Core Goals
Personal core goals as a public health professional are to improve the physical, mental, and social well-being of individuals in the society. They will be realized through the continuous development of applicable skills and knowledge of a hospital-based physician.
Emotional Intelligence
The emotional intelligence advocates five components, including self- awareness, self-regulation, internal motivation, empathy, and social skills. According to Sternberg (2011), self-awareness enhances the understanding of personal moods and their effects on others. The awareness is realized when one monitors his/her emotional state, which is likely to lead to unwanted decision-making. Maturity in self-awareness is important in leadership because it enhances capacity for decision-making and influences performance.
Self–regulation is the ability to control impulses and avoiding thoughtless reactions, which can affect the emotions (Bradberry & Greaves, 2009). The component calls for thinking before responding and acting. The aspect is important in leadership because it enables a leader to compose him/her and express views and feelings appropriately (Cassady & Eissa, 2008). In addition, it enhances the conscientiousness to responsibility, adaptability to change, and avoiding the expression of anger. Internal motivation is the push that enhances the interests in learning and the desire to seek knowledge on matters of interest (Cassady & Eissa, 2008). It is an important concept to a leader because it triggers the desire to initiate, persevere, and complete a task when faced with unfavorable experiences.
Empathy is the understanding of the emotional reaction of another person. Self-awareness is a prerequisite for empathy because one needs to understand him/herself first so that he/she can understand others. A leader needs the empathy to be pro-active to other people’s needs and take up the appropriate reactions. The social skills include the ability to identify social cues required for a common ground, manage relationships, and building of networks. A leader requires social skills to be able to listen, guide, inspire others, and manage conflict through persuasion and negotiations (Mersino, 2013). Such a leader uses social skills to build, lead, and sustain teams within an organization to achieve common goals.
Evaluation of Emotional Intelligence
A personal evaluation of emotional intelligence reveals strength in three aspects including self-awareness, empathy, and social skills (Mersino, 2013). Having acquired the ability to understand personal moods, listening to others, responding to their needs, supporting others in teams and groups will assist to achieve common goals. The attributes are important in facilitating effective delivery of services to clients because of the ability to listen and understand their health problem. In addition, the elements enhance teamwork and supportive work environment for collaborative service delivery, which encourage better outcomes. Self-regulation and internal motivation are my areas of weakness. Experiences such as anger, sadness, fear, and joy affect decision-making and critical thinking, which is a sign of poor self-regulation. In fact, the lack of confidence, proper planning, and sense of direction affect internal motivation.
The Growth Areas: Improvement Plan
The growth areas are the weaknesses identified whose improvement can assist in enhancing leadership and realization of personal goals. The improvement in these areas requires a formulation of a plan upon which concrete action steps would be undertaken. Improving self- regulation is a critical growth area where assistance from a professional would be required (Cassady & Eissa, 2008). In this case, I intend to visit a psychotherapist to assist in unearthing the solution. The problem is deeper and reading relevant literature and undertaking personal initiative may not be effective. The steps required include identifying the appropriate professional to approach, raise required money, attend sessions and post-session evaluation. The steps would require about two months and two weeks.
Concerning internal motivation, improvement can be enhanced by reading relevant materials and undertaking the relevant steps. For example, reading materials on the importance and how to plan and set goals would be the best initiative. Effective planning and clear goals are important motivators that drive the desire to achieve our goals regardless of obstacles. Two months would be required to complete the internal motivation improvement process.