NBI Results

Now that you've reviewed your NBI profile and had a chance to discuss it with your peers, think about each of the following areas of the assessment:

Job Fit: How does your NBI profile fit with your current job? Are you working within or against your preference?

The results of my NBI profile doesn’t really fit with my current job, as I’m usually around multiple people or on a team working together to try and win games. I also, place a lot of emphasis on my teammates emotions and how they’re physiologically responding to my verbal commands or critiques. The NBI results viewed me as uncaring and showing little empathy towards others, which is why I don’t believe it’s accurate to my personality as a leader.  

Decision Making: Do you rely more on the left or the right hemisphere when making decisions? What are the strengths and limits of your current approach?

The NBI results showed me to be more of a left hemisphere type of thinker when making decisions, which tags me as a factual realistic, statistical direct type of person. I believe there is a lot of truth to these results as, I tend to rely on facts and reasonable logic more than opinions and creative ideas. Although I don’t lack imagination and believe in new ways of doing things if it results in similar or greater success. These traits can be seen as strengths because of the accuracy associate with them. The understanding that thorough detail will go into any project or event, will allow the comfort of knowing that some type of success will be obtained at whatever level it can be. These traits can be seen as a weakness because sometimes fresh and new ideas can trump facts and old ideas, sometimes you have to look past what’s at face value and understand the emotions behind the reasoning. Being too detailed and fact based can cause you to be blind to other relevant factors to a problem. I like to believe that even though I highly value facts and logic, I’m not blind to emotions and other factors outside of the stats.      

Communication: When you communicate with others, what preferences do you rely on the most? How do you "show up" in social settings? What areas might you need to focus on to be more effective in your communication?

The NBI result declared me to be a loner who doesn’t like to work with outers or only a small team if needed. That I prefer to work alone as, I’m uncomfortable in different environments that make me share emotions or show empathy to others. All that is crap, I have traveled the world and been to multiple environments that were uncomfortable for me at first but I adapted and proceeded to live there for months at a time. I like to believe that I’m a very sociable as well as personable individual and do my share of helping others in need. I will say that I have shown myself to be an introvert at times but recently have been working on being more extroverted. If there’s an area that I would like to focus more on when communicating, it would be listening more to understand a problem from a personable level rather than just to gain the facts.   

Performance: What are two ways that your thinking preferences contribute to your performance effectiveness (e.g. planning, motivating others, using data analytics, delegating, etc.)? What are two areas that come to mind that would increase your effectiveness?

My thinking preferences play a huge role in how a perform as a leader, planning how I will attack a situation is what I do on a regular basis, as I never go into a problem without a game plan. I always try to think about what the outcome maybe if I approach an issue so that I can prepare myself with a counter. Motivating is a way that contributes to my ability as a leader, as I’m always motivating my guys to do what they know how to do on the court, know matter who we play. Placing that encouragement in them by whatever tactics needed, such as screaming, joking, or through my own actions, I feel this helps me as a leader especially when they have successes because of it. I would like to increase knowledge of the situations that I’m in, as you can never gain enough knowledge. Also, I would like to become even more personable with the people around me because the more you know the people around you the stronger the bonds with them will be.       

Teamwork: When working in teams, for what roles do you have a "valence" and what might be some of the strengths your thinking preferences might bring as well as some challenges?

While in a team environment I like to have a democratic type of structure, where everyone can voice their opinions and an idea is decided by the majority. I believe my thinking preference will work well in this type of structure because with a group of people joining together to find a solution to a problem, being detailed and direct will prove useful if the conversation goes off track or into un realistic views. My type of thinking can be challenging at times because It may cause friction for imaginative based thinkers.  

Communication Style

Communication is the key aspect of my brand Control Your Mentality, which means I must understand the ins and outs of communication. I must be aware of how the material within the brand comes off to the audience, as the brand is predicated to a subliminal approach, which will allow for people to take away whatever meaning they felt the material gave them. I also I must thoroughly push the concept of my brand as it’s built on the bases of communicating. It’s important for people to understand what type of communicating my brand is doing and how it’s different than other forms of communication.   

Something that can help me achieve this, is by enforcing Paula caproni’s concept of focusing on key performance issues. She declared in her book Management Skills for Everyday Life, “Focus on key performance issues, behavior that the receiver can do something about, and only one or two issues at a time. Frustration is only increased when the receiver is faced with too much information, concerns that are irrelevant to the job, or situations over which he or she has no control.”. To me, this means if I focus on the singular issue, which is freedom of thought, an area I believe a brand like mine is warranted, I can separate myself from others. The issue being freedom of thought, can have many who may come up with similar concepts like mine, but the idea in this era, is revolutionary in it’s simplicity, which won’t be able to be duplicated to its exact detail.

As I’ve stated before the key is communication, in the form of networking, elaborating with my future team, the material within the brand and the feedback from the audience. I understand that communication for me is vital to the success of my brand because it’s what will not only make it successful but sustain its success. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve worked even harder on becoming more of an extrovert by going out more, saying yes to joining activities whereas I would always find a reason not to go and being noticed more vocally. I know that becoming more extroverted will also contribute to helping myself and my brand’s communication style.    

References

Caproni, Paula. Management Skills for Everyday Life, 3rd Edition. Pearson, 20111121. VitalBook file.

Trust

Positive emotions and behaviors can impact my brand in a huge way, as my brand is essentially speaking to the true behaviors and emotions of people. If an individual’s emotions aren’t genuine and they’re representing my brand, it could have a negative impact on the message of my brand. Adding people into my brand isn’t just a job for them but a lifestyle that I see within them because the brand represents who they are always. If someone representing my brand, on their own time is behaving in a way that contradicts the message of the brand, then that can have a negative impact as well, even though they’re on their own time. That’s why it’s important to have individuals that live the lifestyle that the brand is predicating because it continuously pushes the brand’s concept by those individuals simply living their life.  

Trust plays a huge factor in this because I must trust that the individuals I hire to represent my brand are bringing true emotions and behaviorisms. My brand doesn’t work without other people being involved and bringing their art in whatever form they’re gifted with. This means weeding out people who just want to be noticed for their art but don’t really care about the message behind it. This will take some major trust, which is always nerve wrecking because these will be individuals who I don’t know at all and will have to build with.

Caproni - “Trust is necessary in situations where we do not have complete information about another person’s intentions. Therefore, our trust in someone is based in large part on our perceptions of that person’s trustworthiness. We base these perceptions on several factors, including the person’s reputation,38 our prior experiences with the person,39 and our stereotypes about that person’s identity group memberships (e.g., gender, race, religion, and nationality)40 and organizational group memberships (e.g., department or hierarchical level).41 Researcher Michele Williams notes that we are more likely to believe that someone is trustworthy and are likely to cooperate with them when we see them as belonging to the same group(s) as ours. Furthermore, we are more likely to rely on stereo- types about who we can and cannot trust when we are under time pressure.42”

I believe building trust for me within people, starts with me becoming more open about my life and the positive as well as negative experiences I’ve had. I think trusting people with your secrets will allow them to feel more comfortable with you. This type of growth is what I think will promote trustworthiness within my brand. My brand embodies trustworthiness, as everything is real, I would only want realist to contribute and be apart of the brand, as I seek to get people’s genuinely authentic thoughts and emotions through an artistic lens.     

Storytelling

This week was very interesting because the stories that I’ve read about and listen to. I was at times wrapped up and very intrigued in the stories from my classmates. What I can take from listening to these stories without speaking or giving ongoing feedback, is that I found myself almost reliving their stories as if I was there. There’s an emotional connection when you get out of the way of the storyteller, by not interrupt or taking your attention off the story. It’s almost like being in a dream. I discovered that I was able to put things together within a story because I was deeply engaged in it. My focus was so intense that I was able to put pieces in a story that wasn’t explained to me during the story. Also, when you’re completely silent and engaged, you can feel the emotions within the storyteller intensify as they’re telling their story. I did however feel as though I was leaving the storyteller hanging at times, with me not giving any feedback.  

The stories I listen to, had a lot of passion and self-desire, as there was a will for things to happen in the story teller’s favor. The stories uncovered truths about the storyteller and at times an emotional release. The silence, although uncomfortable for seconds at a time, really pressed the story teller to go deeper within the story, which led to things that the storyteller may not have wanted to tell. I felt that the stories I listened to were unique and fulfilling to me because I was so engaged in what was being said. Even the beginning of the stories, carries its own suspense because of not knowing what the story will be about.

My story was about the time I was in Columbia and found myself in a night club with two drug dealers and afterwards saw a woman laying motionless on the ground from what I could assume being hit by a car. The start of this story seems worrisome and sad, which it was but the way I told it, brought some entertaining light to it. First, I don’t believe the woman died or know for sure if she was hit by a car or just drunk in the streets holding up traffic. It was a long night and I didn’t have much fun, but the strangest and uncomfortable situations kept occurring. I believe it made for a good story, not because of what happen but because of how I was telling it. I’ve told this story before a few times, so I kind of knew what type of reaction to expect, which is usually a shocked, humorous and relieved one. The listener was shocked to hear about these dangerous situations happening but relived that no harm was done to me and possibly the lady laying in the street. Also, the reaction of humor because of the humorous way I told the story.

I think its inappropriate to tell certain stories, in certain settings, such as a sad story in an uplifting environment. I think the setting matters and the way you tell a story matters to it being appropriate to tell. I also think that telling a story about someone else’s experience whether good or especially bad can be inappropriate if that individual isn’t ok with it being told. People must tell their own stories because no one will give a person’s story the amount of passion and emotion that the individual themselves will give. This is because an individual relives their experience when telling their story, another person doesn’t have the ability to do that, when telling a story for someone else, even if they were a physical witness at the time of the events. They wouldn’t be able to duplicate how that individual was feeling, which would be displayed in how they would tell the story.    

Personality Self Assessment

I want to start my lotus blossom out with the wordcommunication, as I believe this is the key aspect to getting my brand off the ground. I feel that Communication will be thepulse which starts my brand because with communication comes, networking, selling, marketing, strategizing, socializing, and mobilizing. Each one of those facets stem from communication, which is what my brand will need to get successful notoriety as mentioned in Tom Peter’s article The Brand Called You. 

After completing the personality assessment in the book, I realize that although I am a sociable, personable and outgoing, I still need work with being more of an extroverted type of individual. My brand won’t get off the ground if I don’t take chances and begin to put myself out there more. Even though I don’t think the assessment is one hundred percent accurate, it did uncover something that I do understand about myself, which is I can be a bit inverted at times. Instead of making the first move in communicating with someone new I sometimes wait for them to approach me. This is not good for maintaining a brand and certainly not when starting one.

An area in my life where I’ve been much more of an extrovert than an introvert is whenever I’m playing basketball, as it’s like another person is inside of me. I’m much more vocally active and look for communication with my team or even trash talking with the opposing players. I believe that I can take my personality on the court, tone it down a bit and transfer it to my personality off the court, regarding me being more of an extroverted individual. This in my opinion will also make me a better leader as well.      

Praise, Admiration and Appreciation

Two times in which I felt an expression of praise, appreciation and gratitude was required is, when I witnessed A boy give money and food to a homeless person and when my father decided to take some kids home who were stranded at a convince store.

All my life I’ve seen people give money to homeless individuals and I’ve given as well. This time was different for me as the person who gave the money and food was no older that thirteen or fourteen years old. One could assume that the kid didn’t have much money himself but recognized that his situation was betterthan the homeless persons. So many people walked passed the homeless person including myself because even though you may want to help, you can’t help all the time. The kid’s selflessness made me go back and give the homeless person some money as well as the kid. Also, I gave him my appreciation, praise, and gratitude for what he did. I didn’t get any names I just took the opportunity that was created by the kid to be selfless as well. 

Another time I witnessed a situation that deserved praise, appreciation, and gratitude, was when my father decided to take two kids home who said they were stranded at a convenient store. The two kids were no older than ten, with one being a boy and the other being a girl. They approached us and asked for money, to buy some food. My father because of the time of day being around 10pm, asked them if they were ok? They responded by saying, they were stranded but didn’t live to far from their home. My father then asked if they needed him to call someone to come pick them up? The kids called their mom, but she didn’t have means of transportation to get to them. So, he then asked if it was ok for us to drop them off? Their mother responded by saying yes. My father then bought them some food and dropped them off at their home. I never said anything to my father about that, as the gesture was something that I’ve seen him do in different variations many times before. I guess I was use to these acts of selflessness from him and for some reason felt weird giving him praise for it. I think another reason why I chose not to say anything, was the understanding that I was raised to always try to do the right thing, not for the praise but because you’re supposed to.           

My Brand

In five years I see myself as a successful pharmaceutical salesman working towards heading my own region. This means that I would be in charge of multiple agents for a pharmaceutical company. Also, I can see myself being in a leading role (Chief of sales/marketing) for a sales/marketing Firm. 

A career in sales/marketing is what I see as my objective career goals, my mission is to trademark and market my brand (CYM) Control Your Mentality. CYM is a brand that embodies the concept of controlling your own thoughts and not being controlled by current societal thinking, to not be afraid to be objective to what’s being accepted. CYM is the expression of a persons true thoughts, not constructed ones. This is done in artistic subliminal ways, such as poetry, music, drawings, sculpting, molding, photography, sketching, dancing, singing, rapping, and much more. It’s done in a subliminal fashion because it’s up to the observer to figure out what the message means to them and apply it to their life. subliminal messages can mean different things to different people, which is the beauty of it because it allows for people to gain their own understanding and not be swayed to one line of thinking. 

I want CYM to be a business that is marketed to every self empowering format there is. Whether it’s used for fitness aspects or people with disabilities, to politics or social issues, I want the brand to create a new mentality within society which is truly to have free thought. 

CYM is my brand because it speaks to who I am, as it goes against the norm and challenges others to think past what seems to be accepted. 

I’ve started a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram page featuring CYM and have some content already with a small following. I haven’t been able to put the time in to the brand as I just started it and trying to juggle a lot of things at once but during this course I hope to continue to add content, such as my poetry, videos, pictures, quotes of enlightenment and more. 

Leadership communication style

The Leadership communication style that is not a strength of mine is perspective talking, which is a active constructive behavior that leaders use in order to talk to their subordinates. I feel that this is a style of communication that allows leaders to gain a deeper understanding of how their subordinates feel. 

Goal is to Work on the active constructive behavior perspective talking:

The active constructive behavior perspective talking consist of understanding how to listen and comprehend what other people are saying. It allows you to see the other person’s point of view, which can help to understand why they’re saying what they’re saying. Also, perspective talking helps to come up with multiple solutions to certain situations instead of just relying on a single solution. 

Purpose of Goal:

The purpose of this goal is to be used in the field of sales/marketing as well as in my personal life. Understanding how a person thinks, gives me a higher chance of making a sale or gaining a mutual understanding with the individual. 

How Will Goal Be Completed:

This goal will be completed by researching as well as studying all material based on the constructive behavior perspective talking. Then I will apply it to my everyday life accordingly. 

Time to completion:

I will set aside two hours to study and research prospective talking each week for 7 weeks. I believe with the combination of studying, researching and actively applying the method to my everyday life as well as the course, I should have a root understanding of the active constructive behavior perspective talking, which will complete my goal.