Tom's Blog

Identity, Values and Strengths

Core blog post 19 January 2023

Explain a situation where you have made an ethical decision. Discuss how you weighed up the values involved in that decision, the decision you made, and how you reflect on the decision now.

There was a situation at my work place where I received more than double of my usual monthly salary. There was a slight temptation to stay quiet about it and pretend nothing happened, but I made an ethical decision to tell my manager. He was very grateful for my honesty and discussed the issue with the payroll team. We discovered that multiple people were affected with the glitch in the system and people who were affected were being contacted. So eventually staying quiet wouldn't have worked anyway. Reflecting back on this situation now, it was a great decision by me in which I followed my ethical and moral values and showed my honesty to my manager who was really grateful.

Describe how your culture and the people around you have influenced your values and identity.

My value and identity have been greatly influenced by my culture and people around me. I was born in Korea and my parents were a very hard working couple. They would work early in the morning until late at night just to help provide a better environment for the family. They would never boast about anything or were always humble and nice to other people. In addition, my family is Christian. I always value working sincerely, being humble and treating everyone with respect. I do my best to have a positive impact around the people around me and help out wherever I can.

Identify your strengths and how they will support you during your learning journey.

My strength lies in working with people. I have managed small and large teams where I could get along with many people and work fairly. No matter the person’s capabilities or personality, I would try my best to treat everyone the same and accommodate other people’s opinion. This strength will support my learning journey where I can collaborate with other people and help each other amplify the learning.

Evaluate your limitations in terms of your learning and career development. How might these affect your learning journey?

My limitation in terms of learning is initiation. Once I initiate a task, I tend to focus really well and give it my best to achieve the task, however I sometimes have the tendency to delay the initiation and procrastinate. This may affect my learning journeys a little bit but I value other people’s time and not wasting other people’s time so this collaborative/flipped learning will give me strong motivation to not delay projects and start working on the project efficiently.

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

Working as a pharmacy manager there was always resistance from team members on deciding how we operate in the pharmacy. The best strategy I have tried was to have a team meeting where everyone can share their ideas and perspective about the matter. Everyone has a chance to explain why they wanted to do something this way and also have to listen to other people's opinion. This discussion allowed the team to understand why we choose to do something this way and make them not feel like they did not contribute to matters, being ignored and feel like they were just being told what to do. This helps to resolve a lot of the resistances and tensions. At this present moment, I have no other strategies I would try as most of the time these strategies worked well. If there was any resistance still despite having team meetings, I would sit down one on one and hear their opinion in detail and try to understand their perspective of the idea and come to a rational decision together.