Women's Development Community - Communicating my personal values
Wednesday, 5 July 2023, 12:17
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Kate Blackham, Wednesday, 5 July 2023, 12:28
Firstly, an acknowledgement. I haven't blogged for months. That was intentional and does not reflect a lack of interest in reflection. I am progressing through the Open University's Postgraduate Certificate in Online Teaching and putting all my regular reflection into a OneNote file.
I have recently begun participating in the OU's Women's Development Community. Last week's seminar was on Communicating your personal brand in line with your values. The starting point for this activity is identifying your character strengths as outlined by the VIA Character Strengths Survey. My top 5 are:
Love of learning: mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge, whether one's own or formally: related to the strength of curiosity but goes beyond it to describe the tendency to add systematically to what one knows.
Honesty: speaking the truth but more broadly presenting oneself in a genuine way and acting in a sincere way; being without pretence; taking responsibility for one's feelings and actions.
Spirituality: having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe; knowing where one fits within the larger scheme; having beliefs about the meaning of life that shape conduct and provide comfort.
Fairness: treating all people the same according to notions of fairness and justice; not letting feelings bias decisions about others; giving everyone a fair chance.
Judgement: thinking things through and examining them from all sides; not jumping to conclusions; being able to change one's mind in light of evidence; weighing all evidence fairly. (Note that having a strength in Judgement in the VIA survey actually correlates to being colloquially called non-judgemental.)
I shared this list with my family who agreed with it. Especially the number 1 - love of learning. My husband calls it 'stamp collecting'. I'm always taking courses, learning something - and not always degrees.
The honesty no doubt comes about due to my diagnosed autism and my tendency towards directness as apposed to expecting others to read between the lines with what I say. I also value the opportunity to truly be who I am and not who the neurotypical majority would prefer me to be.
I'm guessing my strong spirituality score would come as a surprise to those who work with me although it would be quite unexpected to those who know me best.
Part of the discussion within the seminar was on how important it is to have your character strengths validated in your working environment. So, for example, my need for honesty, fairness and good judgement mean that I would be very unhappy in a corrupt, toxic workplace. My love of learning is very strong - one of the (many) reasons why I left professional editing was that I felt that I was eternally editing versions of the same two textbooks - one for computer science A level and the other for physics A level - and only very rarely getting the chance to work on something new and exciting and inspiring to me personally. I couldn't bear the thought that I might still be working as an editor in 20 years time. Ideally, given how high spirituality ranks for me I would have a chance to use that strength professionally too. But that isn't likely within the OU - not without a whole bunch of new modules/degrees. So I can see the seeds in a future need to move on, but right now I'm happy with how my life is.
The last step was to form a sentence (or three) about one's personal brand. A kind of elevator pitch of who you are. It should not be about your current job but about what your strengths and values are. Eventually it should be condensed down to be the length of (and perhaps could be used as) a LinkedIn headline. It was at this point that my autistic self tried very hard not to eyeroll - I hate marketing speak. It's basically lying and/or waffling, when you could say what your job is much more succinctly.
We were advised to include descriptors that others used of us, so I've got 'nurturing' (from mentors on my PGCE) and 'patient' (from the leader within the Girlguiding unit where I volunteer).
So my sentences are:
I am a patient, nurturing, non-judgemental tutor who loves to inspire her students with enthusiastic insights acquired through my insatiable thirst for knowledge. The spiritual side of life is important to me as a practising Christian. I am an late-diagnosed autistic advocate and am committed to the pursuit of truth and justice (and the American way, hehehe!).
Women's Development Community - Communicating my personal values
Firstly, an acknowledgement. I haven't blogged for months. That was intentional and does not reflect a lack of interest in reflection. I am progressing through the Open University's Postgraduate Certificate in Online Teaching and putting all my regular reflection into a OneNote file.
I have recently begun participating in the OU's Women's Development Community. Last week's seminar was on Communicating your personal brand in line with your values. The starting point for this activity is identifying your character strengths as outlined by the VIA Character Strengths Survey. My top 5 are:
I shared this list with my family who agreed with it. Especially the number 1 - love of learning. My husband calls it 'stamp collecting'. I'm always taking courses, learning something - and not always degrees.
The honesty no doubt comes about due to my diagnosed autism and my tendency towards directness as apposed to expecting others to read between the lines with what I say. I also value the opportunity to truly be who I am and not who the neurotypical majority would prefer me to be.
I'm guessing my strong spirituality score would come as a surprise to those who work with me although it would be quite unexpected to those who know me best.
Part of the discussion within the seminar was on how important it is to have your character strengths validated in your working environment. So, for example, my need for honesty, fairness and good judgement mean that I would be very unhappy in a corrupt, toxic workplace. My love of learning is very strong - one of the (many) reasons why I left professional editing was that I felt that I was eternally editing versions of the same two textbooks - one for computer science A level and the other for physics A level - and only very rarely getting the chance to work on something new and exciting and inspiring to me personally. I couldn't bear the thought that I might still be working as an editor in 20 years time. Ideally, given how high spirituality ranks for me I would have a chance to use that strength professionally too. But that isn't likely within the OU - not without a whole bunch of new modules/degrees. So I can see the seeds in a future need to move on, but right now I'm happy with how my life is.
The last step was to form a sentence (or three) about one's personal brand. A kind of elevator pitch of who you are. It should not be about your current job but about what your strengths and values are. Eventually it should be condensed down to be the length of (and perhaps could be used as) a LinkedIn headline. It was at this point that my autistic self tried very hard not to eyeroll - I hate marketing speak. It's basically lying and/or waffling, when you could say what your job is much more succinctly.
We were advised to include descriptors that others used of us, so I've got 'nurturing' (from mentors on my PGCE) and 'patient' (from the leader within the Girlguiding unit where I volunteer).
So my sentences are:
I am a patient, nurturing, non-judgemental tutor who loves to inspire her students with enthusiastic insights acquired through my insatiable thirst for knowledge. The spiritual side of life is important to me as a practising Christian. I am an late-diagnosed autistic advocate and am committed to the pursuit of truth and justice (and the American way, hehehe!).