My Identity, Values and Strengths Exploration

Explain a situation where you have had an ethical decision to make. Discuss how you weighed up the values involved in that decision, the decision you made and the consequences of the action you took.

Raising my children as vegetarians is an ethical decision I have had to make. I have been a vegetarian for over 20 years so for me it was natural that they would be too. However, I had to take in to account that my partner, at that stage in our lives, was not yet a vegetarian and also the opinions of in-laws and friends and family. Not to mention society as a whole. My values of ethics and caring as well as authenticity and assertiveness came in to play. I couldn’t contribute to killing animals and destroying the environment but I also had to put my children’s health first, as that is ethically right for me. My children’s health has to come before an animal’s welfare even though it makes me quite uncomfortable. My values allow me to stand up for my beliefs and assert them if necessary, as it was in this case. I informed those around me that I would be bringing them up vegetarian but that I would do it in an informed manner, with their health at the forefront of my mind. There was concern from certain camps and in hindsight these concerns were unfounded and that public common-sense, although common, did not make sense – children could be vegetarian and not wither away. Now six years on, my partner and Mum have both become vegetarian and my mother-in-law has reduced her meat eating, which in my view is fantastic.

Describe how your culture has influenced your values and identity.

My parents are both immigrants to New Zealand, one from Australia, the other from England. They instilled an appreciation for working hard and realising that there is more to life than money, that experiences, friends and family mean a lot. My Mother has always volunteered her time for animals, people and the environment, which has influenced my values and how I believe we should treat those things. It has also had an impact on my life as I am a vegetarian and believe that we should look after people who aren’t as privileged as ourselves. I’ve been raised to be aware of the beauty of this planet, that we need to look after it and that governments need to put the environment first. I appreciate diversity, admire natural beauty and seek fun and adventure which stems from my upbringing in New Zealand. I also believe in fair-play and teamwork, that everyone deserves help and that we should look after each other, which I think is a cultural strength of this country.

My culture has also affected how I see myself. I have been a stay-at-home mum for the past 6 years and while I have completed a diploma during that time, the lack of a career has affected how I see myself. I am not completely happy being seen as solely a Mother, even though it is a very hard job to have. I have a need to define myself by study and work as I’ve been raised by society to feel like those are a measure of success, even if I now know that it is not true. I believe how we help others and the environment should define us.

Evaluate your strengths and limitations in terms of your learning and career development.

My strengths are: being a self-believer, deliverer, philomath (lover of learning) and a believer – believing in doing the ‘right thing’ ethically and morally. These can help me tremendously during my new career development. Web dev is a constantly changing playing field, there are new technologies that need to be learnt and streams of information to take it and learn. My love of learning and curious nature will help me to navigate this more easily as I have a natural inclination to want to learn and seek new information. I also believe that I can do this, that I will do this, so that when situations arise that can throw me off course, I am confident that I can navigate them and still reach my goals. I am detail orientated and I like to deliver what is asked of me. I am also a completer-finisher, so once I start something, I really do like to see it get done.

My limitations include being sensitive to criticism, avoiding confrontation and conflict and internalising client problems as personal problems and not ‘work’ problems. I am looking forward to being able to consciously address these weaknesses during the next 20 weeks at EDA and beyond. I hope that by laying these out for all to see that I can address them and keep on working on them during my career and not let them limit me. I am looking forward to confronting my issues with criticism in this new environment and training myself to take an objective view, now that I feel like I am having a fresh start in my career. I do feel that being sensitive to criticism fuels my work ethic, wanting to please and get work done. It also stops me from failing, which I now know is not a good thing as it means that I may not be trying different angles, in case I do fail.

Identify which of your strengths might help you in your learning journey and how they might intersect with learning obstacles.

My self-belief should help me to persevere and work through obstacles that I encounter. I enjoy teamwork; therefore, I will be able to reach out to fellow team members and ask for guidance from them. My love of learning and curiosity should also come to my rescue when I am feeling overwhelmed with a problem or workload. I will need to learn how to remove myself from a stressful state (through yoga or meditation) and bring me back to remember my strengths and how they can help me persevere.

Share an example from your experience of where you were trying to work productively with others, but there was resistance or tension. Discuss the strategies you used at that time, how effective they were, and your reflections on what other strategies you would try now, and why.

I used to work for an internet company that was set up in New Zealand but owned and essentially governed from the United States. The directors had recently bought this company and were not familiar with the New Zealand market. I was tasked with creating a marketing plan to sell one of our lower priced but bad value products. I presented our plan and was met with resistance as the directors wanted more details. We went back and forth, providing more and more detail, until it emerged that what was happening was a cultural and trust issue. I knew qualitative information about New Zealand that couldn’t be delivered quantitively to them. I needed them to trust my knowledge (and job position) however they were not willing to do that as they wanted detailed proof that what myself and my team were saying was true. To resolve the issue I went to my manager, as I thought we had had enough email back and forth and it was become a large waste of my time. I discussed with him my plan and he then phoned the Americans and had my back for me. This worked. In hindsight I should have realised that the new owners would be seeking more information and provided it outright. I should also have cut the email conversation short and brainstormed some ideas of how I could placate them. My manager had an open-door policy so I could have brainstormed with him earlier if needed, instead of wasting half a day trying to find the requested information.