PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT Personality development is the developing a personality cult so as to create a strong

positive impression about self with the targeted group, or in general; and more pertinent aspect of such personality is to maintain and prove in a long run.The term ‘personality’ is derived from the Latin word persona, meaning the mask which the actors wore on the Greek and Roman stage to distinguish their roles and amplify their voices.  Why should the mask or outward appearance be used to designate something so essentially inward as personality? Precisely because it is a convenient symbol with which to mark off the individuality of or difference between one man and another.The three principal raw materials of personality – physique, intelligence and temperament – are determined both by heredity and by conditions subsequent to birth.

The experiences that an individual has during the course of his life contribute in a large number of ways to the formation and development of his personality.The interaction between the individual’s heredity and environment gives rise to what are known as the traits of his personality.  Some examples of traits are cleanliness, honesty, cheerfulness, miserliness, irresponsibility.

A trait that derives its meaning from being related to a specific thing, person or idea is known as an attitude.

We define personality as the sum total of the man or woman, as he or she impresses other men and women.We must learn what part personality plays in the three main areas of human life activities: love and marriage, career, and social relations.

According to Freud, the personality is a trinity consisting of id, ego and superego.  The id is a reservoir of psychic energy and the source of the human instincts.  It furnishes the power that sustains a person’s activities.  The ego is a special part of the id which keeps the individual in touch with the outside world, and finds outlets for the expression of his instincts.  The superego is a kind of moral censor which passes judgment on the individual’s strivings according to the standards which he has acquired from his parents.  It makes him feel guilty when he goes against those standards, and proud of himself when he lives up to them.

According to Jung, the personality consists of six parts: the ego, the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious, the persona, the anima, and the shadow.The ego requires little explanation. It is what is more generally known as the conscious mind.  It is made up of conscious perceptions, memories, thoughts and feelings.  The personal unconscious consists of experiences which have been repressed or forgotten, but which can under certain circumstances be recalled.  The collective unconscious is a storehouse of ancestral memories which is common to the whole race.  The personal is that side of ourselves which we choose to display to society.  The personal is thus a mask which often hides the true nature of the personality.  The anima is the feminine side of a man’s personality.  Its counterpart is the masculine side of a woman’s personality, which is known as the animus.  The shadow is the animal side of man’s nature. 

In Jung’s view the personality looks not only backwards to its racial past, but also forwards to a goal, which is the development of a unified whole known as the self.  The self or psyche, according to Jung, has four basic functions, which are present in every individual.  These are thought, feeling, sensation and intuition.  Thought seeks to understand the world on the basis of a true-false evaluation; feeling apprehends it on the basis of a pleasant-unpleasant evaluation; sensation perceives things through the senses; intuition perceives them through an inner awareness.

Jung says that the personality reveals two attitudes.  They are introversion and extraversion.  The introvert is influenced by what he finds within himself.  The extravert takes his bearings from what lies outside himself.

The essence of Adler’s theory of personality is the doctrine of a creative self, which asserts that man makes his own personality out of the raw materials of heredity and experience.  Adler’s conception of the nature of personality thus coincides with the popular idea that man can be the master, and not the victim, of his fate.

Alder says that the individual’s style of life or law of movement is an expression of his total personality.  The style of life is the individual’s characteristic way of reacting to the situations that confront him in life.To Freud’s basic scheme of id, ego and superego Horney has added the concept of what she calls the ‘idealized image’.  This is the mental picture that a person has of himself as he would like to be.  A man who is a failure will picture himself as a success.It is a face-saving device which enables the individual to retain a good opinion of himself in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Important Points for an Ultimate Personality:

More people than you would believe remain in jobs they hate because they need t

Appearance. Intelligence. Smartness. Trustworthy, High integrity and Responsibility. Knowledge, in depth. Management Effective Communication & Efficiency. Economic independence. Morality / Character. Being beneficial / advantageous.

Strong negative aspects to spoil personality:

Unhygienic Hurting attitude. Useless approach. Non-beneficial communication. Untrustworthy, Irresponsible, Lack of integrity. Below average performance. Powerless egoism. Financial indiscipline. Mismanagements. Uncontrolled burst of negative emotions.

 

Factors for Personality Improvement

Pleasing Physical Presentation.

Body Language. Communication. Maturity in Socio-Cultural Values. Beneficial Interactions Grasping & Understanding circumstances and environment. Intelligence. Outwitting Defensive Smartness. Concentration and Devotion in duties with (developed) liking/interest. Taking care with responsibility as if own. Accountable action without attracting negative reaction. Will to achieve. Convinced stand and inner-strength to withstand. Analytical decision of choosing the best suitable of all the available practical

alternatives with maturity and in the interest of purpose. Risk taking with accountability for calculations. Maturity of values. Convincing nature. Make them to dance to your tune without their knowledge. Speak to them the language they understand. Make them to realize your positive abilities without your involvement. Be the best for good and worst for the bad in managing. Do not react but act sensibly. Don’t suppress emotions, but eradicate them with positive thinking. Yoga & Meditation. Priorities in the order of advantages and time. Health Care. Voluntary Initiative for learning and helping. Financial Management to beget more pleasure and happiness.

Personal development in psychology

Psychology became linked to personal development, not with the psychoanalysis of Freud (1856–1939) but starting[when?] with his contemporaries Alfred Adler (1870–1937) and Carl Jung (1875–1961).

Adler refused to limit psychology to analysis, making the important point that aspirations look forward and do not limit themselves to unconscious drives or to childhood experiences.[12] He also originated the concepts of lifestyle (1929 — he defined "lifestyle" as an individual's characteristic approach to life, in facing problems) and of self image[citation needed], a concept that influenced management under the heading of work-life balance[clarification needed].

Carl Gustav Jung made contributions to personal development with his concept of individuation, which he saw as the drive of the individual to achieve the wholeness and balance of the Self.[13]

Daniel Levinson (1920–1994) developed Jung’s early concept of "life stages" and included a sociological perspective. Levinson proposed that personal development come under the influence — throughout life — of aspirations, which he called "the Dream":

Whatever the nature of his Dream, a young man has the developmental task of giving it greater definition

and finding ways to live it out. It makes a great difference in his growth whether his initial life structure is

consonant with and infused by the Dream, or opposed to it. If the Dream remains unconnected to his life

it may simply die, and with it his sense of aliveness and purpose.[14]

Levinson’s model of seven life-stages has been considerably modified[by whom?] due to sociological changes[which?] in the lifecycle.[15]

Research on success in reaching goals, as undertaken by Albert Bandura (born 1925), suggested that self-efficacy[16] best explains why people with the same level of knowledge and skills get very different results. According to Bandura self-confidence functions as a powerful predictor of success because:[17]

1. it makes you expect to succeed2. it allows you take risks and set challenging goals3. it helps you keep trying if at first you don’t succeed4. it helps you control emotions and fears when the going gets rough

In 1998 Martin Seligman won election to a one-year term as President of the American Psychological Association and proposed a new focus: on healthy individuals[citation needed] rather than on pathology:

We have discovered that there is a set of human strengths that are the most likely buffers against mental

illness: courage, optimism, interpersonal skill, work ethic, hope, honesty and perseverance. Much of the

task of prevention will be to create a science of human strength whose mission will be to foster these

virtues in young people.[18]

Personal development in higher education[

Personal development has been at the heart of education in the West[citation needed] in the form of the Greek philosophers[which?]; and in the East[citation needed] with Confucius. Some people[which?] emphasize personal development as a part of higher education. Wilhelm von Humboldt, who founded the University of Berlin

(since 1949: Humboldt University of Berlin) in 1810, made a statement interpretable[by whom?] as referring to personal development: … if there is one thing more than another which absolutely requires free activity on the part of the individual, it is precisely education, whose object it is to develop the individual. [19]

During the 1960s a large increase in the number of students on American campuses [20] led to research on the personal development needs of undergraduate students. Arthur Chickering defined seven vectors of personal development[21] for young adults during their undergraduate years:

1. developing competence2. managing emotions3. achieving autonomy and interdependence4. developing mature interpersonal relationships5. establishing identity6. developing purpose7. developing integrity

In the UK, personal development took a central place in university policy[citation needed] in 1997 when the Dearing Report[22] declared that universities should go beyond academic teaching to provide students with personal development.[citation needed] In 2001 a Quality Assessment Agency for UK universities produced guidelines[23] for universities to enhance personal development as:

* a structured and supported process undertaken by an individual to reflect upon their own learning, performance and / or achievement and to plan for their personal, educational and career development;* objectives related explicitly to student development; to improve the capacity of students to understand what and how they are learning, and to review, plan and take responsibility for their own learning

In the 1990s, business schools began to set up specific personal-development programs for leadership and career orientation and in 1998 the European Foundation for Management Development set up the Equis accreditation system[24][dead link] which specified that personal development must form part of the learning process through internships, working on team projects and going abroad for work or exchange programs.[citation needed]

The first personal development certification required for business school graduation originated in 2002 as a partnership between Metizo,[25] a personal-development consulting firm, and the Euromed Management School[26] in Marseilles: students must not only complete assignments but also demonstrate self-awareness and achievement of personal-development competencies.

As an academic department personal development has become[when?] a specific discipline, usually associated with business schools.[27] As an area of research, personal development draws on links to other academic disciplines:

education for questions of learning and assessment psychology for motivation and personality sociology for identity and social networks economics for human capital and economic value philosophy for ethics and self-reflection

Personal development in the workplace

Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), proposed a hierarchy of needs with self actualization at the top, defined as:[28]

… the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.

Since Maslow himself believed that only a small minority of people self-actualize — he estimated one percent[29] — his hierarchy of needs had the consequence that organizations came to regard self-actualization or personal development as occurring at the top of the organizational pyramid, while job security and good working conditions would fulfill the needs of the mass of employees. [citation needed]

As organizations and labor markets became more global, responsibility for development shifted from the company to the individual.[clarification needed] In 1999 management thinker Peter Drucker wrote in the Harvard Business Review:

We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: if you’ve got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top

of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out. But with opportunity comes responsibility.

Companies today aren’t managing their employees’ careers; knowledge workers must, effectively, be

their own chief executive officers. It’s up to you to carve out your place, to know when to change course,

and to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50 years. [30]

Management professors Sumantra Ghoshal of the London Business School and Christopher Bartlett of the Harvard Business School wrote in 1997 that companies must manage people individually and establish a new work contract.[31] On the one hand the company must allegedly recognize that personal development creates economic value: "market performance flows not from the omnipotent wisdom of top managers but from the initiative, creativity and skills of all employees".

On the other hand, employees should recognize that their work includes personal development and "... embrace the invigorating force of continuous learning and personal development".

The 1997 publication of Ghoshal's and Bartlett's Individualized Corporation corresponded to a change in career development from a system of predefined paths defined by companies, to a strategy defined by the individual and matched to the needs of organizations in an open landscape of possibilities. [citation

needed] Another contribution to the study of career development came with the recognition that women’s careers show specific personal needs and different development paths from men. The 2007 study of women's careers by Sylvia Ann Hewlett Off-Ramps and On-Ramps[32] had a major impact on the way companies view careers.[citation needed] Further work on the career as a personal development process came from study by Herminia Ibarra in her Working Identity on the relationship with career change and identity change,[33] indicating that priorities of work and lifestyle continually develop through life.

Personal development programs in companies fall into two categories: the provision of employee benefits and the fostering of development strategies.

Employee benefits have the purpose of improving satisfaction, motivation and loyalty.[citation needed] Employee surveys may help organizations find out personal-development needs, preferences and problems, and they use the results to design benefits programs.[citation needed] Typical programs in this category include:

work-life balance

time management stress management health programs counseling

Many such programs resemble programs that some employees might conceivably pay for themselves outside work: yoga, sports, martial arts, money-management, positive psychology, NLP, etc.[citation needed]

As an investment, personal development programs have the goal of increasing human capital or improving productivity, innovation or quality. Proponents actually see such programs not as a cost but as an investment with results linked to an organization’s strategic development goals. Employees gain access to these investment-oriented programs by selection according to the value and future potential of the employee, usually defined in a talent management architecture including populations such as new hires, perceived high-potential employees, perceived key employees, sales staff, research staff and perceived future leaders.[citation needed] Organizations may also offer other (non-investment-oriented) programs to many or even all employees. Typical programs[which?] focus on career-development, personal effectiveness, teamwork, and competency-development. Personal development also forms an element inmanagement tools such as personal development planning, assessing one's level of ability using a competency grid, or getting feedback from a 360 questionnaire filled in by colleagues at different levels in the organization.