Reflected best self exercise assignment and instructions to participants

OB 6301- RBSE – Reflected Best Self Exercise 100pts (10%)

Summary:

The RBSE is available for purchase ($9 for one copy) with a credit card on the website -

www.centerforpos.org. There, click on the “DO” link and then on “Tools”, which will take you

to the following page http://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/cpo-tools/reflected-best-self-exercise-

2nd-edition/, click on "Purchase”. You need to complete the order form, and pay for your copy.

Upon completing the purchase process, you are then able to download a PDF of the RBSE, and

are authorized to print the number of copies paid for. The booklet you download has background

information and detailed descriptions on how to complete this assignment.

Born from empirical research from University of Michigan’s Center for Positive Organizational

Scholarship, the Reflected Best Self Exercise™ (RBSE™) uses stories collected from people in

all contexts of your life to help you understand and articulate who you are and how you

contribute when you are at your best. With this new insight, you will feel immediately

strengthened and connected to others, experience clarity about who you are at your best, and

refine personal development goals to be your best self more often. The RBSE™ guides you step-

by-step through the process of identifying potential respondents, making the request for

feedback, creating your a priori best-self portrait, analyzing your reflected best-self stories,

creating a new, reflected best-self portrait, and translating that portrait into proactive steps for

living at your best.

The Reflected Best Self Exercise (RBSE) is a four-step exercise that integrates external feedback

and personal reflection about participants’ strengths and ability to add value. This exercise

provides participants with a structured opportunity to consider who they are at their best. After

completing the exercise, participants should be able to:

• Identify and articulate their personal strengths and their capability to add value to work organizations (and beyond).

• Understand what kinds of work situations bring out the best in people.

• Understand the power and impact of the reflected best-self portrait for personal development and for individual and organizational performance.

Please note this is a multi-steps assignment, you are given 5 weeks to complete it, start early

from week 1, as well as you may find various reminders to work on it, listed in the syllabus

course calendar. Do not wait the week this is due to get started, as you will likely be unable to

produce anything of quality and/or of value to you.

Why RBSE?

The Gallup Organization asked 198,000 employees in 7,939 units of 36 companies, “At work, do

you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?” When employees answered

“strongly agree”, - They had significantly less turnover - They had more productive business

units - They had higher customer satisfaction scores. But globally, only 20% of employees

working in large organizations feel that their strengths are in play every day. The goal with this

assignment is for you to identify your best self, and create an action plan to actualize your best

self at work and in turn potentially enhance your career success.

http://www.centerforpos.org/
http://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/cpo-tools/reflected-best-self-exercise-2nd-edition/
http://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/cpo-tools/reflected-best-self-exercise-2nd-edition/
Procedure (Refer to the Reflected Best Self exercise booklet for detailed instructions):

1. Identify Potential Respondents (co-workers, supervisors, employees, family, friends)

2. Request Reflected Best-Self Stories (gather feedback from 10-20 individuals who know you well and will be honest. Ask them to describe 3 instances when they saw you at your best)

3. Reflect upon your own experiences of being at your best and write your own Best-Self Stories (submit a-priori Best-Self Portrait). Make sure you complete your own Best-Self

Stories BEFORE you read any of the feedback you received.

4. Analyze All Best-Self Stories. Search for common themes across stories to discover how you add value.

5. Compose your Reflected Best-Self Portrait (submit). You can also create a word cloud on wordle.net, or any other free word cloud generator, and submit it in eLearning (voluntary)

6. Analyze Context, List Enablers and Blockers

7. Create an Action Plan

Assignment Deliverable:

Write a paper that captures your core learning from the RBS exercise. The paper should have the

following sections (be sure to label each section!!):

1. Introduction

2. My First Best-Self Portrait (based on your own stories, this is the a-priori Best Self Portrait)

3. Feedback Process: Analysis and Observations (see table 2 and 3 for examples)

4. My Final Best-Self Portrait (created after your analysis of all the feedback you received)

5. Discoveries and Applications to create an action Plan (read Phase 2, and table 6 for example). In this last section of the paper, your action plan should reflect on the following

questions: How does your best-self portrait correspond with the sorts of things that you spend

the bulk of your time doing? What situations or contexts encourage your best self to emerge?

What keeps you from operating at your best more of the time?

a. How can you prioritize your life so that you maximize the potential for your best self every day? What can you do differently? What might you consider not doing anymore?

Are there certain contexts you can put yourself in to maximize your potential?

6. Optional. You can include to this paper a word cloud of the result of your RBSE (#4). Go to the following website www.wordle.net. You then enter the block of text from your RBSE

(#4) and it will automatically generate a word cloud, or graphic representation of the words

in your block. There are a lot of options for color scheme, font, and layout. It’s a great

graphic reminder! You can also use any other website that allows you to create a word cloud.

Grading category:

1. Presentation and writing quality 2. Completion of all required sections 3. Level of effort presented 4. Quality of self-reflection

“Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb

a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid.”

~Albert Einstein

http://www.wordle.net/