Introduction

This individual assignment focuses on Chen Qianqian’s self-awareness on competence development efforts this semester. This assessment will discuss key results of the conducted competence-assessment questionnaire; critically review the major differences between Chen Qianqian’s self-assessment and the assessment received from a friend (Natasha) and family member (Yifan); and state two competence areas she wants to develop most this semester.

Key results of the competence-assessment questionnaire

• Strong competence areas

Communication:

I consider myself as an effective communicator, and I am congruent with the message that I deliver. Communication is like a “soft skill”, which empowers me to express myself, gather information, form relationships and interact with others. Communication is crucial in my personal career to perform basic functions of operations and management, and will improve employee relations in workplace. (Carlopio and Andrewartha, 2012).

Collaboration:

Personally, I value the importance of collaboration a lot. “Many hands make light work”, it is undeniable that the power of effective collaboration will help a company to achieve development and success. In my personal career, personal capacity is absolutely vital, however as a team member, the ability to discuss, tolerate, negotiate, compromise, support members, share resources, respect and trust each other, communicate effectively, act swiftly to coordinate and cooperate are long-term skills that need to be practiced.

Managingchange:

In my study life, I seek to develop my strain capacity and adaptive ability to manage changes. I am open to changes because I understand changes may redirect you to a better result or life track. It’s important for me to learn how to manage changes in my personal career, because changes will train people to turn an unexpected challenging situation into a favorable condition.

• Weak competence areas

Emotional intelligence

In this survey, I responded the “disagree” on the statement “never lose temper when I feel frustrated or angry”. We all get angry or frustrated, and sometimes it’s not easy to control yourself and prone to rage burst. However, negative consequences of losing temper may lead to a damage your social relationship and even may ruin your career. Therefore, it is essential for me to practice and keep cool when I feel my temper burning.

Persuasion:

I do not consider myself as a persuasive person, because usually there will be a lack of evidence, and especially with logical when I support my arguments. Persuasive speaking more likely to enhance the communication in workplace, that helps to establish supervisory rapport. Ability to engage others, and influence their opinions, can pay a big role in whether you’re entrusted with similar assignments or left on the sidelines. (Khare, 2010)

Networking:

There is a resistance on building up my new relationships. Sometimes I feel awkward meeting with strangers or talking to strangers, which really pushes me out of my confront zone. However, a developed social network is essential for my personal career to help businesspeople connect with other managers and entrepreneurs to further each other’s business interests by forming mutually beneficial business relationships. Through social capital leaders can offer tap into the financial and intellectual capital of their network contacts.

Critically review – differences between assessments

Yifan is my order sister, so in certain way, she know me very well. However in her assessment, she consider me as “Excellent” at networking; never loose temper; persuasive and motivated. Despite my sister lives with me, she never studied or worked with me. Most of Yifan’s assessments were based on the cognition of childhood experiences with me.

Language gap is a possible reason why Yifan assessed me differently. Linguistically drives misunderstanding is a typical communication phenomenon when we put our thoughts and ideas out into written messages in a foreign language. Because English is not her first language, she might misunderstand the meaning, or found trouble comprehend these statements. Moreover, the time-constrained evaluating process caused her a degree of pressure, which might also influence the assessment result from what the questionnaire intended to convey.

It is surprising to see that Natssha responded “slightly disagree” on the statement “Thinks about the best way to communicate a message”. Since I consider myself an effective communicator, this difference may occur due to cultural differences. Even though Natashia comes from Asian country, she has started learning English since little in local international school, and she is influenced by the western culture deep-rooted. China has a high-context culture, and an implicit communication occurs more often in such culture. In what the anthropologist Edward Hall (2003) referred to, people carry messages in an implicit way in high-context culture. So personally I prefer to use phone message, but Natassha prefer face-to-face. Cultural differences and individual habits influenced the way she sees and analyzes me.

Two prior competences area in Semester 1

–Motivation

Motivation is a core component of constructive theories of learning and self-improvement. It is a zest that stimulate individual, provide direction to personal behavior, and underlines the tendency to persist. (Bartol and Martin, 1998)

According to the research conducted by Schunk (1989) and Zimmerman (1989), the researchers demonstrated that students accomplished progressively and were more spurred when they set particular goals for themselves. Therefore, it is prior for me to boost motivation in a brand new semester by setting clear and achievable study goals. Once I determine my goals, I can use them as motivational tools to achieve learning objectives, develop and direct myself toward better performance in study. (Locke & Latham, 1990)

-Professional Networking

In order to integrate into local life and study, networking is consider to be another priority. Networking is a virtuous circle, good working relationship improves the perception of project success. (Kintish, 2014.) There is nothing a student need more than good relationships with others in their brand new semester. Networking allows me to become connected with a professional in my field or with students who are also going into similar fields. Advice given from my perspective networking connections can help you become familiar with what to do and what not to do when it comes to my subject.