For­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning has urged women to de­vel­op high moral stan­dards by im­prov­ing their spir­i­tu­al­i­ty as a means of un­lock­ing self-em­pow­er­ment.

Speak­ing at a Women’s Break­fast sem­i­nar held by The Lead­er­ship Firm ti­tled When Women Roar, Man­ning said it was im­por­tant for women to ex­am­ine their per­son­al­i­ty traits, find their weak­ness­es and work on achiev­ing their full po­ten­tial.

She said women should eval­u­ate their per­son­al­i­ty type, find their pas­sion, em­brace their pur­pose and make spir­i­tu­al­i­ty the foun­da­tion of their lives as they jug­gle nu­mer­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with dai­ly life.

“I was born shy and in hind­sight, I re­alised that my moth­er un­der­stood I was nat­u­ral­ly shy and she took mea­sures to em­pow­er me to build con­fi­dence in my­self. She coached me through many chal­lenges. As I ma­tured I be­came ex­posed and read more on the top­ic of lead­er­ship,” Man­ning re­called.

Urg­ing women to find the pos­i­tive as­pects of their per­son­al­i­ty, Man­ning said true em­pow­er­ment be­gins when women re­lease their pur­pose.

“The em­pow­er­ment has to be from with­in. I was a peace­mak­er and I let that per­son­al­i­ty trait guide my pas­sion. Au­then­tic pow­er comes from deep with­in and it is spir­i­tu­al. The re­al pow­er comes from open­ing your heart and shar­ing with some­one else,” she added.

She then in­vit­ed the au­di­ence to as­sess their own per­son­al­i­ty traits us­ing an as­sess­ment de­vel­oped by Dr William Moul­ton Marston in 1920. Ti­tled DISC (Dom­i­nance, In­flu­ence, Steadi­ness and Con­sci­en­tis­tious) Man­ning said each per­son­al­i­ty type had blind spots or weak­ness­es.

Un­der the type D, Man­ning said peo­ple can be task-ori­ent­ed or peo­ple-ori­ent­ed where they fo­cus on ex­pe­ri­ences, feel­ings, re­la­tion­ships and in­ter­ac­tions with oth­er peo­ple whilst be­ing con­fi­dent and dri­ven, re­sults-ori­ent­ed, thrives on chal­lenges, de­ci­sive and ac­tion tak­er. How­ev­er, she said peo­ple who are in the D cat­e­go­ry can be im­pa­tient, ar­gu­men­tive, over­pow­er­ing, dis­likes rou­tine, worka­holic and ego­tis­ti­cal. Their fear of los­ing con­trol makes them dom­i­nant and un­able to mo­ti­vate peo­ple.

Those in the I cat­e­go­ry are out­go­ing and peo­ple-fo­cused.

“These are friend­ly, talk­a­tive, adapt­able, op­ti­mistic, en­cour­ag­ing but they have weak­ness­es in that they ex­pe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ties in fol­low­ing through, inat­ten­tive to de­tails, eas­i­ly dis­tract­ed, more con­cerned with pop­u­lar­i­ty than re­sults, and has a ten­den­cy to over com­pro­mise and un­der de­liv­er. To cor­rect this, you have to lis­ten more and fo­cus on mile­stones and dead­lines,” she added.

Those un­der the S cat­e­go­ry com­pris­es the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple. Un­der this type, peo­ple are re­served and peo­ple-fo­cused.

“You are re­li­able, loy­al, sys­tem­at­ic, a good lis­ten­er and me­di­a­tor. But you lack self-mo­ti­va­tion, re­sis­tant to change, sen­si­tive, ex­pe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ty in es­tab­lish­ing pri­or­i­ties and you avoid con­fronta­tion.  You need to learn to ac­cept change and bal­ance the needs of oth­ers with your own. If you don’t deal with the fear of lack of se­cu­ri­ty, you can with­draw from the sit­u­a­tion,” she ex­plained.

The fi­nal cat­e­go­ry C re­ferred to peo­ple who are re­served and task-fo­cused.

“This group of peo­ple are an­a­lyt­i­cal prob­lem-solvers, or­gan­ised and sched­uled, cre­ative and qual­i­ty-fo­cused. How­ev­er your weak­ness­es are that you may over­analyse and un­der-re­act, you may ex­pe­ri­ence per­fec­tion­ism, fear of fail­ure, iso­la­tion and in­flex­i­bil­i­ty and you may be re­sis­tant to change. To solve these blindspots you must fo­cus on ex­cel­lence, not per­fec­tion, set lim­its for analy­sis in or­der to reach dead­lines,” she added.

She told the au­di­ence to work on their per­son­al­i­ty chal­lenges and nev­er ne­glect their spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

“Em­pow­er­ment starts with lis­ten­ing. We all de­serve dig­ni­ty and de­serve a hear­ing. Em­pow­er­ment starts with a  job, work pro­vides worth, ed­u­ca­tion leads to in­no­va­tion and men­tor­ship nour­ish­es re­la­tion­ships. As you em­pow­er your­self and oth­ers you must un­der­stand that in­vest­ing in the whole per­son is the crux of the mat­ter be­cause peo­ple are worth it,” Man­ning said.

She added, “The most im­por­tant tole of such a woman is her un­wa­ver­ing re­la­tion­ship with God. Not her job ti­tle, mar­i­tal sta­tus or so­cial clout. Be­come a woman who has dig­ni­ty, in­tegri­ty and high moral stan­dards,” she added.

Dur­ing the func­tion, awards were giv­en to Dr Agatha Car­ring­ton and for­mer  At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Sen­a­tor Glen­da More­an-Phillips.