Chapter 2 • Self-Awareness: A Point of Departure
SELF-AWARENESS QUESTIONNAIRES (SAQ) Which of your many personal characteristics are most likely to affect the way you deal with others? We have picked seven measures that are related to effective interpersonal relations and improving your interpersonal skills. Learning style refers to your preferred way of learning based on your relative emphasis of four different learning modes. Interpersonal needs indicate what you want from your interactions with others. Your level of assertiveness indicates how you go about getting what you want. The big five personality factors indicate your levels of adjustment, sociability, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Cognitive style refers to the general way you approach and attempt to solve problems. Locus of control refers to whether you believe you are or are not in control of what happens to you. The Type A personality test indicates the degree that you feel under time pressure to accomplish several things at once, making you competitive and aggressive, versus taking things more slowly and enjoying non-work-oriented activities. The following questionnaires have been designed to measure each of these characteristics. Take the time now to complete them. When you’re finished, you’ll find directions for scoring each of the questionnaires and a discussion of what the results say about you and your interpersonal skills.
SAQ 1: Learning Style15 Assess your learning style by ranking the following eight statements describing different ways of learning. Circle the number along each scale that best describes your behavior from the extremes of 1, “This does not describe me at all,” to 5, “This describes me perfectly.” Circling 3 would be an uncommitted position to either extreme. Circling 2 means the statement is rarely how you behave, and 4 indicates that the statement is often how you behave. 1. I enjoy venturing into new experiences and relationships to see what I can learn. This does not describe me at all 1 2 3 4 5 This describes me perfectly 2. I actively participate in “here-and-now” experiences that enable me to become aware of how I affect my environment and others. This does not describe me at all 1 2 3 4 5 This describes me perfectly 3. I am a careful observer of events and people, and find myself reflecting on what I see and hear from what goes on around me. This does not describe me at all 1 2 3 4 5 This describes me perfectly 4. I find myself talking with others about our recent experiences so that I can make sense of what people say and do and why events turn out as they do. This does not describe me at all 1 2 3 4 5 This describes me perfectly 5. I like to manipulate abstract ideas and symbols to visualize how concepts and things are related. This does not describe me at all 1 2 3 4 5 This describes me perfectly 6. I find myself engaging in “what if” forms of reasoning and synthesizing ideas into hypotheses and models for future testing. This does not describe me at all 1 2 3 4 5 This describes me perfectly 7. I enjoy taking risks by testing my ideas on others or in actions to see if they work. This does not describe me at all 1 2 3 4 5 This describes me perfectly 8. I am a decisive and practical problem solver who enjoys putting plans into action. This does not describe me at all 1 2 3 4 5 This describes me perfectly
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