Strengths Essay (WGU Portfolio Career Reflections-April-2019)

The following are many of my strengths that I have developed though out my personal life as well as my career and have consistently strived to develop and maintain a high level of competence in these skills and strengths. Many of these skills that transfer into the future of my career and beyond include leadership and communication, influencing ability, ethical behavior, tact, planning and organization, critical thinking, as well as decision making and problem-solving skills. I describe my top five strengths in detail below.

1.      DEEP DIVING INTO PROBLEM-SOLVING.  Problem-solving skills is one of my primary strengths. In my work, problem-solving is a primary function in any of my duties. I begin with the End in Mind (borrowing from the 7-Habits principles) as I approach projects with gathering as many pertinent facts as possible from my customers and my co-workers who may be supporting the project. There may be ambiguity and many unknowns at the beginning and that may slow me down but I don’t put everything on hold in order to get started. I am flexible to switch directions if needed, while still maintaining the focus on the customer’s needs. This translates into a better designed report, or project outcome, with fine-tuned analysis geared to what the business questions were needing to be answered.

    DEDICATION, SOLVING FOR “YES” AND OWNERSHIP.   I have a ‘can-do’ approach to my customers’ projects and requests, and try to look at long-term solutions that are best for the whole organization, rather than make band-aid solutions for the short term. Ownership to me means that I take full responsibility for the actions I take, or the mistakes I make – in my work. I don’t view the problems as someone’s else’s fault - or blame them for my lack of understanding, or actions, or misses. However uncomfortable the conversation may be to say “I’m wrong” or “I missed”, I’m willing to do so and right the situation by taking appropriate steps to correct them. An example of this is when I was recently testing and validating a Report Dashboard that I have been working with another department on. The results of the testing brought to light some questions from my leadership that uncovered some requirements that had not been clearly defined in the project scope.  Disappointed that this had brought our project to a halt, which was on the verge of being launched, I had to go back to my scope and requirements documentation and write further metrics definition and take that back to the other department to begin work on. This process created a setback in our project release by over a month and still, I pressed on, got the requirements re-written and the new release scheduled. Whatever the obstacle is, I find a way to work through it and solve for ‘yes’.

CONTRIBUTION TO WORK ENVIRONMENT - EFFECTIVE TEAM MEMBER.  I have a tremendous amount of confidence in and respect for all of my team members and strive to also be a strong team member to support them. I ask tough questions of others, and respond without being defensive when they do the same with me. I’m vocally self-critical and take ownership of my own projects, and yet lend support to the other team members whenever they need it. I’ve done lots of training with other team members, as they reached out to me for help. I put the needs of the team before my own and sometimes this is to my own detriment,. While saying yes to help others, it can be a downfall to me if I run out of time to make my own deliverables. I do my job efficiently, with goal that it will make the team stronger and my other co-workers more self-sufficient to allow them to do their jobs easier. Along the way, this has also helped me be a more organized and structured employee, making me more efficient.  I think it’s a win-win situation for everyone.

4.      PERSEVERANCE AND TENACITY.  I have an uncanny ability to press on when things get difficult. I do not give up under stress, obstacles and challenges. Those things make me want to push harder and seize victory rather than give up and fail. This is not to say I have an unhealthy fear of failure, but rather, I use these experiences to learn and grow, and develop the best solutions. In my career and my life, I have had many opportunities to practice patience and tenacity, and perseverance. I have had setbacks where I was let go from positions due to circumstances beyond my control, I have had bad bosses that were abusive, or did nothing but discourage me, and I have had personal trials to overcome, such as bringing up children in a single-parent home, and overcome poverty. I have not let any of those things hold me back and go on to achieve the things I have, including finally obtaining my Bachelor’s degree before I turn 50 years of age. I have proven that I have a great deal of tenacity and it will continue to serve me well in my future.

      Tenacity is a strength that I surely have and the end result of problem-solving gives me the strength of purpose, this lets me know that I am on track to doing what I am supposed to be doing. Tenacity gives me the drive to dig deeper to uncover the root cause, if there is one, and it drives me to resolve or plan out a solution as well as tells me to not give up until I have found a viable solution.

5      VISION.  I have proven myself with my thought-leadership time over time throughout my career. Whenever I am asked to do a project, I go beyond the literal request and use my judgment and experience to see beyond this to discover the unspoken and uncovered needs. I try to make their ideas possible through sound, accurate, timely solutions, wherever possible. It’s tough to achieve all the time, as some things don’t work out the way you planned. I look for ways to bridge the divide between the business challenges we face, whether it is time, expense, or lack of resources, and reach toward the future of my organization. An example of this is in the shortcomings of the operations reporting dashboards that I am responsible for in my current job. These dashboards do not currently support the level of drill-down capability for details that the operations needs in order to take corrective actions towards better performance. I built a “work-around” solution with Excel that includes various views that highlight each level of the organization’s performance: their goals, actual performance scores, and status. Then I built several detailed views that give each sub-department the visibility of the details they need in order to make a plan for improvement. The details provide specific customers, contact information and sales details in order to let them make informed decisions with their planning. I thought up these improved views on my own and added them as a supplemental report to the overall performance reporting, which gives overall status, but not specific details.