Reflective Essay on Self-Management: Developing Personal Qualities

This reflective essay explores the author's personal quality of self-management, analyzing its impact on academic and professional life. The essay uses theories such as the Big Five Personality Test, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Gibbs Reflective Cycle, Locus of Control, and Emotional Intelligence to support the analysis. The author reflects on experiences at university and in the workplace, demonstrating how self-management skills have influenced behavior and performance, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The essay also identifies areas for improvement in emotional intelligence, such as managing emotions, self-motivation, empathy, and social skills, to enhance personal and professional relationships. The reflection highlights the importance of self-awareness and continuous development for overall success.

Personal and
Professional
Development

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10
Online...................................................................................................................................10
Appendices.....................................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Personal and professional development are the part of the student journey and
professional career. During my course and professional career I have analysed that my personal
quality is self management (Husdal and et. al., 2021). My self management skills and abilities
are my core strength since my school days to my personal life and also at the time of my first
experience as an employee. Other than this quality there are several qualities that an individual
build in the life-span. There are two types of skills hard core and soft core skills. Hard core skills
are the tangible abilities such as typing speed, computer and coding skills, proficiency in foreign
language etc. on the other hand the soft core skills are the intangible skills that are also also
known as interpersonal skills such as communication, leadership, motivational, team working
etc. the skills are crucial to be develop with the experience in order to describe the individuals
personality. The present report is the reflective essay of my personal quality that I have
recognised during my academic course. The essay will discuss how my quality impact my
behaviour in university and during interaction with my colleagues at workplace. The report will
discuss the theories like Big Five Personality Test, Myers Briggs Type Indicator, Gibbs
Reflective cycle, Planned Happenstance, Locus to Control and Emotional intelligence to support
my quality and also to help in finding my other abilities.
MAIN BODY
Personal Quality- Self Management
According to the Munro, (2021), the self management skills are the critical
employability skills. The self management skills is a intangible ability to manage the own
behaviour, thoughts and feelings in a productive and conscious manner. A person with good self
management skills is aware of its reaction in particular situations. Basically, the self-
management is the concept in which individual understand its own responsibility in different
phase of life and needs to fulfil that responsibility (Clark and Sorum, 2021). From the business
perspective, the self management ability is essential for the effective functioning of an

workplace. Also, the self management skills are important for the empowering employees to be
more innovative and creative in their work for the better output of work. Hence, self
management is the essential skills at workplace in order to stay conscious of the feelings and
thoughts and also for the need of improvement.
I have analysed that my key personal quality is self management ability during my
workshop activities occurred at the University. Our module leader asked me and my peers to find
out more about my personal quality and for that he also suggested some activities. At first I took
my Big Five
Personality Test and results of the test reflected my greatest quality. I answered multiple
personality related question during the test in the format of questionnaire with 5 ranking criteria.
From the personality test, I identified that I have characteristics that are required to be good in
self management skills.
The Big Five
Personality Test comprises of five dimensions of personality i.e. Openness. Conscientiousness,
Agreeableness and Natural reaction. The results of the test are given below:
(See Appendix 1 for full report)
From the above results of the Big Five Personality Test it is discovered that percentage of
Conscientiousness is the 65% which is leading among the other factors of my personality test
(Schermer, Bratko and Bojić, 2020). From the personality test I able to discover some traits and
characteristics are useful and needed for successful self management skills such as: disciplined,
well organised, Conscientious, efficient, strong sense of responsibility and duty, detail oriented.
Skills that help to increase and enhance the self management skills are Role clarity,
Illustration 1: 123test.com

organisational skills, Goal alignment, strategic planning, time management, priority setting, self
awareness, emotional regulation and self care.
I completely agree with my Big Five Personality Test results as from childhood I have
been more introvert and always enjoyed to work on self-awareness and was always disciplined in
class, workplace. I am always more conscientious and very less extrovert. I have always been
highly organised and always do my work precisely by considering all the minor and major
details. In my workplace, also I follow all the work ethics and organise my desk, file and other
details very systematically. This help me in work like operations and achieving the management
details accurately without failure as my personal quality of self management reflect my high
personality score of conscientiousness. During my academic course of work, my module leader
used to check my personal quality through different activities like assigning me work of filing
papers of library, fund raising activities, assigning me a task of my own without any guidance in
specific timeline, asked to work in team etc. all this helped in increasing my self management
skills and other employability skills.
My module leader asked me to double check my personal quality for which I invited
myself to another test called as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (King and Mason, 2020). This test
indicator was developed by the Katharine Briggs and Isabel Brigg-Myers at the time of World
War II. The test indicator has a purpose of helping people to analyse and measure their
personality traits in order to search for right job in crisis. The MBTI is developed on the basis of
typological theory of Carls Jung. As per this theory there are four physiological types in this
theory. The MBTI used the Jung's theory to present a system that demonstrated the personality
of the individual using 120 personality related questions that create a particular profile based on
16 personality types. According the results of this test my personality profile is ISTJ: Introvert
(56%), Sensing (12%), Thinking (6%), Judging (12%). This test is also referred as Human
metrics Jung Typology Test.
(See Appendix 2 for full description)
ISTJ description:The people with this personality profile is often known as inspectors.
Attribute related to this personality profile are: keen sense of duty, awareness was right and
wrong in the interested area, responsible, devoted to duty, punctual, clear cut, planning. When I
compared my results of Big Five Personality Test with this my personal quality was confirmed
as the self management.

To showcase the test reliability, I will explain the academic activity assigned during my current
course. To analyse my academic experience I have used Gibb's reflective model that contains 6
reflective stages.
At the time of my reflection, in relation to my relevant experiences that has assisted me
throughout my academic course to know myself deeply. During this course our module leader
stated about Self- Efficacy theory. The theory was discovered by psychologist Albert Bandura in
1994 and theory states that Self – Efficacy is the belief of an individual in his/her capabilities to
win in particular situation. I realized during this theory that my Self Efficacy if high as I self
manage all my things and also through overall experience in the past year. My group activities,
my academic journey, workplace projects has effectively demonstrated that I have gained
continuous improvement in myself and also become confident in my work and capabilities
through my achievements.
In reference to the self efficacy theory, my tutor suggested told me hat it is must to
understand the Locus of Control discovered by the theorist Julian Rotter in 1966. the
identification of the perception for controlling the life is termed as the Locus of Control. I have
analysed on the basis of this theory that my psychological attitude on controlling my life has
changed. As the Pandemic has changed and disturbed the life of many people similarly due to the
pandemic may daily routine was heavily disrupted. I identified that I am under those subjects
that possess a extreme level of internal locus of control as I think my personality is more like
able to control and take reasonability to what happened to me and also for may actions. But at
the time of lock down due to COVID-19 I realized that I was under huge pressure due to the
uncertain circumstance, I also felt weak. But when the business plan activity was cancelled due
to pandemic I was less affected due to my introvert nature as early I was nervous to express my
personal quality as team member.
As I moved forward into my academic course to support the above reflection on my
personal quality and to verify the accuracy of my the above stated personality traits which has
helped in discovering my self management abilities. The module leader asked me to take
additional test based on physiological theory named as Emotional intelligence (EI). This theory
was initially discovered by Salovey and Mayer in 1990 which states that emotional intelligence
is the ability of an individual to perceive and control the self and others emotions (Ahad and et.
al., 2021). After some time Goleman discovered the new concept of EI in 1995 and according to

which the high level of emotional intelligence is useful in enhancing personal and professional
relationship and is also useful in problem solving skills, improve self management and
awareness, leadership and communication skills. As per this test there are five fundamental areas
to identify my emotional intelligence level and are also essential on the development of the
ability to effectively manage my emotions. The five areas are: awareness, managing emotions,
social skills, empathy, motivating oneself.
(See Appendix 3 for the result of EI test.)
Self awareness: Among all the other areas this area is the only strength of mine as I
possess the ability to recognise all my feeling and thoughts. I have strong allowance and control
over my mind which help me in emotional response and also help me in identifying my emotions
which can affect my behaviour and performance.
Managing emotions: the ability to manage the emotions in positive direction in order to
willingly adapt the changes is termed as managing emotions. As per the test I am required to pay
attention to this area as this was delayed to the pandemic and made me confused to how to
manage my emotions as I faced the difficulty in managing my thoughts and actions together in
the uncertain situation.
Motivating oneself: my score for this was also low therefore, this area is also under
needed to pay attention as being introvert I don't have potential to motivate oneself to excel in
personal and professional career. Also this reflection test has made me realize that I get panic
and disoriented in the sudden and unplanned situation which discourages me.
Empathy: the ability to recognise, understand and manage emotions and feelings of
other is termed as empathy. According to the results I have low score of empathy which means
this area requires the attention as I do not easily communicate with people and perceive introvert
personality over extrovert show my low empathy towards other. This reflection has made me
realize that I must communicate with other people in order to show them, empathy during their
tough times.
Social skills: Strong ability to influence, inspire, motivate and manage the others
emotions is the termed as the social skills. This area is also needed to pay attention because I
realized possessing strong social skills will help me to handle the emotions in relations with
others. This will also help me influence the others during leadership and team work. Also for the

introvert personality like me it is very important to have social skills in order to develop the
communication skills and also to get opportunity to showcase myself among others.
At last. Through this reflection I have understood that how my self management skills and
abilities impact my personal behaviour with others and also during the uncertain situation like
COVID-19. By considering the situation of Covid-19 where everyone where so distance from
each other and where highly depressed and demotivated for not meeting there loved once, Due to
loss of lives etc. everybody needs support and also made me understand how I can get benefit
from uncertain situation.
Planned Happenstance is a theory discovered by John D. Krumboltz in 1996, the theory
states about the ability to handle and organise unplanned situations give the individual a chance
to convert those events into learning opportunities and development. This approach of Planned
Happenstance theory is achieved if I will have clear cut ideas, no blocks and barriers, potential to
expect the unexpected and to undertake the actions which contains the combination of five
characteristics i.e. curiosity, risk taking, persistence, optimism and flexibility. Thus I realized
that to become little extrovert the planned Happnestance theory is useful to me in future and also
provide me a unique perception to manage the uncertain circumstances of my life in better
manner and for right decisions.
CONCLUSION
From the above essay it is concluded that currently in the fast pace world people have no
time for self reflection to analyse their real personality. In the current world, the new generation
has to actively present itself as the changing trends for which they are required to regularly adjust
their behaviour learn new skills to stay in race. This reflection to analyse and discover my
personal and greatest quality was an excellent opportunity for me to understand who actually I
am with the help of in-depth personality trait analysis. The Big five personality test made me
understand why I act in certain manner and different from others. Both the Test MBTI and Big
Five Personality Test has provided me a clear vision of my personal qualities and attributes and
also assisted me in shaping my personality and other personal skills. According to the test results
and theoretical analysis I reconfirmed that self management skills are my personal quality. The
self management quality are useful to me during my workplace and at my university therefore,
this sis crucial for my professional and personal development. According to my human metric
Jung test I was recognised more as an introvert personality which was justified by the EI test in

that also my only strength was recognised as the self awareness which verified all my above test
of personality. At the university I proved that how self management skills help in completing all
my task timely and also to manage all my activities to exhibit my high performance.In my last
academic year, I was also provied with opportnity to dmeondstare my self management skills by
assigning me individual based tasks which I effectively completely and that also helped in
gaining self confidence. The concepts like locus of control and planned happenstance has made
me analyse that how I currently behave in uncertain and unplanned situation of my life and How
am I supposed to behave and demonstrate in future. As the whole this reflection was very useful
to me in exploiting different learning opportunities in my academic course and also how helpful
my self management skills are during unplanned and stressful circumstances.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Adeani, I.S., Febriani, R.B. and Syafryadin, S., 2020. USING GIBBS’REFLECTIVE CYCLE IN
MAKING REFLECTIONS OF LITERARY ANALYSIS. Indonesian EFL
Journal, 6(2), pp.139-148.
Ahad, R and et. al., 2021. Work Attitude, Organizational Commitment and Emotional
Intelligence of Malaysian Vocational College Teachers. Journal of Technical Education
and Training, 13(1), pp.15-21.
Clark, E. and Sorum, M., 2021. The Impact of Self-Management Skills in Elementary
Classrooms.
Husdal, R and et. al., 2021. Diabetes care provided by national standards can improve patients'
self‐management skills: A qualitative study of how people with type 2 diabetes perceive
primary diabetes care. Health Expectations.
King, S.P. and Mason, B.A., 2020. Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator. The Wiley Encyclopedia of
Personality and Individual Differences: Measurement and Assessment, pp.315-319.
Schermer, J.A., Bratko, D. and Bojić, J.M., 2020. A test of the differentiation of personality by
intelligence hypothesis using the Big Five personality factors. Personality and
individual differences. 156. p.109764.
Thiagraj, M. and Karim, A.M.A., 2020. Reflective practices to explore postgraduate students
learning experience in mobile learning platform. Sains Humanika, 12(3).
Trigueros, R., Padilla, A.M., Aguilar-Parra, J.M., Rocamora, P., Morales-Gázquez, M.J. and
López-Liria, R., 2020. The influence of emotional intelligence on resilience, test
anxiety, academic stress and the mediterranean diet. A Study with university
students. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(6),
p.2071.
Online
What Is self-management, and how can you improve it?, 2021, [Online].Available through:
<https://www.betterup.com/blog/what-is-self-management-and-how-can-you-improve-it>
Jung Typology Test™ , 2021 [Online]. Avaialble through<http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-
win/jtypes2.asp>
ESFPs at a Glance, 2021 [Online].Available through
<https://www.qa.mbtionline.com/types/esfp/>

Appendices
Appendix 1