Self-Understanding, Personality and Psychometric Instruments 11

of consciousness. Insights into the inner personal dynamics of other people, into ideas and current developments in the education service, and wider insights into environmental forces and trends enhance this. 2) Skills – personal skills enable you to achieve an inner balance of these five elements. Team skills involve motivating the team and linking individual interests and ideas into a common vision. Communication skills are two way, developed through active listening and creating clear messages for others.

Facilitation skills enable everyone to perform at their peak level. A skill in managing the cultural level is about ensuring alignments within the organization and attunement within the individual. 3) Attitudes – changing from power and problem driven attitudes to vision driven because of a commitment to purposes and values. This involves a shift to management based on caring and connection. Your thoughts, feelings and actions are proactive and self-reliant. 4) Creativity – the capacity for envisioning and understanding intuition; the capacity for a wider and deeper perception; to see deeper significances and connections and to be able to break old connections; and to convert such connections into concrete applications. 5) Consciousness – based on your concept of the self, you develop the capacity to access the different states of consciousness. This is what, in the subtitle to the book, Parikh describes as ‘management by detached involvement’. This process enables you to achieve your potential. This is the sustainable peak performance which inspires others.

Using your own words reflect on your understanding for personal development of your knowledge, skills, attitudes, creativity and consciousness.

SELF-ACCEPTANCE We are not always secure in our ‘identity’, particularly when there is some challenge to its integrity. What is central as the basis for professional and personal development is the willing acceptance of the self. The self has an existence with distinctive traits or characteristics and is related to your identity, a basis for your self-esteem, self-confidence, self-respect and self-regard. Self-affirmation is important for personal success. Irrational and negative beliefs are damaging. The belief that you should be liked by everyone for everything, or that you can be highly competent in all activities is irrational. You should not think there is a problem when things do not go as you want, believe you can necessarily have significant control over the future, or that external events or other people determine your happiness. There is always the opportunity to remake the past and not be trapped by the belief that something that once affected you always will. If some obstruction has stopped your progress, you could interpret this obstacle as irrational and impossible to challenge, or you could work round it. If you have negative feelings about yourself you will act less effectively, but you can also learn to change these feelings.

How fully do you accept yourself?