunities for me to obtain the various leadership skills but even allow me to
manage the human resources successfully (Baum 2016). I would also lead with certain questions
and follow the democratic leadership style, so all the employees could provide their opinions and
responses, based on which I would make a final decision (Bunakovet al. 2015). This can make
the employees feel that they are valued and allowed to take part in the process of decision-
making. As a leader, I aspire for promoting effective communication to make the employees
understand the goals and objectives of the organization, motivate and encourage them to make
them perform better, enable positivity and create a good culture within the organizational
premises, cerate innovation and creativity and finally obtain feedbacks and responses of
employees to understand the areas of weaknesses. This would ensure that the risks and issues had
been overcome to bring out the best productivity within the organisation (Carmody 2013).
2.5 Power and PoliticsCoercive Power

13
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
1. Reward Power This would allow me to enable compliance according to the skills and
abilities that I had gained to distribute the rewards that can be viewed by others with ease.
3. Legitimate Power The legimate power is based on and what power I have received based
on my position within the organisation’s formal hierarchy.
4. Expert Power The expert power would allow me to manage some activities through
betterment of skills and knowledge that I had gained while progressing in my career
(Dochy et al. 2012).
5. Referent Power The influence gained through possession by an individual or with the
proper utilization of personality traits that I do possess.
Power, politics and influences are three major components of the organizational behaviour.
Power denotes the ability to influence the decision making process and controlling of resources
with ease and effectiveness while the politics include the informal approaches that allow for
obtaining power and authority based on luck or merit. The influence includes resemblance of
power and can be more subtle rather than being direct. The approaches to power are understood
by integrating the bureaucracy and with the combination of rule and authority (Dochyet al.
2012). Pluralism theory is useful in this instance to explain how I can distribute power among
the various groups of individuals I may work with in the future as a manager. The Marxist
approach to power is also effective for me to focus on the dominance of class within the
capitalist societies. Organizational learning promotes authority, and the various approaches for
doing so are the management training, development of management and development of
organisation (Goeldner and Ritchie 2012). All these approaches are essential for me to gain the
power, politics and influence over authority to manage the workforce properly and ensure career

14
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
growth and development with ease and effectiveness. The legimate power can allow me to
emerge as a leader and progress in my career with much ease and effectiveness. The expert
power on the other hand can improve my skills and knowledge level and make me perform to my
potential effectively.
3.0 Decision making and planning
Kolb’s model is applied for determining the most important problem, identify its causes, manage
the best solution and implement the solution finally. This is done by following the various steps
including situational analysis, problem analysis, solution analysis and implementation analysis.
The situational analysis will help me to gain a concrete experience and gain in-depth analysis of
the problems, reflect the observations to analyse the problem, conceptualize the abstract and data
and finally manage active experimentation to implement the solution for overcoming the
problem effectively (Cochrane and Narayan 2013). Suppose within the organization, there is
quarrel among workers, I will listen to the causes of such problem ather than taking any
necessary step immediately. This would keep me knowledgeable and informed about the
problems and finally make a decision to overcome the problem with ease and efficiency.

15
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
While pursuing the degree related to the tourism and hospitality, it is important for me to make a
particular decision based on the internship facilities, geographic location, paid or unpaid nature,
training and development opportunities and employment opportunities provided. It is important
to check all the available facilities and ensure that right opportunities are provided by the
university where I am currently willing to pursue my course of interest. The geographical
location must also be convenient for me to visit and study my course properly. I will like to work
on the nearest location and also progress in my career by visiting the nearest university for
obtaining good amount of knowledge and information and furthermore make progress with ease
and effectiveness. (Kabilan 2013).
On the other hand, the decision making theory can help me to study the reasoning
according to which the choices are made by agents. There are both normative and descriptive
decision theories (Little 2012). The normative decision theory enables me to make the best
decision and select the most suitable alternative for allowing me to progress in my career
whereas the descriptive decision theory analyses the existing irrational agents that make
decisions. The decisions can be made based on choices under uncertainty while complex
decisions are made by assessing the resources that are obtained and analyzing those properly
(Maci 2013). The intuitive decision making theory enables to make decisions based on intuitions
and use analytical data to determine alternative solutions. This would allow for making decisions
of selecting the right career and even determine the benefits that could be obtained by obtaining
internship facilities within the tourism and hospitality sector (Kabilan 2013).

16
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
4.0 Conclusion
The report was presented for ensuring that my professional development could be further
developed by an improved understanding of self-awareness and decision making theory., . The
goals and objectives had been achieved with the help of identifying the self-awareness skills,
personality traits, values and motivators along with the leadership aspirations and ability to
manage the human resources with ease and effectiveness. These various findings showed that I
manage a positive and proactive personality type to identify the scopes and opportunities,
determine the initiatives that are needed to be taken and finally take necessary action. This would
not only create a positive change but would help in overcoming the obstacles and limitations
fruitfully. This has been motivated by Big Five personality model and the transformational
leadership style has helped me to enhance my skills and knowledge and progress in my career
with ease and effectiveness.
References
Baum, T. ed., 2016. Human resource issues in international tourism. Elsevier.
Bunakov, O.A., Zaitseva, N.A., Larionova, A.A., Chudnovskiy, A.D., Zhukova, M.A. and
Zhukov, V.A., 2015. Research on the evolution of management concepts of sustainable tourism
and hospitality development in the regions. Journal of Sustainable Development, 8(6), p.39.

17
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Capps, D.K., Crawford, B.A. and Constas, M.A., 2012. A review of empirical literature on
inquiry professional development: Alignment with best practices and a critique of the
findings. Journal of science teacher education, 23(3), pp.291-318.
Carmody, J., 2013. Intensive tour guide training in regional Australia: an analysis of the
Savannah Guides organisation and professional development schools. Journal of Sustainable
Tourism, 21(5), pp.679-694.
Cochrane, T. and Narayan, V., 2013. Redesigning professional development: reconceptualising
teaching using social learning technologies. Research in Learning Technology, 21(1), p.19226.
Dochy, F., Gijbels, D., Segers, M. and Van den Bossche, P., 2012. Theories of learning for the
workplace: Building blocks for training and professional development programs..
Goeldner, C.R. and Ritchie, J.B., 2012. Tourism: principles, practices, philosophies (No. Ed.
12). John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R.E. and McKee, A., 2013. Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of
emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Press.
Horng, J.S. and Tsai, C.T.S., 2012. Culinary tourism strategic development: an Asia‐Pacific
perspective. International journal of tourism research, 14(1), pp.40-55.
Kabilan, M.K., 2013. A phenomenological study of an international teaching practicum: Pre-
service teachers' experiences of professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 36,
pp.198-209.

18
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Little, J.W., 2012. Professional community and professional development in the learning-
centered school. Teacher learning that matters: International perspectives, pp.22-46.
Maci, S., 2013. Tourism discourse: professional, promotional and digital voices (Vol. 11). Ecig.
Mersino, A., 2013. Emotional intelligence for project managers: The people skills you need to
achieve outstanding results. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.
Mor, Y. and Mogilevsky, O., 2013. The learning design studio: collaborative design inquiry as
teachers’ professional development. Research in Learning Technology, 21(1), p.22054.
Schoemaker, P.J., Krupp, S. and Howland, S., 2013. Strategic leadership: The essential
skills. Harvard business review, 91(1), pp.131-134.
Scott, S.E., Cortina, K.S. and Carlisle, J.F., 2012. Understanding coach-based professional
development in reading first: How do coaches spend their time and how do teachers perceive
coaches' work?. Literacy research and instruction, 51(1), pp.68-85.
Smith, W.K., Besharov, M.L., Wessels, A.K. and Chertok, M., 2012. A paradoxical leadership
model for social entrepreneurs: Challenges, leadership skills, and pedagogical tools for managing
social and commercial demands. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 11(3),
pp.463-478.
Van Driel, J.H. and Berry, A., 2012. Teacher professional development focusing on pedagogical
content knowledge. Educational Researcher, 41(1), pp.26-28.

19
TOURISM AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Visser, R.D., Evering, L.C. and Barrett, D.E., 2014. # TwitterforTeachers: The implications of
Twitter as a self-directed professional development tool for K–12 teachers. Journal of Research
on Technology in Education, 46(4), pp.396-413.
Zepeda, S.J., 2012. Professional development: What works. Eye on education.
Zionts, S., 2012, December. MULTIPLE CRTTERTA DECISION MAKING”. In Multiple
Criteria Decision Making Theory and Application: Proceedings of the Third Conference
Hagen/Königswinter, West Germany, August 20–24, 1979(Vol. 177, p. 150). Springer Science &
Business Media.