Self Assessment

Self-Assessment Paper

Throughout my life I have exhibited curiosity and this has defined the type of learner that I am. Growing up with Spanish speaking only parents my mastery of the English language was delayed and therefore my SAT scores suffered: strong in Math and weak in English. I therefore studied Electrical Engineering. My ability to learn outside of numbers developed during my graduate education. Here other interest peaked which included subject matters that required higher levels of reading comprehension to master. Organizational behavior, for example, I quickly found enjoyable only to understand much later in life that my oldest sibling's mild retardation had actually provided a framework for understanding human behavior in an organizational setting. Void of the Cultural Capital exhibited by most of my high school colleagues I did struggle during my undergraduate work (Butin, 2011, p. 9). The learner that I am has much to do with my life experiences and I am here today because I strive to be part of the solution and not the continual problem. My career has been in private industry and not academia. Today's entitlement society extends to private industry and I am here to gain the training and discipline in order to quantify, document, understand and implement change in an effort to provide a solution and not simply accept and passively promote the current state.

My strengths include experience, endurance, and emotional intelligence. I have made mistakes and accepted responsibility for their immediate corrections. I have been insensitive and have suffered the consequences. I have been myopic and have learned the hard way to see the big picture. In summary my life experiences outside of pure academics is both my strength and weakness as I embark on this Doctoral Journey. In order to be successful I must develop and grow my research competencies and transition from pure judgment based on experiential knowledge to analysis and opinion based on analytical thinking. Said analytical thinking is a process that I expect to develop throughout my doctoral studies supported by a strong research methodology.

Returning to the experience position mentioned above I have witnessed first had experienced manager fail while implementing proven managerial competencies while observing other middle level managers succeed by implementing leadership competencies supported by the same proven managerial framework. In other words: Leadership vs. Management. I currently struggle with the definition of the above statement because of a second interest that I summarize as: Sales and Relationship Management vs. Process and Process Discipline. My need to explore these two areas as potential interest for a dissertation topic is clear and the tools and methodologies required for clarity are expectations of this course.

In summary the objective of this first week's assignments are