A key component of developing your personal brand is to understand your strengths and weaknesses. It can be difficult to step outside of our self-perceptions and take a critical look at ourselves, but the process of doing so is imperative to increasing our self-awareness and focusing our brand towards areas where we are confident we can be successful.

I teach courses in human relations, with the key aspect of these courses focusing on developing the self-awareness of my students.  Throughout the course, students take weekly assessments to cultivate a deeper understanding of their personality, stress type, communication skills, and conflict and decision making styles.  What I love about teaching this course is that it results in students having a much deeper awareness of their strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to have more productive relationships.

So how do you begin to develop your self-awareness?  A good place to start is to take assessments that will help raise awareness of the various aspects of your natural personality.  Below are some of the assessments that I have used – give them a try and see what you can learn about yourself.

Mindtools – is a great site that with many free resources and assessments that will help you better understand your leadership and management styles, decision making effectiveness, and how well you manage stress and your time.

SimilarMinds – what this site lacks in explanatory resources, it makes up for in assessment options!  This site is a cornucopia of personality assessment including the Jung/Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Enneagram.  After you get your results – just Google them and you’ll find tons of explanations of your type results!

Queendom — is a site full of great assessments to help you develop an understanding of your personality and communication skills.  They also have lots of career assessments.

Check out these resources and begin your journey of developing your self-awareness. This exercise will truly help you better understand your personal brand.