Discussion Topic 2

Prompt 1:
-After visiting the above sites, write briefly about what you learned and share your
personality type (your four letter “score” according to the Jung Personality
Typology) – or the four letter type that you believe most accurately describes you.
Which of the two instruments seemed to better capture your true personality? -
What leaders are you like, and do you happen to particularly admire anything of
them? Why?
-What did you learn (and/or confirm) about your personality by completing this
activity? Provide some examples of some of your behaviors – and how those
behaviors relate to your personality type.

My personality type was INFJ (16% I, 16% N, 34% F, 3% J). I believe that this personality type
accurately describes me. Some characteristics that this personality type include that I can relate
to are that we are dreamers and doers, we are mistaken for extroverts because we are
outgoing yet we are actually introverts, we need time to “rebuild depleted resources to prevent
emotional overload”, and that when it comes to school we tend to be more attracted to liberal
arts rather than sciences. The one characteristic that really hit home with me was that INFJ’s
are mistaken for extroverts because we are outgoing. All my life I've been a pretty shy person,
yet as I've grown and after I got my first job at the age of 17 (6 years ago, even though it
seems like yesterday) I've become so much more outgoing. Even though I’ve become more
outgoing, I still don't consider myself an extrovert even though my friends and coworkers would
consider me an extrovert. The INFJ personality type 100% makes sense. Also the characteristic
of needing time to rebuild depleted resources to prevent emotional overload is something that I
relate to so much. For example I just worked the past 7 days in a row while also making time
for several friends and as soon as I got to my two days off I stayed in my house for both of
those days off because I needed to decompress and recharge. Some leaders that are also the
INFJ personality type were Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela. I don't know who I was
expecting to share the same personality type with but I have to say I was flattered and
surprised to find out that I share a personality type with two very influential and respected
people.

Prompt 2:
-Contrast the two different personality instruments. What similarities / differences
did you notice? What new insights / perspectives did the “Big 5” reveal that the
Jung Typology did not?
-Provide some examples of some of your behaviors – and how those behaviors
relate to your “Big Five” scores.

It was interesting to see the results of two different personality instruments. There were several
similarities between these two testes. A similarity that I found interesting was that I scored in
the middle for extraversion on the Big 5 test, which was similar to the Jung test which said I
was introverted yet outgoing which is pretty much the same that that the Big 5 test said.
Something that the Big 5 test showed that the Jung test didn't was that I am hard-headed,
skeptical, and competitive. These things describe me to a T, yet the Jung test did not reveal
these things to me. My scores for the Big 5 test were openness to experience 52,
conscientiousness 65, extraversion 47, agreeableness 24, and natural reactions 66.
Prompt 3:
-Share your results and what you learned about yourself based on your research
into these personality tests with a loved one, friend, or trusted colleague. (If
possible, have that person take your favorite of the personality tests as well.) Your
goal here is to discover some additional insights about yourself that you may have
missed when you initially reviewed and thought about your results. What did you
learn by sharing / discussing your results with someone else?

I shared my results with my brother, who is someone who knows me best. When I asked him
to read over my results he assumed that these tests were similar to horoscopes, which he
believes gives everyone super vague results so no matter what it says you’ll be able to relate to.
But once he started reading the results to both the Jung test and the Big 5 test, he was
shocked by my results. His words were “this is so wild because this is like ACTUALLY exactly
who you are as a person.” which is exactly what I was thinking. The Big 5 test described me as
hard-headed, which was something I could kind of see. Hard-headed was the first trait my
brother commented on. Which lead me to asking him if I was really that hard-headed, in which
he replied “for sure without a doubt.” which was funny because he was able to give me
examples of times I was clearly being hard-headed.

Prompt 4:
-Reflect on what you learned about the concept of emotional intelligence based on
what you read in your textbook and online. Based on your results with the above
tools, what would you consider to be your strengths and weaknesses with respect to
emotional intelligence? Discuss the concept with a loved one, friend, or trusted
colleague. What are their perceptions with respect to your self-appraisal?

I think that the concept of emotional intelligence is intriguing. The components of emotional
intelligence are self awareness, managing emotions, persistence, empathy, and social
competence. For starters I didn't realize emotional intelligence was a thing until I read this
chapter of the book. Personally I feel as if I am a very emotionally intelligent person. I would
say that I am pretty strong when it comes to all five of the components of emotional
intelligence. I have never been a “book smart” type of person yet I have always been in touch
with my emotions and I'm an extremely self aware person. Discussing this with my mom she
brought up the time I went to a therapist when I was 19. I was able to talk myself through all
of my issues because I was so self aware that going to the therapist only lasted for maybe 3
weeks/ 3 sessions. She (my mom) also believes that I am a very emotionally intelligent person,
she thinks my emotional intelligence stems from having to deal with a lot of emotionally heavy/
life changing situations at a young age.

Prompt 5:
-Contrast your textbook’s discussion of the role of stress in human relations with
National Geographic’s documentary “Stress: Portrait of a Killer.” What, specifically,
was most interesting to you with respect to the film? What kinds of connections
can you make between stress, personality, and human relations (be explicit here,
and cite your sources)?
-Provide a couple of examples of specific stressful situations from your life – as well
as your own stress-related behaviors in those instances.
-In reviewing the “Moderators of Stress” in Chapter 4 of your textbook, what are
some of the factors that seem to moderate your stress levels (specific personality
traits / coping style / social support / coping strategies)? Discuss the approaches
that work best for you with respect to stress management, as well as strategies you
might employ to reduce your stress.

Stress is something that I have 100% dealt with my fare share of thought out my life. As far as
stressful situations in my life there have been many. An ongoing situation has been dealing with
divorced parents who absolutely despise each other even though they've been divorced for
almost 10 years now. To go more in depth into this example I lived with my mom when my
parents got divorced in 2009 through May of 2016 when she decided to move to North
Carolina. Because I wasn't looking to make that drastic change in my life, I moved in with my
dad so I could continue my life per usual (because as a 21 year old who had lived in Illinois for
15 years at that point, I didn't see the point in quitting my job and leaving my college to go live
in a place where I didn't overly want to live). Thus moving in with my dad caused my mom to
constantly talk bad about him to me every time I talked to her, because adjusting to life living
with my dad (who I hadn't lived with in 8 years) and his girlfriend was a difficult process. So
that situation on top of working full time and going to college put me in a constant state of
stress. Factors that moderated my stress level were optimism, cognitive appraisal, and problem-
focused coping. Optimism was simple, if I wasn't being optimistic I would be miserable. Thus
being optimistic was a necessity. Cognitive appraisal came from constantly evaluating every
situation in my life helped make me feel like I could gain control over my stress, it also helped
me from catastrophizing every situation in my life. finally problem- focused coping was
something that was extremely beneficial to me during this time in my life. Taking a specific
action to reduce the stressor was taking a break from school for a semester so that I could
focus on myself and all the changes I was dealing with in my life. Another action I had to take
was learning not to vent to my mom about living with my dad. Although my mom had always
been someone who I leaned on and someone who I could talk to about all my problems, this
situation was different. Because of her feelings for my dad, I couldn't just vent to her about my
issues. At the time when I was doing these things to help control my stress, they were just
things I was doing. But now that I’ve read about all these techniques I am able to put a name
to all of these things that I was doing.

Prompt 6: 

-What did you learn about organizations, and/or the behavior of individuals within
an organization?  How do the ideas presented in Chapter Three and Chapter Four of
the McCann textbook enrich your understanding of the ways in which organizations
and the people working in them function?

To be honest, all of the things I learned in these chapters will help me grow as a person
and in my career. Knowing how different people work and understanding traits of
personality, emotional intelligence, and how people cope with stress gives me such an
amazing insight to the way people act. Understanding the way people act will only help
me interact with different types of people better.

Prompt 7: 
-How can you apply the concepts that you have learned about in the readings to
your personal or organizational life?  Be specific.

The information presented in these two chapters, the Jung personality test, and the Big 5
personality test has no doubt broadened my knowledge of myself and the different types of
people in the world. I am a big believer of trying to understand others and the way they act,
because if you understand others better it is easier to coexist with them. These readings gave
me an insight into others that I didn't have before. This insight will not only help me grow as a
person, but it will help me grow as a leader in my current job and future career. Specifically in
my current job working as a shift manager at Starbucks, things can get very stressful. Thus
knowing the ways that people deal with stress gives me a better insight to the people I work
with and the way they may react to stressful situations at work.