Personal Learning Paper
There is more to say…..

Avinash Choudhary
PGP-12-018
Division-A

Personal Learning Paper

How do I learn? How does my learning impact my growth?
Learning Style: I believe that learning is a process by which we acquire knowled ge, skills and values through s tu dy, experience or practice. Learning is continuous process and it doesn’t happen all at once. It builds up throughout our life as we get more & more aware about the world. All of us go through various phases of learning cycle. One such cycle is proposed by Kolb’s. In accordance with Kolb’s model; I h ave Diverger way of learning , which is a combination of learning through Concrete Experience and Reflective Observation. I l earn mainly through observation and experience. Diverger’s are good at coming up with new
& unique ideas and seeing things from various perspectives.

Kolb’s Learning Cycle
Learning Style Preference: I believe in experiential learning. I like to receive constructive feedback. Being an engineer, it is ingrained in me to question profusely until I am satisfied with the understanding of the matter. . I am a rational thinker. I assess & evaluate situations with divergent thoughts and ask questions to analyze them at depth and form an opinion. Experiential Learning helps me in understanding in a better way. My greatest strength rests on my creative and imaginative mind.
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Enhancing my learning: I would enhance my learning further by improving upon active experimentation. I could learn better by applying my learning to real life situations and try out new & innovative ideas to see whether & how they work. I believe that the need of the hour is to think out -of-the-box and see their suitability in real time scenarios. I am a risk taker and always pre fer to play on the edge. So experimenting & working in an unknown arena enhance my decision making process.

Who am I?
I always feel that knowing oneself is like building the foundation of a house. Without honesty about your strengths & weakness, you can’t expect to hit goals. This process is further improved if we do it without any pre-conceived notions. As the saying goes “What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself." The more time we devote the better we know about ourselv es. The more you introspect
& gauge, the more you realize yourself. So if I have to define myself, I would draw out a few things which I believe forms the kernel of my inherent nature:
I am an introvert person. I need some time to open up and communicate with people. But once done, I really get along with them very easily. I firmly believe that communication is the best way to reach out to people. Hence, I make efforts to interact with people and understand them. My friendly nature somewhat make me comfortable to get along with people which not only helps in building bonds but also helps in knowing people around me. It creates an emotional connect between peoples and creates a long lasting connection between them.
Though, I enjoy my privacy and love spend ing time alone. It actually helps me to reflect & meditate which works as a booster for me. I am not an easy person to understand. It’s very difficult to read my mind, even for those who know me for years. My Johari window profile reflected maximum unknow n or dark area thereby indicating my complex personality, which I believe is unknown to me as well as unknown to others. However, I am working hard to keep myself open to feedback analysis & exposure which would facilitate in exploring my latent potential depicted by the unknown pane.
My personality is basically characterized by the following attributes:
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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Introvert
Agreeable
Friendly
Emotional
Openness

Attributes defining my personality
These are some qualities of my conscious self which I am aware of as wells as known to others. Openness implies a willingness to adopt unconventional and novel ways of thinking and behaving, manifest traits such as creativity, curiosity , imaginativeness and aesthetic appreciation. I believe that unless we have open mind, we block the channels of transmission & receipt which ultimately hamper the free flow of ideas. Open mind is like a flowing river where new streams
(ideas) meet while a close mind is a pond which may seems very beautiful but stinks after some time. Here I would like to share one of my experiences. While pursuing B.Tech, we get an opportunity to pursue internship at the end of third year to get some practical insight about the knowledge we gained during the course. Most of the students consider it an opportunity to go to their home and find some company for internship no matter what they will learn. I wanted to make the most out of the opportunity and thus decided to try hard to find intern position at some foreign university which could give me multitude of learning in
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terms of interacting with students of various country & ethnicity, experiencing new culture, meeting new faces etc. Though it was a surreal task but I decided to work hard for it. After spending almost 3 months I got an opportunity to pursue internship at University of Catania, Italy which is one of the most prominent universities in Europe. I thoroughly enjoyed my stay at Europe. It helped me to develop on professional & personal front. Hence, I would say open mind is essential for experiencin g freedom & happiness.
Emotions are imbedded characteristics of human behavior. In today’s world of cut throat competition, it has become even more important to have emotional stability to succeed. I am an emotional stable person. I am a cool and compose d person and doesn’t lose my temper even during extreme critical conditions. I am a firm believer in saying “Things don’t get better by just worrying about them”. So even during the hard times, I maintain my calmness. During my Italy visit for internship (described above), I lost my bag containing passport, currency and everything. I was lost in Rome with nothing at hand. I was completely unknown to that place, people and language barrier just made the things worse. Even during that time, I didn’t broke and with my calmness & compositeness I was able to come out of that grave situation. I am also an agreeable person or I should say I take less strong position and avoid disagreeing. I feel that most of people just want to disagree to satisfy their ego and mak e themselves noticeable.
Agreeableness helps you to build strong relationship and most importantly a good team player.
As per the Johari window, there are certain qualities which lie under hidden area and remain unknown to others. Some of these include sensitive, outgoing.
Also there are qualities which other can see and appreciate better than us. These lie in blind spots which include sincerity, good natured, courteous. I would try to cut short my bind spot by being open with people and inviting open fee dback from peers, friends, teachers and others with whom I spend time with. Proper feedback analysis will assist in exploring latent potential and developing it to the fullest. On self examination, I realized that my most important strengths are quick learner, determination and sincerity. I want to leverage on these strengths and look towards continuous improvement. However, this will be a continu ous process. I am sure to see some changes in myself in next few months.
The PG Lab at Lonavala as a part of OB exercise made me realize effectiveness of team work and various group dynamics. Everyone played different roles which
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helped to work as efficient team player as well as leader some point of time. The
PG lab immensely helped me in gauging important feedbac k from my peers which helped me in understanding myself better.

Who are the others with whom I interact?
I love interacting with all sorts of people as I believe that there is something to learn from everyone as everyone is unique in his own ways. Though , I prefer interacting with people who are outgoing and straightforward. These people are clear minded and don’t twist things with changing situations. The Big Five
Locator Interpretation sheet revealed that I am Responsive, Introvert, Moderate,
Challenger and Balanced .

What kind of a person am I? How does this difference affect my relationships? I am enthusiastic and vivacious person. I am a person who is full of life and hate killing time in futile activities. I never miss any opportunity to try something new.
My negative emotionality score indicates that I am usually balanced on emotion.
For example, I never get too much excited, reactive and tensed however trying the situation . I am a frank person and appreciate that quality in others also.

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Personal Learning Paper

How do my emotions drive my & others actions?
I am adept in emotional self awareness and usually able to sense my feelings and trace them to the source. I enjoy whatever work I am involved in and find utmost satisfaction. Other areas of my proficiency are Creativity, Intuition, compassion, Compassion, Integrity, Quality of life, Optimal Performance and
Relationship Quotient. I am good in making out the feelings and body language of others. I am optimal in the areas of Work Pressures and Satisfaction, personal pressures and Resilience. I try to stay emotionally grounded and focused when faced with conflicts or disagreements. I try to stay cool & composed and think rationally in such instances. I am a person with fair degree of Emotional
Intelligence as I am aware o f my emotions. Though I have come across situations of Emotional Dissonance

How do my perceptions affect my behavior?
Perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environ ment. People’s behavior is based on their perception of what reality is, not on reality itself. I form perception about person after only knowing them completely as the first meeting could be misleading. I believe that preconceived notions could be harmful to form long term relationships. So rather being judgmental I try to assess people myself. In my case, the following factors really affect my perception:
Attitudes
Social Settings
Expectations
Motives
Similarity

My perception about people really improved after joining SPJIMR. I learned that people should be judged by their actions and not by their appearance. Here, I met people from diverse backgrounds which have really broadened my perspective. I truly believe in the Pygmalion effect and feel that it usually serves a twin fold
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purpose, i.e., increasing productivity a s wells as confidence of the team member.
While working in groups, I try to judge people looking to both internal & external reasons for their behavior. My interaction does get affected by selectivity and to some extent by halo effect. Sometimes I even resort to a deliberate form of self-fulfilling prophecy by raising expectation level for a person which cau ses them to perform b etter then t hey have expected .

How do I relate to others? What changes do I need to make to improve my effectiveness in dealing with others?
I am happy with the relationship I share with a majority of people. I try forming close relationship with people I interact which helps me in dealing with them, both persona lly as well as professionally. But yes, I have had bad experience with relationships in the past. I feel awkward when I face those people again and found myself in doldrums as to whether go and interact with them in casual way or just turn my back. As far as Inclusion is concerned, I believe in social groups. I like being included in groups as well as try to accommodate/include others. I like being accepted as important member whose points are well taken off in the group talks. I like to take decisions individually as wells as collectively. From people who are very close and significant in my life, I have a moderate need for intimacy and personal relationship. There are few people with whom I interact more and express freely. I can tell them how special they are for me and make them happy about that.

How do I manage intra & inter relationship conflict?
Conflict is process that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected or is about to negatively affect, something that the first party cares about. It is that point in an ongoing activity when an interaction “crosses over” to become an interparty conflict. Conflict mainly occurs due to following reasons:
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Lack of Openness
Incompatibility of goals
Clash of Ego
Differences over inte rpretations of facts

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Personal Learning Paper





Emotional Dissonance
Disagreements based on behavioral expectations
Lack of Communication

I seldom have conflicts while working in a group or team and I usually try to avoid them. I believe conflicts acts as an impediment for a group, hindering its performance. I usually have conflicts when I put up my views in an assertive manner and not able to clarify myself. I also have conflicts over tasks, processes and in relationships. Whenever I am confronted with conflicts, I usually try to resolve them by discussions and n egotiations. While handling conflicts, I am usually high on consideration but not so on assertiveness. During the time of conflicts, I also make sure that the things are settled amicably as soon as possible. Conflicts can se vere impact the relationships and thus need to be resolved within no time.
Conflict management is a treasure which I derived from Power Grid Corporation. I worked on substation operation & maintenance where I was supervising group of
40 odd people. I neve r went into any personal conflict though professional conflict was normal and never affected any relationships. There were no hard feelings as everyone was aligned towards a common goal. They were generally task conflicts. One thing I learned while working is that Conflicts are constructive.
Group members propose different solutions to achieve the goals which only help in knowledge sharing and teach you different perspective to tackle the problem.
With all that, you need to be assertive in whatever you are proposing.

What happens when we work & interact in groups & teams?
Working in team is my forte. I am a good team player and even act as motivator as well. My team skills include
High Enthusiasm: help in maintain the team spirit
Good listener: very essential to heed to the points made by others
Respecting opinions of others: Everyone make their opinion based on facts, experiences. It should be well taken off
Good Negotiator: hence efficient conflict negotiator
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Leadership: helps in given direction to the discussions
For any group, group norms are very much essential. The performance of group members (especially for me) is affected by presence of other members. Depending on whether the group is constructive or otherwise may raise/fall the performance of group members. I always like to work in Constructive group where members are highly motivated towards their goal. On the other hand, group where people are uninterested, there is no passion to drive the group
During PG Lab, I enjoyed being a part of highly exub erant group in treasure hunt and Assault. The group performance was synchronized and everyone gave their
100 % in accomplishing the task. New and new ideas keep pouring in, which actually helped in finalizing the plan before going ahead with the task. I view my contribution as healthy participation and brainstorming of ideas. I even took feedback from the group members and I am still working on those clues to emerge as a better team player.

How do we as individuals move from “me to we”?
I am team player and believe in bringing new ideas to the group. Thus, I am the most sought after person during the initial phases of project. As a team player I have the ability to listen & respond to people and work collectively even during the crisis time. I also believe in giving direction to the group by leadership position and negotiating the ideas proposed by group members. My analytical abilities & logical thought process contribute significantly in it.
I am disciplined person and believe in perfection. As the saying goes “Every work is the self portrait of the person who does it ”. This in a sense is drawback as I get anxious and tend to worry if results are not in place.
Sometimes even I end up reinventing the wheel. I need to work on that. I need to understand that different people have different ways of working, thought process which needs to be appreciated.
During the last 3 months in SPJIMR, we got enough opportunity to work in various groups like Academic group, ADMAP committee etc. I enjoyed the most while working in DAS (Design & Analysis by Simulation). Actually it provides the opportunity for brainstorming and to come out with the best.
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How do I achieve personal leadership and become an integrated individual?
This is the first time I have put so much effort in knowing myself. At the back of my mind I always knew what kind of person am I but never thought too deeply of what I want to develop. On aligning IQ, SQ, AQ and EQ and using other instrument results from my OB classes, I found some common themes that can describe my personality type, strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths: Determinant, quick learner, Ambitious, Ca ring, Disciplined and Team player Weaknesses: Dominating attitude, Emotional, Less communicative at times
(introvert), Procrastination
Most often we think we know what we are good at but we are usually wrong.
More often, we know what we are not good at. I believe that one can perform only on strength and can ’t build performance on weaknesses. I always try to leverage on my strengths and I know what I need from life. I know what kind of roles suits me and what I need to do in order to achieve my final goals. Reflecting on the day’s events and assessing the positives and negatives of it can be highly instrumental to attain the ultimate aim .
To overcome my weaknesses requires lot of efforts on my part. With the feedback
I received from my pe ers, I need to work on communication skills & interpersonal skills in the next two years. I also need to be more patient and less reactive in both personal & professional life. I also need to be less emotional at work.
Working on these weaknesses and overcoming them will help me in bec oming an integrated individual. F inally, this line is the motto of my life:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”- -Aristotle

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