Monday 1/17/11 – Wednesday 1/19/11 in Indianapolis.
We spent a few days back ‘home’ in Indianapolis where we could work on 'to do' lists, have some Japan training, and finally have some team training at Elanco before catching the plane for Washington D.C. We had one day of cultural training for Japan. Some people came in that had either lived in Japan or grew up in Japan. They talked to us about basic phrases and some of the customs that the people have. Overall, we were all super pumped for it and ready for the real thing and to have some new kind of experiences.
The morning of the 19th was spent at Elanco for some team training and to go over results of a personality test that we took. It was called “Insights Personality Test” and measured many different aspects about each of us that went into showing how we naturally approached most situations and how we thought. The basic way of explaining it would be that there is a grid and your responses to a variety of questions will determine what quadrant you are in. Christain, a past state officer that works at Elanco now, was our trainer. We started the morning by discussing perspective and perception and what those two things mean to individuals and then what they mean when we come together as a team. These two concepts really hold so much truth in how people interact; especially in a how they approach various situations. To demonstrate how perception is different for everyone, take a look at this picture and count how many faces you can find in 30 seconds…
How many did you find? I can’t find them all but I guess that some people have found up to 18 different faces! Anyway, we all perceive different things and to us that is the reality that we experience. The key here is that everyone else has a bit different perception so their reality is varied as well. When we work with people, on a team or just as friends or even our own families, we need to understand that just because we are looking at the same situation; it doesn’t always mean that we see the same thing. Communication is huge on a team so that we can be ‘on the same page’ so to speak.
We then dove into the results of our test and we were all a little surprised as well as in complete agreement with what they results said. I mentioned earlier that there are four different quadrants. Each of these quadrants is a different color that represents four unique personality styles. Now the grid basically looks like this…
Understanding more about ourselves is huge if we want to improve and grow. Christian shared two quotes with us that really made me think about how aware I am. They go like this…
"Unawareness controls me. Awareness empowers me." – John Whitmore
“What we do not understand in ourselves, we do not understand in the other person either.” – C.J. Young
We all have and use each of the four quadrants. Yet, we have one or more that we naturally slip into. For me, I have three that I more naturally use. That is the blue, green, and then yellow.
What this means for me is that I am more introverted and typically more of a thinker. Now all of these are good and all of these have some negatives with them. For me, I tend to gather as much information as I can to make the “RIGHT” decision while still thinking about how my actions make others feel so that they know that I care about how we feel “TOGETHER” as well as searching to have a good time with it and having “FUN.” The big negative (and believe me there are so many more) to me is that I am slower at making a decision because I will wait so long to make sure that I make the right decision that it can be too late and will often over-analyze.
Another step in our training was for us to create a poster with how we communicate and what we bring to the team.
This training really helped me to understand more about myself as well as understanding more about my amazing teammates. When a team comes together, I am learning more and more that it takes more than just amazing individuals. It takes time, patience, and a passion to understand each other and work with each other more. Teammates provide perspective and perception that one person will never get on their own.
No comments:
Post a Comment