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 individuals 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 persons 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 individuals
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 mans
personality. Its counterpart is the masculine side of a womans personality, which is known
as the animus. The shadow is the animal side of mans nature.

In Jungs 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 pleasantunpleasant 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 Adlers 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.
Adlers 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 individuals style of life or law of movement is an expression of his total
personality. The style of life is the individuals characteristic way of reacting to the
situations that confront him in life.
To Freuds 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.
Dont 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 (18561939)
but starting[when?] with his contemporaries Alfred Adler (18701937) and Carl Jung (18751961).
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 (19201994) developed Jungs 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]
Levinsons 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 selfefficacy[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.
2.
3.
4.

it makes you expect to succeed

it allows you take risks and set challenging goals
it helps you keep trying if at first you dont succeed
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[

[citation needed]

Personal development has been at the heart of education in the West

in the form of the Greek
[which?]
[citation needed]
[which?]
philosophers
; and in the East
with Confucius. Some people
emphasize personal
development as a part of higher education. Wilhelm von Humboldt, who founded the University of Berlin
[by whom?]
(since 1949: Humboldt University of Berlin) in 1810, made a statement interpretable
as referring to
personal development: if there is one thing more than another which absolutely requires free activity
[19]
on the part of the individual, it is precisely education, whose object it is to develop the individual.
[20]

During the 1960s a large increase in the number of students on American campuses led to research on
the personal development needs of undergraduate students. Arthur Chickering defined seven vectors of
[21]
personal development for young adults during their undergraduate years:
1. developing competence
2. managing emotions
3. achieving autonomy and interdependence
4. developing mature interpersonal relationships
5. establishing identity
6. developing purpose
7. developing integrity
[citation needed]

In the UK, personal development took a central place in university policy

in 1997 when
[22]
the Dearing Report declared that universities should go beyond academic teaching to provide students
[citation needed]
with personal development.
In 2001 a Quality Assessment Agency for UK universities
[23]
produced guidelines 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
[24][dead link]
Development set up the Equis accreditation system
which specified that personal development
must form part of the learning process through internships, working on team projects and going abroad
[citation needed]
for work or exchange programs.
The first personal development certification required for business school graduation originated in 2002 as
[25]
a partnership between Metizo, a personal-development consulting firm, and the Euromed Management
[26]
School in Marseilles: students must not only complete assignments but also demonstrate selfawareness and achievement of personal-development competencies.
[when?]

As an academic department personal development has become

a specific discipline, usually
[27]
associated with business schools. 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 (19081970), proposed a hierarchy of needs with self actualization at the top, defined
[28]
as:
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
[29]
percent his hierarchy of needs had the consequence that organizations came to regard selfactualization or personal development as occurring at the top of the organizational pyramid, while job
[citation needed]
security and good working conditions would fulfill the needs of the mass of employees.
As organizations and labor markets became more global, responsibility for development shifted from the
[clarification needed]
company to the individual.
In 1999 management thinker Peter Drucker wrote in the Harvard
Business Review:
We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: if youve 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 arent managing their employees careers; knowledge workers must, effectively, be
their own chief executive officers. Its 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
[31]
establish a new work contract. 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
[citation
the individual and matched to the needs of organizations in an open landscape of possibilities.
needed]
Another contribution to the study of career development came with the recognition that womens
careers show specific personal needs and different development paths from men. The 2007 study of
[32]
women's careers by Sylvia Ann Hewlett Off-Ramps and On-Ramps had a major impact on the way
[citation needed]
companies view careers.
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
[33]
change, 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.

[citation

Employee benefits have the purpose of improving satisfaction, motivation and loyalty.
needed]
Employee surveys may help organizations find out personal-development needs, preferences and
[citation needed]
problems, and they use the results to design benefits programs.
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
[citation needed]
outside work: yoga, sports, martial arts, money-management, positive psychology, NLP, etc.
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 organizations 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
[citation needed]
perceived future leaders.
Organizations may also offer other (non-investment-oriented)
[which?]
programs to many or even all employees. Typical programs
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.