My "Voice"

"People's Voice Initiative":

Life Styles Inventory

So, a couple of weeks ago at work we had a two-day training course called "The People's Voice Initiative." It was basically two sessions that focused on evaluating the way you think and interact with a group. It is a series of workshops that is supposed to help you realize your individual work style and help change an organization and move it towards being a more productive workplace through individual change.


Workshop Part 1:
In the workshop you take a large quiz that has a bunch of phrases and you have to rate each phrase from 0 to 2 on how well the term describes you. There are phrases that range from "suspicious," "hard to impress," and "difficulties forgiving others" to "helpful" & "good teacher," to "avoids conflict" & "does not like to take responsibility."

These scores add up in different categories and you fill in what they call the circumplex to find out how you think (seen below).

I was very high in the red and even higher in the green. Apparently this is pretty typical, but the goal is to reduce red and green tendencies (passive/defensive) and increase the blue (constructive) as much as possible. It is funny though because my circumplex did not turn out as I would have expected it to. I was lower in the "perfectionist" category than I thought I would have been, and also I thought I would have more blue. I was also higher in "oppositional" than I would have guessed. Apparently a lot of my green can be contributed to the fact that I am new to my job and still feel dependent/need direction. These are things for me to "work" on.

The workshop was interesting because this company has done lots of research and say the companies that are the most inefficient and take a long time to get things done are those with the most red, because they argue rather than use productive cooperation.

This company, Human Synergistics, did a survey of all of NAVSEA the previous year and found that most of our organization is also rather typical-mostly red. So now they are back to help us change that.


Workshop Part 2: 
The second part of the workshop was to go through 2 "simulations" that got our group to work together to solve a problem, and then rate our group to see how we worked together (using the same circumplex idea).  First individuals would fill out the questionnaires for the simulation, then the team would fill out the same survey, as a group.

Simulation #1: Brushfire Survival

The situation: You and your group are on holiday in the Dandenong Ranges just east of Melbourne, Australia, when you suddenly notice a bushfire approaching.

The challenge: Rank 12 items in the order of their importance to your team’s survival.

Some of the items were: snorkel, fins, masks; wool blankets; jeans and sweatshirts; boots; a hose; buckets; a map; keys to a car in the driveway; a cellphone; a ladder; a fire extinguisher; (I can't remember the last item).

Of course our group assumed you would flee, putting the keys and map at highest priority. Here was the flaw. Apparently the correct answer is to stay and fight off the fire. If you didn't make that assumption, you couldn't get it right! (P.S. none of the groups decided to flee). One guy in our group said we could use the snorkels and fins to hide out in the water tank in the backyard. We vetoed this idea- good thing we did, because apparently you will die very quickly this way as you would die from the heat of the water once the fire was there.

Simulation #2: Coach a team to success

The second challenge was to decide on a way to coach a team to the top of a regional league. We had to fill out a whole survey that contained a coaching question as yes or no. For example, there were lots of "half time" questions that asked what you would do. One of them was "Give your team a hype up speech." This simulation was hard because it was based on more of your personal beliefs and values.

Though our group did not do well (we did not get evenly close to the correct answers), we worked really well together and had lots of fun! Some people complained about the training and that it took them away from work for 2 days, I thought it was fun and helpful.

The link to the companies website is: http://www.humansynergistics.com