There is a big advantage in knowing ourselves and the type of environment in which we feel nurtured. But there is also a huge advantage in knowing how a partner, a child, or a co-worker thinks, feels and sorts information.
Once we recognize that not everyone is like me and that each of us sees the world through their own lens, we will quickly realize that individuals will approach similar situations differently. It is not necessary that they do it just like me.
You cannot afford to miss the richness that comes with understanding your own personality and the benefit it brings to relationships.
As the world moves faster, when you are expected to do more with less, when teamwork and innovation are essential, when there are greater cultural and international concerns, understanding psychological types offers an unmatched resource.
Take Control of How Others See You
You are being perceived, either positively or negatively, every day of your life.
Others are constantly viewing and making judgments of you. The impact of this perception can happen quickly; it takes only a few seconds to form an opinion. Even though you don't have control of how others view you, you do have control over your actions, which can substantially affect others' perceptions. This is "the power of thinking without thinking," as Malcolm Gladwell describes subconscious mental processes in his bestseller Blink.
You can't influence someone's perception 100 percent of the time. Recognizing this limitation helps you accept the circumstances when you encounter people who simply won't change their perceptions of you.
The power of perception is important because it completely determines how people view you, and therefore, how they act toward and around you. Proactively shaping others' perceptions of you is a key strategy for standing out, gaining credit for your work, and ultimately, achieving career advancement.
So, how do others see and create an opinion of you? Perception is affected by a variety of factors, including:
What people notice about you.
The behaviors that make an impression.
The image you project.
The attitudes you project.
The opinions you hold.
You need to be honest with yourself about who you are before you can focus on the way you want others to perceive you. You can begin by conducting a candid assessment of your true skill level. By comparing the way that others perceive you with your genuine skill level, you can determine whether your current ability corresponds to where you want to go.
Once perception has started, the reality of what you see begins to take effect. This provides a level of certainty. Once the perception becomes the reality, the person begins to think that this is what he or she actually believes, and develops faith and confidence in this belief. The final step occurs when one considers the perception to be truth. The truth provides such certainty for a person that it makes it difficult to change or alter the perception that one has created.
Take Action Now
Consider how others perceive you both positively and negatively.
Conduct an assessment of your skill level wherein you honestly analyze your skills in terms of where you are and where you want to be.....to determine how best to close the gap.
Review all of your social networking sites from two perspectives. First, make sure you portray yourself as you want to be perceived. Second, make sure you represent your company's image appropriately.
At one time or another, all of us have dreamed of becoming a heroine, a celebrity, a VIP, or someone else who stands out above the crowd. We know we have talent but we often resist taking a chance or going after our dream.
Sometimes life seems like a runaway train that we are scrambling to catch. We have to discover the way we want to live our lives for ourselves! The first part of the discovery process is to learn about who we are. We need to become the Lewis and Clark of our own personal territory, discovering our strengths, weaknesses, triggers, motivations, tendencies, skills, goals, hopes, wishes, expectations, and themes.
Early in our lives, we understand that we have a personality unique from everyone else’s. Later we’ll understand that personalities are shaped by our genetics, our personal life experiences, and the manner in which we interpret those experiences. Life is one long succession of learning experiences—and all too often we have to repeat the same lesson over and over again before we learn it by heart.
Women need to do what they do best. To find out more about yourself, read the book "Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self knowledge."
Limited time offer: This "Women, Know Thyself" ebook is free at Amazon.com on Valentine's Day and the day after only. "
Sources: Joel A. Garfinkle: Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level
John G Agno: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge.
If you register for the conference and book your hotel by February 15th, you'll be in the running for one of the many bonus prizes. Don't procrastinate. Register Now!
Work Together or Fail Alone
Jonah Lehrer's article, "GroupThink" in The New Yorker, January 30, 2012 states that brainstorming seems like an ideal technique, a feel-good way to boost productivity. But there is a problem with brainstorming. It doesn't work.
Scientific advances have lead to a situation where all the remaining problems are incredibly hard. Researchers are forced to become increasingly specialized, because there's only so much information one mind can handle. And they have to collaborate, because the most interesting mysteries lie at the intersection of disciplines. "A hundred years ago, the Wright brothers could build an airplane all by themselves," says Ben Jones, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management, at Northwestern University. "Now Boeing needs hundreds of engineers just to design and produce engines." The larger lesson is that the increasing complexity of human knowledge, coupled with the escalating difficulty of those remaining questions, means that people must either work together or fail alone.
Exposure to unfamiliar perspectives can foster creativity. Debate, rather than brainstorming, may be less pleasant but it will always be more productive....because the power of dissent is the power of surprise.
Criticism allows people to dig below the surface of the imagination and come up with collective ideas that aren't predictable. And recognizing the importance of conflicting perspectives in a group raises the issue of what kinds of people will work together best.
The best research is consistently produced when scientists work within ten meters of each other. "If you want people to work together effectively, you need to create architectures that support frequent, physical, spontaneous interactions," says Isaac Kohane, a researcher at Harvard Medical School.
How to become a Network Linchpin
A new generation of laboratory architecture has tried to make chance encounters more likely to take place, and this trend has spread in the business world.
Since all the work in every organization is done through relationships, it makes great sense to utilize technology to allow people to connect and collaborate easily and effectively.
Understanding and facilitating these relationships, which flow through a web of professional networks and across functional boundaries, allows employees to create productive change. And since competition is a matter of relations, the company’s ability to structure and control the process of securing productive relationships will determine success in the marketplace.
The best meetings happen by accident, in the hallway or parking lot. To become the network linchpin of your work group, a very good place for your open-door office location is the one closest to the rest rooms.
When the composition for the work group is right--enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways--the group dynamic will take care of itself. Although such conversations will occasionally be unpleasant, that doesn't mean that they can be avoided. The most creative spaces are those which hurl us together. It is the human friction that makes the sparks.
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