Alien from another Universe-ity

My personality type is ISFP, which stands for the Adventurer. People with such personality like freedom and hate being controlled, they often struggle with deadlines, and don’t like forcing their opinions on others.

Usually, Adventurers are not interested in controlling others and dominating – exactly because they don’t like giving orders and are not good at long-term planning. However, the ISFP type still can be a good leader – such people are creative, kind, and curious, and they easily adapt to any changes.

           As I have mentioned above, Adventurers usually prefer not to become leaders. But when the project is personally important and significant to them, they can become highly motivated to take the lead. Because of personality preferences such as feeling overthinking, and prospecting over judging, ISFP people are generally good in understanding the concerns and needs of their colleagues and can lead by example, do not become dominating and authoritarian, and prefer to give quiet support.

After taking the personality test, I have learned that my confirmed profile is ISFP, which stands for the Adventurer, and I am 58% introverted, 62% observant, 63% feeling, 68% prospecting, and 51% turbulent. At first, these numbers meant nothing to me, but while reading the article about Adventurers, I started becoming more and more surprised how well it matched my preferences, behavior, reactions, and even feelings.

Let me tell you more about myself and Adventurers in general. We love to express ourselves, and like artists who use canvas and paint for painting, we use every possibility to show how unique we are – even a little detail, from colors and types of clothes to hobbies and ways of spending time. Charming, kind, and often shy, we tend to help others and will never force our values or opinions on others. Adventurers are open-minded and tend to give second chances, especially because we ourselves do not want to be judged and are willing to have the freedom to live our own ways. Therefore, when it comes to working, you will probably find Adventurers in positions that leave enough space for doing things as we see fit. This type of personality hates being micromanaged, but on the other hand, due to our spontaneity, we are not good at long-term focusing. But don’t be scared if you deal with Adventurers! We anyways will make things happen, and if you want to manage us successfully, just leave us in a sandbox or set goals clearly. Moreover, we love to feel valued and respected, thus we will work hard to gain such an attitude towards us.

If I understood correctly, for this exercise I can use any other peer assessment-related instance. Therefore, I chose to work on peer assessment in Pixel Art for Video Games course which I study on Coursera. I love art and video games and always experience more emotions when peer assess there or receive feedback. This week I had to peer assess three other students, so there is some material to talk about.

My feelings and thoughts.

Student 1.

Surprised: “I think this person actually has experience in this, why does (s)he need to take the course?”

Excited: “I can take note of some of these ideas and use them later. This pixel art looks fantastic!”

Anxious: “What if most of the other students are at the same level, and I am not good enough?”

My MBTI type is the ISFP, and I am introverted, observant, feeling, and prospecting. For this exercise, I asked my old Japanese friend Matthias Matsunaga to work with me. His personality type is the INTP, and he is introverted, intuitive, thinking, and prospecting. Also, he is assertive, while I am turbulent.

           Before completing this assignment, I answered all those questions myself. First of all, initially, my partner was one of my peers (who did not provide me with her own answers), and secondly, I did it for myself to better understand what kind of answers are possible. My own answers were very long and had several details and examples, so I was very surprised to see those of my new partner.

What is a positive attitude? To what extent do you have it? If you have a positive attitude, what actions might you display? How do you communicate it? What does a positive attitude “look” like to others? How do we differ in expressing our respective positive attitudes? How are we the same in expressing positivity? What is a negative attitude? If you have a negative attitude, what actions might you display? How does your communication look like? What does a negative attitude “look” like to others? How would you teach others to be more enthusiastic and motivated? Which exercise from the NVC document would you choose to teach a group of people? Why?

1. I think that a positive attitude is an ability to think positively about yourself, things, and situations. Also, a positive attitude helps people to solve any problems pleasantly. Lately, I realized that the extent to which I have a positive mind depends on how much free time I have. The funny thing is, that even when I’m tired because of having too many issues and tasks, I think much more positively about everything in my life than when I have too much free time. Probably, it relates to the fact, that when I am concentrating on my own business, I don’t have even a slight moment to spend reading bad news or gossiping, feeling pity, and other negative emotions.

Comment on how and what you learned about yourself and EI.   Choose a competence that is most important to you and explain what attributes are most important and why.  Substantiate your choice as well as add one additional competence that reflects your culture, your family, or your views. Explain how each competence is important.

            This week I realized how little I know about Emotional Intelligence and about myself, as well. I did not even understand how important it is to be aware of EI, its components, and MBTI types. Even though we have not been asked to have the MBTI test yet, I was too curious and finished it before writing my Discussion Forum assignment. I learned about some of my strengths and weaknesses that I would probably never think of and realized how important it is to be aware of Emotional Intelligence and that it is a skill that can be learned and upgraded, which will be very helpful in both personal and professional areas. The higher your EI level is, the more successful you are in relationships and different social situations. According to Cherniss (1999), Emotional Intelligence can be seen as a tool that can be used by managers and HRs in order to claim that something should be done, providing good reasoning. It can be also used to find better suitable professionals to provide a greater success rate.

Looking at your SWOT analysis, create a post that summarizes what you found out about yourself in doing the SWOT.   If you focused on a particular situation, did you learn anything new in doing the analysis? Did it help bring clarity to your thinking or possible next steps? Post a couple of action steps you are going to take moving forward.

          The previous week I made a SWOT Analysis of my personal financial situation and learned a lot of new things in doing the analysis. Before I did it, I knew there were some issues with my personal finance, but the situation was too abstract, and I could not make any plan for how to solve those problems. The SWOT analysis, probably, made this situation too detailed – I was surprised to see how many strengths I had, and finally made a real list of my weaknesses. It is always uncomfortable to analyze your own weak points, especially when there is a great number of them. However, this exercise helped me to suddenly realize that all my weaknesses could be overcome. Though it can be challenging, I can learn how to deal with them and even how to get rid of them.

Answer the following question: What is my chosen emotion that I want to improve and what is my SMART goal related to developing the chosen emotion?

            Just like any other person, I’m a complex creature and can experience combinations of emotions most of the time. As soon as I am already an adult and I know the rules of the society I live in, my actions often do not match the emotions I feel, which later causes frustration and a blue mood. The emotion that I want to improve is my anger. I can become extremely mad in one second, but as soon as I understand, that this is not the proper way to react, I control myself and do not overreact. I can even continue speaking calmly and quietly, but my head starts pulsating and my face turns red in a split second. It is extremely uncomfortable physically and can cause a serious headache for the rest of the day if you do not remove the reason for this emotion quickly.

Reflect on the usefulness of both of the tools. How would you apply the two tools in your daily life? Use two concrete examples for each tool (4 total examples). Be specific, concrete, and original (absolutely no copying and pasting). Emphasize your role, but do not forget that the tools have little meaning for only one of the individuals involved.

            This week we learned about two powerful tools, the SCARF model and Non-violent Communication. The SCARF model covers factors that affect positive or negative responses in social situations and involves 5 key “domains” that influence our behavior: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness (Rock D., 2008). Let me tell you a bit more about all of them. Status is about our relative importance to other people in the social situation. Our status can affect the mental process in many ways, and it is important to understand when others feel a threat of the status (which can happen after giving instructions, advice, or suggestions to a slightly ineffective worker) and when others can see it as a reward (for example, when they can get praised or promoted).