4. Learning and Personal Improvement
• Personal Effectiveness: The foundation of
great management
• Most fundamental aspect of personal
competence is to know yourself and to
have a clear understanding of how you
learn new skills and motivate yourself to
improve your capability
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5. Myths of Personal Effectiveness
• Learning comes with age and experience
• We know ourselves
• Growth opportunities lie solely in our
weaknesses
• It’s not me, it’s them
• The best managers are hyper-organized
and workaholics
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6. Learning How to Learn
• Bandura’s social learning theory – learning
of any new behavior is the result of three
main factors – the person,
the environment and
the behavior
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7. Social Learning Theory
• Mutual influence is referred to as
reciprocal determinism
• Most learning is done through observation
and modeling of the behaviors of others
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8. Social Learning Theory
• Perception – a person’s mental processes
such as motivation, attention, self-
regulation and self-efficacy
• Behavior – person’s response or action
• Environment – the physical and social
environment surrounding an individual
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10. Attention
• First challenge of learning is to focus
• Critical you isolate as specifically as
possible the behaviors you hope to learn
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11. Retention
• Must be able to understand and
remember what you have observed
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12. Reproduction
• Importance of practice or actual
demonstration of a skill
• Cannot learn management by just
observing or reading
• Have to translate the images or
descriptions into actual behavior
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14. A Model of Self-Management
• Self-Observation/Exploration
• Self-Set Goals
• Management of Cues
• Positive Self-Talk and Rehearsal
• Self-Reward and Punishment
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15. Self-Set Improvement Goals
1. In committing to a goal, a person
devotes attention toward goal-relevant
activities
2. Goals energize people
3. Goals affect persistence
4. Goals motivate people to use their
knowledge to help them attain the goal
1-15
16. Discussion Question?
What is the most important part of self-set
improvement goals?
A. Specific
B. Measurable
C. Attainable
D. Relevant
E. Time-bound
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18. Putting It All into Practice
1. Know where you are currently
2. Set SMART goals for your change
3. Arrange your world to focus your
attention on and remind you of your
improvement plan and goals
4. Stay positive and rehearse the desired
behaviors at every opportunity
5. Create your own rewards for
accomplishing your targets 1-18
19. Individual Differences and their Importance
• Ability – what a person is capable of doing
• Personality – represents the pattern of
relatively enduring ways in which a person
thinks, acts, and behaves
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20. How Do I Think Critically and Analytically?
• Cognitive ability – capacity to learn and
process cognitive information such as
reading, comprehension, mathematical
patterns and spatial patterns
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21. How Well Do I Understand and Use Emotion?
• Emotional intelligence – refers to the
ability to accurately identify emotions (in
self and others) as well as understand and
manage those emotions separately
http://www.grantland.net/emotionalintelligence.htm
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22. Key Aspects of Emotional Intelligence
• Be able to accurately identify and express
yours and others feelings
• Get in the right mood
• Predict the emotional future
• Do it with feeling
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23. Cultural Intelligence
• Cultural intelligence – represents a
person’s capability to function effectively in
situations characterized by cultural
diversity
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24. Question?
Which Culture-Quotient sub-skill is a
person’s understanding of how cultures
are similar and different?
A. CQ-Strategy
B. CQ-Knowledge
C. CQ-Motivation
D. CQ-Behavior
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25. Cultural Intelligence
Dyne and Ang have identified CQ as
consisting of four sub-skills
•CQ-Strategy – how a person interprets and understands
intercultural experiences
•CQ-Knowledge – person’s understanding of how cultures
are similar and different
•CQ-Motivation – person’s interest in experiencing in and
interacting with people from different cultures
•CQ-Behavior – person’s capability to modify their own
verbal and nonverbal behavior so it is appropriate for
different cultures
1-25
26. What Are My Dominant Personality Traits?
Big Five Dimensions
1. Extraversion
2. Emotional stability
3. Agreeableness
4. Conscientiousness
5. Openness to experience
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27. What Are My Personality Preferences?
Carl Jung
• People’s behavior is rarely random but
reflects a stable pattern of personal
preferences
• Large percentages of people in certain
occupations tend to share similar
preferences
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28. What Are My Personality Preferences?
Four Major Preference Areas
1. Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I)
2. Sensing (S) or Intuition (N)
3. Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
4. Judgment (J) or Perception (P)
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29. What Are My Core Values?
• Individual’s value system
– Enduring beliefs about what’s most important
in the world
– Non-negotiable deeply held beliefs
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30. What Are My Core Values?
• One of the most important ways values
awareness operates is attempting to
determine compatibility and fit with others
in jobs, occupations and organizations
• Occupational fit
– condition that exists when there is relative
agreement among the parties about what is
most important
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31. What is My Preferred Career Orientation?
• Career orientation – preference for a
specific type of occupation and work
context
http://www.businesscartoons.co.uk/shop/index.php?
act=viewProd&productId=10
1-31
34. Important Self-Awareness Issues
• Assessment results are simply feedback
• Thousands of self-assessments exist but
many have questionable legitimacy
• Preferences are choices we make about
how we perceive the world and function
best in it
• Look for patterns and consistency across
your assessments
1-34
35. Involve Others: Seek Regular Feedback
• Major obstacle to seeking feedback is fear
• Multi-source feedback – enhances self-
knowledge and improves managerial
behavior
1-35
36. Focus on Strengths, Not Just Weaknesses
• Most productive to place focus on
strengths and the things you can
realistically change
1-36
37. Question?
What is the pattern of mental and physical
responses to conditions of uncertainty
and perceived threat?
A. Stress
B. Eustress
C. Trauma
D. Anxiety
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38. The Prevalence and Dangers of Stress
• Stress – pattern of mental and physical
responses to conditions of uncertainty and
perceived threat
1-38
39. The Prevalence and Dangers
of Stress
• Managers experiencing high stress are
more likely to:
– selectively perceive information
– fixate on single solutions to problems
– revert to old habits to cope with current
situations
– show less creativity
– overestimate how fast time is passing
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40. The Prevalence and Dangers of Stress
• Some level of stress is essential to high
performance
• Eustress – controlled or productive stress
• Challenge is not to eliminate stress, but to
understand how it arises and to manage it
in a way that does not derail your life and
work
1-40
41. Sources of Stress: Big Events and Daily Hassles
• People tend to overestimate how much
large events in their lives contribute to
their stress level and grossly
underestimate the effects of “daily
hassles”
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42. Sources of Stress: Big Events and Daily Hassles
• Daily hassles – annoying events that
occur during the workday that make
accomplishing work more difficult
• Daily uplifts – unexpected positive
outcomes that can have the opposite
impact and can recharge a manager
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43. Strategies for Managing Stress
• Physical Hardiness
• Psychological Hardiness – ability to
remain psychologically stable and healthy
in the face of significant stress
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44. Psychological Hardiness
• Commitment - persevering through a hard
time
• Control - greater our capacity to choose our
best attitude, the greater our sense of being in
charge of our circumstances
• Challenge
– seeing a problem as a challenge mobilizes our
resources to deal with it
– encourages us to pursue the possibilities of a
successful outcome 1-44
45. Psychological Hardiness
• Challenge
– seeing a problem as a challenge mobilizes
our resources to deal with it
– encourages us to pursue the possibilities of a
successful outcome
1-45
46. Dealing with Stress in the Moment
• Muscle relaxation
• Deep breathing
• Mood repair
1-46
47. Managing Time
• First be effective, then be efficient
• Start with written goals
• Follow the 80/20 rule
• Use the time management matrix
• Learn to say no
• Make good lists for effective prioritization
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49. Three Effective Ways to Say No
1. “I’m sorry. That’s not a priority for me
right now.”
2. “I have made so many commitments to
others, it would be unfair to them and
you if I took on anything more at this
point.”
3. “No.”
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50. Make Good Lists for Effective Prioritization
• Plan the work, then work the plan
– ABC method – assign A to a high-priority item,
B to medium priority item and C to low-priority
items
• Ask “What’s the next action?”
• Know yourself and your time use
– Internal prime time: time of day we typically work
best
– External prime time: best time to attend to others
1-50
51. Make Good Lists for Effective Prioritization
• Fight procrastination
• Swiss Cheese Method - poke small holes
in an A project with instant tasks
• Instant tasks - require 5 minutes or less
of your time and makes some sort of hole
in your high priority task
• 2-minute rule - any time demand that will
take less than 2 minutes should be done
now
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