Self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and how they influence others around you. It also includes an evaluation of your strengths, weaknesses, values, and motivations. These serve as a foundation for personal growth and improving my relationships.
Research suggests that when we see ourselves clearly, we are more confident and more creative. We make sounder decisions, build stronger relationships, and communicate more effectively. We’re less likely to lie, cheat, and steal. We are better workers who get more promotions. And we’re more-effective leaders with more-satisfied employees and more-profitable companies.
One of the activities and reflections I completed in SE 361 was about Clifton Strengths. The CliftonStrengths Assessment highlights 34 talent themes, like Empathy, Learner, and Restorative. The assessment also focuses on your top 5 themes, mine being Learner, Harmony, Empathy, Restorative, and Competition. Having these themes at hand has helped my self-awareness because I now have a better understanding of my behaviors, strengths, and emotions. For example, the Restorative theme matched my behavior while working in teams or resolving conflicts. The assessment also noted how this behavior has some weaknesses. With this theme, I tend to try to step in too early, when I should allow the parties to try to figure it out themselves. Learning these strengths and weaknesses about my themes has helped me increased my self-awareness.
In the reflection below, I discuss each of the themes I recieved in the CliftonStrengths Assessment and how I have been enlightened with their descriptions and behavior. Having specific behaviors put into themes has helped me categorize my strengths and weakness.
Reflecting on the Clifton Strengths allowed me to gain valuable insights into my strengths and weaknesses. Understanding these strengths and weaknesses has helped me recognize how I can leverage these traits in both my personal and professional life. The strengths that the test chose for me were Learner, Harmony, Empathy, Restorative, and Competition. These themes or strengths were part of the strategic thinking, relationship building, executing, and influencing. Looking back at my themes, I agree with most of the strengths that were selected for me. Learner, Harmony, Restorative, and Competition all resonated with me. The one that stood out to me was Empathy. I’ve always thought of myself as a very logical thinker. I try to remove emotion from my decisions or thinking. But looking deeper into my past behavior, I have to agree that Empathy is part of my strengths. I can understand how others feel and think. I can also put myself in their shoes and understand their situation. Putting my strengths into specific categories and specific words I can understand will help me work on those strengths and apply them to my life.
Reading the descriptions and the “How this Theme Could Get in the Way of Success” section helped me put specific feelings and situations into describable themes/strengths. For the Learner theme, the report describes how I love the process of learning rather than the end goal. This is true because I like spending time understanding and contextualizing the material. In the end, I will always enjoy the knowledge I get, but I’m fascinated by the process. I am always trying to understand the material, trying to find that A-ha moment where everything clicks in place. The report also details how I get frustrated with boring classwork or teachers. Being able to identify one of the issues I face because it's a strength of mine was eye-opening. I’m motivated by the process, but if I can’t see it helping my long-term goals, I drop it immediately.
This connection also occurs for the other themes. For example, for the Harmony theme, the report mentions how conflict stresses me out and I find myself constantly intervening. This happens very often, whenever there is a fight or conflict I can see, I try to stop it because it stresses me out. For the Restorative theme, the report details how I can appear to others as critical or negative. This happens when classmates or teachers share an idea or answer, I might be too quick to point out the flaws or discrepancies in their thinking. The report also details how I might be too quick to fix others’ problems when they want me to listen and be a friend. This exact situation happened to me during freshman year. One of my friends was venting to me about breaking up with his high school girlfriend. Instead of trying to let him vent and let out his emotions, I tried to offer solutions to help him. Understanding that this was one of my strengths instead of my weaknesses helped me reframe it into something positive. It was something I could use to my advantage instead of trying to stop this behavior.
This Clifton Strengths assessment is part of self-awareness, a key element to emotional intelligence. This assessment provided me with a clearer picture of my natural inclinations, allowing me to embrace my strengths while also acknowledging my weaknesses. I realized that I am great at solving conflicts between others and problems they might have, but I may try to help them too quickly. I am also overly critical of others’ ideas and solutions, but this is a strength because I am trying to find a good solution or idea. Building self-awareness allows me to recognize my triggers and reactions. If I try to help someone too quickly, I can take a step back and think about how I can utilize the restorative theme. I’m great at solving problems, but I need to first let them talk about their problems. If they need my help, I can offer them my solutions. Another example would be if a conflict is happening, I would only step in if the conflict gets out of hand. Sometimes, the people in the conflict need to figure it out themselves instead of having somebody jump in. Taking this assessment has helped me identify my strengths and weaknesses, building self-awareness. This self-awareness means I can lean into my strengths at the right time and make the correct appraisal and judgement.