Self-awareness and Self-efficacy

Self-awareness and self- efficacy are important in monitoring individuals’ inner state as well as their emotions and behavior. Different theories and models were developed to enable individuals and groups of recognizing themselves and other peoples’ attitudes. They enable people to enhance their attitudes, perception, follow the critical thinking, become judgmental and take a calculated risk (Luong & McLaughlin, 2011).

Decisions are crucial for success, they should be carefully made to the individual and the organizational levels. The decision-making process could be difficult because of uncertainty or insufficient information required to make the decision. Simply, the right decision leads to positive results, it involves recognition of the problem, desire to make a change and decision implementation (Turpin & Marais, 2004).

This essay concerns with the types of critical thinking and decision making, including, self-awareness, DISC profile tool, the “Johari Window” model, Self-efficacy theory, the social cognitive theory, the prospect theory, anchoring-and-adjustment theory, the critical theory and the expected utility theory. Also, the self-reflection of the current and future situation will be discussed with relevance to each theory and an example of a celebrity is provided to reflect the on the theories.

Self-awareness enables individuals to recognize their feelings and emotions. It helps people to recognize the real causes of certain emotions to be able to control the inappropriate feelings. Organizations tend to offer tools of personal-assessment to enable the employees to work more efficiently with diverse personalities. Self-awareness enables employees to improve their communication, teamwork and productivity. DISC profile is a tool used by different organizations. It measures four dimensions of the personality; the ‘dominance ability’ to be direct, strong and forceful, the ‘influence ability’ to be sociable and talkative, the ‘steadiness ability’ to be gentle and soft-hearted and the ‘conscientiousness ability’ to be analytical and logical. The employees are asked to complete a series of questions that measure the four personality dimensions, then it produces a personality report about the individual behavior. DISC is a nonjudgmental tool that helps people express their behaviors and maps the differences among them to be able to provide a common language (Gravett & Caldwell, 2016).

The term ‘interpersonal’ involves personal interactions and relationships. It could take the form of verbal, non- verbal or written form of communication. The relationships between people could be explained by using the “Johari Window” model. The model explains the soft skills, empathy, cooperation, the influence of the behavior of interpersonal intergroup development. The model is useful in self-awareness training, interpersonal communication, team development, personality development, intergroup relations and group dynamics. It is also called the disclosure or feedback model of self-awareness (Saxena, 2015). This model enables individuals to know how they view their selves and how people view them. It shows the degree of openness to others through information sharing. The model considers four areas of awareness, the known to self and known to others (open). The not-known to self, but known to others (blind). The known to self, but not-known to others (hidden). Finally, the not-known to self and not known to others (Luong & McLaughlin, 2011).

The Johari Window Model

My degree of openness, according to the Johari Window model is located in the hidden area. I am not a very open person, lack communication skills and do not express my feelings. This model enables me to understand my personality and the degree of openness. Also, I can understand people’s behavior by classifying them according to the four areas of the Johari Window model. In my future career, this model will help me in managing projects and making decisions based on the available information and the degree of openness required for every task. In addition, I will be able to classify my colleagues and followers according to their degree of openness.

Self-efficacy refers to the individual’s ability to execute and organize actions necessary to achieve certain objectives. The leadership self-efficacy refers to the leaders’ ability to fulfill their role through guiding, coaching and cooperating with followers to achieve the desired goals. Also, some researchers relate between the leader self-efficacy and the unit outcomes and people’s perception of the leader’s effectiveness (Machida & Schaubroeck, 2011). I have complete self-awareness, I know my goals and work actively to achieve them. When I become a leader, I wish to be an effective leader who has the high self-awareness to be able to communicate with the followers and achieve the desired outcomes.

In addition, self-efficacy could be considered as a subjective judgment of the individual’s competence level of behaving in a certain way or achieving specific outcomes in the future. Self-efficacy has been formulated by Bandura’s social cognitive theory that considers self-efficacy as the individual’s belief of the capabilities of executing certain courses of action to achieve specified performance outcomes. It mainly considers the individual’s behavior in the future. It involves reflection and self-analysis but it should be realistic and not overestimated. A good measurement of self-efficacy is conducting social comparison and analysis of the success or failure of the previous experiences in performing similar tasks. The feedback of others expresses a kind of social persuasion of the self-efficacy, while the negative states like stress result in loss of control and lower the beliefs in self-efficacy. Self-efficacy could be linked to self-regulation to produce more effective learning strategies. Conversely, the link between self-efficacy and anxiety is inverse (Shea & Bidjerano, 2010).

I always try to benefit from my past experiences by analyzing them and evaluating the advantages and disadvantages. Learning from the mistakes is very important to me in order not to repeat the negative experiences. Also, the evaluation of others, including my teachers, family members and friends enables me to recognize my behavior and make a realistic and objective evaluation to myself to be able to achieve my desired goals at the personal level and the professional level as well.

DISC Profile Tool

According to Bower (2015), self-awareness strengthens the self-responsibility which enables the individual to engage in life at their full potential. The prospect theory explains the peoples’ behavior of making irrational choices. The theory assumes that individual decisions are directed by the subjective values that influence the outcomes. Some people are risk takers while others are risk averse, people might take the high risk because of overestimating their expectation and vice versa (Mowrer & Davidson, 2011). The decision making under risk evolved from the preferences in games of chance to understand individuals’ risk-taking ability. Risk describes a situation in which the individual chooses between the potential outcomes of each option separately and their probability of occurrence. Researchers use the expected value of the outcomes, it involves calculating the probability-weighted average of the specified outcomes (Holmes et al., 2011).

According to the prospect theory, I am a risk taker and high achiever, although I always analyze the situations objectively to minimize the risk. I try to make reasonable judgments to take evidence-based decisions. Although, I can bear the negative consequences of my decisions.

Social relationships involve correction between oneself and another. A mechanism of correction is the anchoring-and-adjustment that was introduced by Tversky and Kahneman (1974), as cited in Tamir & Mitchell (2013), the mechanism assumes that individuals should get information to be used as an anchor, then the information could be adjusted by searching for the right answer. While adjustment refers to a serial processes that follow the anchor or the start point. It involves time and cognitive efforts that evolve serially. The social inferences require self-knowledge as an anchor point, it also requires answers of the inquiries about other person’s attitudes and cognitive effort to correct and adjust the automatically generated anchors. Logical thinking assists people to make the required adjustments by eliminating the irrelevant information. Anchoring impacts our daily lives, including the results of salary negotiations, decision making and our ability to judge people’s attitudes (Lieder et al., 2017).

In my opinion, individuals should utilize the available information at most to be able to take the most appropriate decision. Also, not all of the decisions are critical and require the complete information, but the adjustment is very important to ensure better decision making. I tend to use the logical thinking to be able to eliminate the irrelevant information. I intend to recognize the importance of anchoring in my daily life mainly, in taking decisions and in judging people’s attitude.

Social Cognitive Theory

The critical theory involves ideas examination, evaluation and decision making. The aim of critical thinking is maintaining an objective position. It enables the individuals to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the argument. It depends on evidence to support the claims (Sullivan, 2016). The critical thinking enables effective problem solving, attaining knowledge and enhancing lifelong learning (Asyari, Al Muhdhar, & Susilo, 2016). For example, in my future career, certain decisions will require actions based on evidence. The powerful evidence is the one that provides analysis supported by analysis. It seems like a complex process, but I like to always make accurate decisions that maximize the business value.

The expected utility theory (EUT) is considered the most accepted decision-making theory under risky conditions. The opportunity-threat theory is a new theory that simplifies the risk attitude given the features of the new paradoxes. Managers are influenced by the opportunity and the risk, not only the expected results of their decisions (Pandey, 2018; Mishra, 2014).

My personality type enables me to make decisions under uncertainty conditions. I can take the full responsibility for the decisions I make in my social life regardless of the consequences. In the future, when I become a leader, I believe that I will be the responsible person for the decisions I make, not the team members.

An example of a celebrity is Justin Bieber, the child singer that the audience could not separate their perception about his performance from his age. Bieber’s early videos on YouTube showed a performance of a child, in his recordings he was perceived as too young. Although, there is no definition that describes the performance at the level of adults. This was followed by the emergence of the demographic label of “tween” that was introduced to regulate the phenomenon of Bieber. Tween is used to promote aging out of children’s consumer products who still cannot be considered as teenagers. The emergence of the teen products allowed 40 radio airplay to play Bieber’s songs. Also, it is important to notice that Bieber acted as an adult singer to attract the attention of the audience (Bickford, 2014). This example shows that the anchor information about Bieber was adjusted by the emergence of the teen products that resulted in the airplay of his songs. Bieber’s self-awareness in his early days of celebrity enabled him to recognize his feelings and emotions. His self-efficacy reflects that although he knows he is still a child, but he can act as an adult to achieve his desired goal of becoming a famous singer.  

Prospect Theory

In conclusion, Self-awareness enables individuals to recognize their feelings and emotions. It helps people to recognize the real causes of certain emotions to be able to control the inappropriate feelings. The DISC profile is a tool used by different organizations. It measures four dimensions of the personality; the ‘dominance ability’, the ‘influence ability’, the ‘steadiness ability’ and the ‘conscientiousness ability’ to be analytical and logical.

The “Johari Window” model explains the soft skills, empathy, cooperation, the influence of the behavior of interpersonal intergroup development. The model is useful in self-awareness training, interpersonal communication, team development, personality development, intergroup relations and group dynamics.

Self-efficacy refers to the individual’s ability to execute and organize actions necessary to achieve certain objectives. The leadership self-efficacy refers to the leaders’ ability to fulfill their role through guiding, coaching and cooperating with followers to achieve the desired goals. The social cognitive theory considers self-efficacy as the individual’s belief of the capabilities of executing certain courses of action to achieve specified performance outcomes.

The prospect theory explains the peoples’ behavior of making irrational choices. The theory assumes that individual decisions are directed by the subjective values that influence the outcomes. Social relationships involve correction between oneself and another. A mechanism of correction is the anchoring-and-adjustment.

References

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Bickford, T. (2014). Justin Bieber, YouTube, and new media celebrity: The tween prodigy at home and online. In Musical prodigies: Interpretations from psychology, musicology and ethnomusicology. UK: Oxford University Press.

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Gravett, S., & Caldwell, A. (2016). Why organizations should concentrate on learning agility. In Learning Agility (pp. 9-17). Palgrave Macmillan : New York.

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