People Management Notes
Ameeta Jaga & Lyn Muzondo
Week 1: Orientation
Article: The Key to Leadership Development is Critical Reflection
• Transformational learning = Being receptive to continuous and deep learning allows
individuals to develop as leaders. This process involves reflecting on our experiences to
fundamentally change the way we see ourselves, others and the world around us.
• Critical reflection = Self-reflection is not just about thinking about your experiences. It
requires you to examine the underlying beliefs, assumptions and behaviours that
influence how you make sense of those experiences.
• Successful and effective leaders reflect deeply, but it looks different than expected (it is
not a time-consuming process, some leaders even use rapid reflection techniques).
• Research-based strategies for critical reflection:
- Keep a learning/reflection journal (helps you process experiences).
- Ask yourself key questions (what did I learn from this experience, why am I feeling
the way I do about it, what would I have said or done differently).
- Discuss the experience (talk to a trusted friend, who is skilled at asking questions and
listening, not necessarily providing advice or recommendations).
- Use group reflection activities (debrief experiences with teams).
Possible Structure for Reflective Writing
• SHORT description (what happened, what is being examined).
• Interpretation (what is most important/interesting/useful).
• Outcome (what have I learned from this, what does this mean for my future).
,Module 1: Leading Self
Week 2: Personality and Motivation
My Personality Type and Traits
• Jung’s type preference: ENTJ (“commander”, slight preference for all, 9%-16%).
• Big 5 personality traits:
Lecture: Personality Type and Traits
• To be self-aware, leaders must seek to understand their own personality type.
• Personality type = Framework designed to describe individuals according to their
personality style, based on 4 unique dimensions.
• Jungian type theory:
- Developed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung in 1921, and continued with Isabelle Myers
and Catherine Briggs (a mother and daughter team).
- Commonly measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
- Aims to explain individual differences while highlighting natural preferences,
strengths, talents and inclinations, as well as blind spots to be developed.
- Understanding our own and others’ personality types helps us to work more
harmoniously, leverage strengths and better navigate areas of conflict.
- Unrelated to job performance and unsuitable for hiring. It can lead to poor business
decisions because of a lack of predictive validity, conflation of preferences and
competence and lacks a faking scale.
- Most widely used as a psychological instruments.
- Best suited for team building.
• Dimension 1: Managing mental energy and perceiving the environment.
- Extraverted (E) = Focus on and need to experience the world to understand it.
- Introverted (I) = Focus on and need to understand the world inside themselves.
• Dimension 2: Obtaining and processing information.
- Sensing (S) = Focus on what can be seen, heard and felt (real and concrete).
- Intuition (N) = Focus on the meaning of and relationships between the data (big
picture thinking).
, • Dimension 3: Interacting with others.
- Thinking (T) = Make decisions based on logical rationale.
- Feeling (F) = Make decisions based on what they care about and what is in line with
their value system (more empathetic).
• Dimension 4: Organising one’s life.
- Judging (J) = Prefer to have a sense of control over their lives (more structured).
- Perceiving (P) = Prefer to understand life than control it (more flexible and
spontaneous, deadlines don’t work well).
• We should make an effort to learn the preferences of other types and bring this into our
leadership.
• There are no superior/inferior or correct/incorrect type. Diversity makes teams more
efficient – they can leverage each other’s’ strengths and fill gaps in each other’s
weaknesses.
• Big 5 personality traits:
- Extraversion, neuroticism/emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness and
openness to experience.
- Personality traits = Reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and
behaviours (as opposed to personality type, which relates to discrete categories).
- 5 personality traits exist across bipolar continuums from 0 to 100.
- Can sometimes predict a person’s workplace social behaviour and performance.
Article: Why Knowing Your Personality is Critical to a Growth Mindset
• “Fixed” mindset = You believe your abilities are innate and can’t be significantly
improved. You explain failure by a lack of talent or a poor fit.
• “Growth” mindset = You acknowledge that improving your life requires adapting,
learning new skills and generally remaining flexible. You believe you can acquire almost
any ability with enough work and push forward in the face of challenges.
• Self-awareness about your personality type offers a benchmark understanding of your
current state.
• Natural preferences identified by personality type influence our behaviours, but do not
dictate them. Actually, the opposite – the more aware you are of your natural
inclinations, the more empowered you are to alter your behaviour in ways that best
serve the circumstances.
• E.g. Brainstorming session over Zoom:
- Introverted people may be inclined to guard their thoughts until they are perfect
before sharing them or may prefer to be in the background of the meeting. They can
work on this by getting a more detailed background on the topic of discussion to
come up with more well-formulated thoughts.
- Extroverted people may be inclined to understand things by talking about them.
They may be interpreted as talking over their colleagues and miss out on ideas from
introverted team members. They can train themselves to pause, listen and ask
questions, probing more deeply into the ideas of other team members.
Ameeta Jaga & Lyn Muzondo
Week 1: Orientation
Article: The Key to Leadership Development is Critical Reflection
• Transformational learning = Being receptive to continuous and deep learning allows
individuals to develop as leaders. This process involves reflecting on our experiences to
fundamentally change the way we see ourselves, others and the world around us.
• Critical reflection = Self-reflection is not just about thinking about your experiences. It
requires you to examine the underlying beliefs, assumptions and behaviours that
influence how you make sense of those experiences.
• Successful and effective leaders reflect deeply, but it looks different than expected (it is
not a time-consuming process, some leaders even use rapid reflection techniques).
• Research-based strategies for critical reflection:
- Keep a learning/reflection journal (helps you process experiences).
- Ask yourself key questions (what did I learn from this experience, why am I feeling
the way I do about it, what would I have said or done differently).
- Discuss the experience (talk to a trusted friend, who is skilled at asking questions and
listening, not necessarily providing advice or recommendations).
- Use group reflection activities (debrief experiences with teams).
Possible Structure for Reflective Writing
• SHORT description (what happened, what is being examined).
• Interpretation (what is most important/interesting/useful).
• Outcome (what have I learned from this, what does this mean for my future).
,Module 1: Leading Self
Week 2: Personality and Motivation
My Personality Type and Traits
• Jung’s type preference: ENTJ (“commander”, slight preference for all, 9%-16%).
• Big 5 personality traits:
Lecture: Personality Type and Traits
• To be self-aware, leaders must seek to understand their own personality type.
• Personality type = Framework designed to describe individuals according to their
personality style, based on 4 unique dimensions.
• Jungian type theory:
- Developed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung in 1921, and continued with Isabelle Myers
and Catherine Briggs (a mother and daughter team).
- Commonly measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
- Aims to explain individual differences while highlighting natural preferences,
strengths, talents and inclinations, as well as blind spots to be developed.
- Understanding our own and others’ personality types helps us to work more
harmoniously, leverage strengths and better navigate areas of conflict.
- Unrelated to job performance and unsuitable for hiring. It can lead to poor business
decisions because of a lack of predictive validity, conflation of preferences and
competence and lacks a faking scale.
- Most widely used as a psychological instruments.
- Best suited for team building.
• Dimension 1: Managing mental energy and perceiving the environment.
- Extraverted (E) = Focus on and need to experience the world to understand it.
- Introverted (I) = Focus on and need to understand the world inside themselves.
• Dimension 2: Obtaining and processing information.
- Sensing (S) = Focus on what can be seen, heard and felt (real and concrete).
- Intuition (N) = Focus on the meaning of and relationships between the data (big
picture thinking).
, • Dimension 3: Interacting with others.
- Thinking (T) = Make decisions based on logical rationale.
- Feeling (F) = Make decisions based on what they care about and what is in line with
their value system (more empathetic).
• Dimension 4: Organising one’s life.
- Judging (J) = Prefer to have a sense of control over their lives (more structured).
- Perceiving (P) = Prefer to understand life than control it (more flexible and
spontaneous, deadlines don’t work well).
• We should make an effort to learn the preferences of other types and bring this into our
leadership.
• There are no superior/inferior or correct/incorrect type. Diversity makes teams more
efficient – they can leverage each other’s’ strengths and fill gaps in each other’s
weaknesses.
• Big 5 personality traits:
- Extraversion, neuroticism/emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness and
openness to experience.
- Personality traits = Reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and
behaviours (as opposed to personality type, which relates to discrete categories).
- 5 personality traits exist across bipolar continuums from 0 to 100.
- Can sometimes predict a person’s workplace social behaviour and performance.
Article: Why Knowing Your Personality is Critical to a Growth Mindset
• “Fixed” mindset = You believe your abilities are innate and can’t be significantly
improved. You explain failure by a lack of talent or a poor fit.
• “Growth” mindset = You acknowledge that improving your life requires adapting,
learning new skills and generally remaining flexible. You believe you can acquire almost
any ability with enough work and push forward in the face of challenges.
• Self-awareness about your personality type offers a benchmark understanding of your
current state.
• Natural preferences identified by personality type influence our behaviours, but do not
dictate them. Actually, the opposite – the more aware you are of your natural
inclinations, the more empowered you are to alter your behaviour in ways that best
serve the circumstances.
• E.g. Brainstorming session over Zoom:
- Introverted people may be inclined to guard their thoughts until they are perfect
before sharing them or may prefer to be in the background of the meeting. They can
work on this by getting a more detailed background on the topic of discussion to
come up with more well-formulated thoughts.
- Extroverted people may be inclined to understand things by talking about them.
They may be interpreted as talking over their colleagues and miss out on ideas from
introverted team members. They can train themselves to pause, listen and ask
questions, probing more deeply into the ideas of other team members.
