4. Self-Assessment: Knowing Your Why Leads to Your Dream Job
Uncover Your Daily Drivers, Self correct, and Identify How to Achieve Your Career Goals Faster With Self-assessments.
Hi! 🙋🏻♀️ Long time no see! I returned to AWS after maternity leave a month and a half ago. It was challenging to find time for Substack while onboarding. But I’m back with a lot to share!
How are you doing with your self-awareness and self-management practices? This post also has 🎁s for you, and an invite to our new Discord server. On Discord, it will be easier to share our journey. The more people who join, the more we will learn from each other, so don’t forget to click 💖 or share this newsletter with your friends!
What You'll Learn:
💡 The importance of self-assessment in owning your career and thriving as a leader.
💡 How to use self-assessments to define your career path and leadership vision.
💡 Practical steps to conduct meaningful self-assessments and what to do with your discoveries.
Tasks for the Week:
☑️ Introduce self-assessment to your self-management reviews.
☑️ Fill the Wonderlead personality sheet with your discoveries.
☑️ Own your career by testing the uncertainties found in your self-assessments.
Assess YourSelf and Discover Your Why
Through self-assessments, we understand better our needs and feelings. This self-awareness eases our success as leaders because by knowing our why, we can redefine our career and share it with the people who will help us to make the next steps.
In my team, we get 360 feedback twice a year. I always took it seriously and dogged into the root causes and patterns to improve my leadership style. I was conscious that the person I think I am, might not be the person perceived by others. And until I self-assessed myself, I didn’t really understand me and all my decisions. By knowing my strengths, limits, and values, I could better understand my past choices. Through self-assessments, I also identified hidden values that were holding me back. Knowing my core values and identifying how to balance them gave me freedom to become the person I envisioned.
“We armored up and at some point that armor no longer serves us. It's keeping us from being seen and known by others. What we thought protected us, keeps us from being the partners, the parents, the professionals, the people that we want to be.” — Brené Brown
Harsh or unfair feedback as well as past experiences created vulnerability armors in my mind that blocked my growth. I still remember situations where some people made me invisible or gave me unfair feedback about my accent. The shields I made up over time prevented me from focusing on what mattered. They affected my communication, and I couldn't completely connect with some colleagues. At the moment I dropped my armors and was true to my core values, I became more empathetic, authentic, and familiar. These changes increased the team's psychological safety which made people feel more empowered to take risks and be open with others.
What is self-Assessment?
Self-assessment is a process of introspection where we evaluate ourselves and our actions. It helps us to identify our own values, skills, qualities, and achievements. With this analysis we get to understand our beliefs, feelings, strengths and areas for improvement.
Why knowing our why helps to succeed?
Knowing our values is a powerful tool for self-discovery and growth. Because our values represent what truly matters for us and guide our beliefs, decisions, and actions even when we are on autopilot. By using self-awareness and introspection, we can control our actions better and align what we do with our core values and strengths, with our why. Aligning with our why, our job organization values, and ethical values increases our motivation and happiness. Using our superpowers and values as a compass helps to get a greater sense of fulfillment and purpose. And with all these advantages, it is easier to succeed.
But there are values that aren’t meaningful. They are called junk values. They were imposed in our childhood, by traumatic events, or by society, and have a negative impact in our wellbeing. We shouldn’t follow them, but it requires effort and persistence. And we will fail to avoid them; at those moments, I practice self-compassion and patience.
For being able to assess ourselves and align with our values for success at the workspace, we need to be emotionally intelligent leaders. We need 1) self-awareness and 2) self-management to keep using our core values and to improve our strengths.
How do I assess myself?
During your self-management review sessions, choose an aspect and dive deep into your preferences. Ask questions and answer them with honesty. Another way to do assessments is to do quizzes on the internet. During the process, track your answers in the Obsidian Vault I shared with you in my last post or in your own note taking tool.
Complete a personality sheet with your self-assessments output.
🎁Download it for free this week, later it will be available through referrals.
In the sheet, you will find different quizzes that you can try. They will help you to identify your personality type, strengths and tendencies.
However, we don’t figure out answers to all our questions through introspection, going with our gut, or quizzes. Instead, think like a scientist. During these sessions, take notes, identify SMART goals you might want to pursue, and clarify your key uncertainties. Afterwards, investigate those uncertainties by doing research and easy experiments. In your experiments, collect data at least for 1-2 weeks. And take note of the activity, feeling, and time spent.
WonderLead in Tech community can help you in your research. In the Discovery track, you will find wonder leaders posts talking about their career choices, with the hope of encouraging you to make yours. In Discord, you will find wonder leaders that will help you in your journey. Share your findings from your self-assessment, ask what you are wondering, or get help in your research from the community.
If you would like to help other leaders too, become a WonderLead founder by
helping in Discord, publishing a Guest Post or sharing your Leadership Breakthrough Stories.
Why does self-assessment matter for my career?
Because personal fit is the most important ingredient for succeeding at a job. It multiplies career impact and capital (skills, knowledge, and credentials). But it can take years to find your fit, and even you might never be certain about it. I am not. For that reason, don’t wait to make the perfect career decisions. Instead, make a career growth plan with steps to remove the uncertainties found during your self-assessments.
Start by making some best guesses about which career/project could be a good fit. If you find uncertainties during your assessments, then start making cheap experiments. Define a sequence of tests, starting by interviewing people and doing short real tasks. After your research and after small tests, treat taking new jobs as experiments. Aim high and be ready to quit if something is going so-so rather than great. With your career plan, the journey towards your dream job and becoming an exceptional leader will be easier.
You’re not alone. I applied these tips, and I am applying them as I write this post. In upcoming posts, we will dive deeper into our dream job and career growth plan. Additionally,
will contribute with a guest post. She will share her learnings about her career move from engineering director to product director. The guest posts in the Discovery track will help to learn about other roles and what drove wonder leaders to make their bold career transitions. We hope to help you in your discovery research!Do you want to join and do this journey with us? Help to build our community, 💖 and Share. Discover, Own, and Thrive as a leader in your career with WonderLead posts and community!
My Recommendations
Books
The Power of vulnerability — Brené Brown, my life changing audiobook.
Mindset: The New Psichology of Success — Carol Dweck. From my ToRead list.
Designing Your Life — Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. From my ToRead list.
Other Substacks related with Self-Assessment and Career
- .
How to set proper boundaries —
.9 Simple Actions You Can Take to Build a Culture of Empathy —
.Become the engineer everyone wants to work with —
and .
Do you have any learnings that you would like to share? Share them in Discord or send them to me and I will add your blurb into Leadership Breakthroughs Stories. I am looking for guest posts from different tech role writers to help more people to discover their path. Join here!
Thank you 🧚🏻♀️ for your commitment to personal and professional growth.
I'm excited to start this journey with you! Click 💖, Chat or Share so more people join.