Second Week Evaluation.

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I have now reached two weeks since I've begun my six week process of improving my Self Management skill that I learned from reading Daniel Goleman. I have to say, I have noticed myself improving slowly but surely in the area. For example, I have been doing well on not being so impulsive on responding immediately with my first thought in a situation. I tend to speak my mind instantly and sometimes that has been to my advantage and sometimes not, especially in my personal life. Well, this week something happened where I initially wanted to just yell out to the person because of a not-so-pretty past we have, but I collected myself and kept my calm, I looked at the overall picture. Which leads me to my next point, relating my Goleman goal to something I learned from reading Heifetz and Laurie's The Work of Leadership article that can be found in Harvard Business Review here. Going back to what I read from Heifetz and Laurie is the "get on the balcony" concept. Like I was saying about seeing the overall picture, this idea goes hand in hand with it. As they state, "leaders must be able to identify struggles over values and power, recognize patterns of work avoidance, and watch for the many other functional and dysfunctional reactions to change." Relating this to my goal, I have been stopping and looking over the entire context and looking for patterns and places to improve on. Instead of finding problems and acting on impulses, I am making an opportunity out of the problem to do better. I am taking the bigger picture into consideration, not just myself as part of the picture. 

First Week Evaluation.

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Today marks the end of the first week of my journey towards improving my self-management skill. Reflecting on this week, a time I remember getting to put this to the test was this entire week of midterms. I lately have a lot going on, with school work, outside work, and my personal life that I find myself schmoozing a lot at home on my days off or just being flat out unproductive. However, with the stress of being a senior in college now and with the reminder of wanting to better myself, I did self-manage myself better this first week. Instead of falling into the temptation of going out with friends, I instead put my phone to silent during my homework hours and completely ignored it. I tried to look over at it the least possible and solely focus on my work to get done. I was able to manage doing this for an hour or so and that was a lot of for me, considering I'm always doing some sort of thing on my phone and "multi-tasking". From what I learned about Peter F. Drucker's What Makes An Effective Executive article this week in relation to my Goleman intention (self-management skill), is asking myself what I needed to get done and making action plans for myself. In the article Drucker discusses an enterprise jotting down their top tasks, developing action plans and asking themselves what's right for the enterprise. I applied that to myself and jotted down my top tasks for midterms, developed my action plan schedule with deadlines and  got them done. I had some minor bumps along the way but for the most part I was able to stick to my action plan. For the first week done, I think I did a good job of retaining the idea that I'm on this six week journey towards self improvement through self management. Click here to access Drucker's What  Makes An Effective Executive or use this link: 
http://harconllc.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/HCLLC_Harvard_Business_Review_Effective_Executive.pdf

The Beginning.

Over the course of the next six weeks I am going to be working on something not beauty or fashion related, but me related. Recently I read an article by Daniel Goleman about what makes a good leader, and the five competencies we can develop to become a great leader. Here you can find a portion of his article on the topic in Harvard Business Review. One of the five competencies that hit me right away is Self-Management. It encompasses having self-control and conscientiousness. These two aspects of this competency are where I lack the most in my being. I know that I am a person with very little patience and that in result acts on impulses a lot to only wish later that I should of done it differently. Therefore, that is what I will be working on developing over the next six weeks. Being able to not act or open my mouth right away, to think things through for best results, to overall be a person that can manage what I say and do efficiently. There is a lot to learn about what Goleman has to say in the topic of leadership; investing some time and effort into the person you can potentially be can only lead to good things. Below I have linked a video where you can see Mr. Goleman himself speaking on the topic of emotional intelligence.

source: YouTube.com