Second round of pre-MBA workshops

[samvara]

Introduction to Referencing probably wasn’t critical to my survival but it was a good refresher and being there meant I got to have a passionate conversation with one of the (gorgeous, omg perfectly straight waist length hair) Chinese women about styles of leadership and teamwork from a very different cultural perspective. We compared my tendency to leap in boots first, her strong teamwork skills and talked about where that comes from plus the associated pitfalls.

Enhancing Your Team Experience (Pt B) was ridiculously fun. We’re all motivated and have previous experience so we’re being incredibly well behaved and radiating ‘ideal team mate’ at each other. It was a joy to work in a group of five on a timed exercise where we’re all hyperconscious of how we’re treating each other and focussing on creating the best possible team dynamic. We’re also pretty competitive so balancing ‘Task-Goal’ with ‘Team’ was a challenge. My team came second in speed but got the first correct answer, we were rewarded with slim UWA embossed wallets which is handy, I can store my new swipe card/ID in it :p

We did an abbreviated version of the Belbin Model for team analysis – if you’re interested there’s an online variant. The idea is to answer the questions while contemplating how you behave in team situations. I’d love to know what my AD&T team members get! I’m also conscious that for me, this partly reflects my preferences and that in practice with AD&T I Shape and Coordinate more than I Resource Investigate.

1. Resource Investigator 83
2. Shaper 72
3. Coordinator 69
4. Specialist 64
5. Plant 61
6. Team Worker 56
7. Implementer 53
8. Monitor Evaluator 53
9. Completer Finisher 50

Comments

[samvara]

Plant: Plants are creative, unorthodox and a generator of ideas. If an innovative solution to a problem is needed, a Plant is a good person to ask. A good plant will be bright and free-thinking. Plants can tend to ignore incidentals and refrain from getting bogged down in detail. The Plant bears a strong resemblance to the popular caricature of the absentminded professor-inventor, and often has a hard time communicating ideas to others.

That's really cool combination - lots of methodical, logical perfectionism geared towards getting the job done *right*' being rounded off by the creativity to find solutions.