Balancing Individual Personal Life and Career Development

Thus the incorporation of self- assessment tools assist in the discovery of entirely new skills, abilities and talents that the leader never envisioned as possessing. Additionally, the self assessment exercise assists in the creation of balance between the leader’s personal life and the professional life as well. For instance once I dedicated my life as the CEO of IMedia LLC, an information technology firm that ventures in the provision of various IT services while at the same time selling IT products, I realized that I wanted my business to grow and wanted to discover new and faster methods of solving problems in the technology sector. One problem that was of particular interest included the spammed mails. In my earlier job, most of the clients complained of legible mails that were sent but ended getting spammed and later lost. I decided to completely dedicate my study into the idea and after consultations and various trials, we finally developed software that could retrieve or clean the system. I was very engrossed in the development of the system and its marketing that with time I realized most companies have the spamming problems either when receiving or sending mails. Many of the companies were willing to spend as mush as $25,000 dollars a month on it.

The business took almost 90% of my time such that I had little time for my personal time; until I employed an assessment tool that assisted me spend 50% of my time on business, making it better for my holistic development. Self assessment tools contain both the formal and informal exercises. Most of them are referred to as profiles that are used by psychologists and are geared to the top CEO’s. Some of these can be assessed online or they can be administered by a certified consultant. Most assessment tools focus on values and beliefs, personality traits, career patterns and so forth. Assessment tools are however used so that the leader can determine better ways of leading his employees and managing his time as well. Assessment tools assist in the integration of personal values and success of the organization as they direct the leader on what exactly he needs to do by providing a holistic plan and at the same time providing the right advice.

Assessment tools additionally assist the leader in making a viable decision especially when interacting with people of different backgrounds. For instance, most leaders will tend to distrust people who talk too much. Thus the following are some of the assessment tools employed:

The DISC profile which is an online test that takes at most ten minutes to complete it wholly (Bratton 2007). The DISC profile also assist in providing a detailed report that is related to areas such as the leader’s decision making, problem solving and the process of effective communication. The specific areas measured include the extent to which a leader is dominant and demanding in comparison to cooperative and collaborative. Additionally, the test assists in determining if one is impulsive or deliberate and the strength of his influencing skills, attitudes, and behavior in regard to employee compliance (Fisher & Ury 1991). The DISC profile additionally assists the leader to determine if he has put a different behavior mask at work compared to that of his home, thus aiding in the identification of the true behavior style. Other personality tests include the Myer-Briggs that, however, needs an executive coach to go through them (Brooks 2005).

With ITIL, it is possible to have the managers at this hierarchy of service follow the daily execution of duties and providence of services as expected. ITIL assist in the identification of major threats in a company and later dealing with them as appropriate (Brooks 2005). Many IT firms have continually employed the method in their analysis of various IT problems and incidents and act as good assessment and management tools for the leaders (Brooks 2005).

Hersey and colleagues (2001) define conflict resolution and negotiation as the process of enhancing relationships and referring to conflict as an opportunity to learn, move forward and work on other things differently, resulting in a win and win situation. Win and win outcomes especially in an organization leaves every feeling respected and valued, and thus increases the overall organization performance. Thus the overall and corporate organizational goals are met and the organization’s employees are still willing to do business together as a team (Hersey et al. 2001).

Negotiation is among the tools that are used for conflict resolution. Most negotiators possess well-recognized interests in the achievement of an outcome. As a leader it is advisable that one begins by first negotiating the conflict and then giving it to an arbitrator who decides about the solution later (Linstead et al. 2009). Despite the circumstances being challenging, an opportunity for the leader