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SOLERA DIAMOND VALLEY | FEBRUARY 2019 11 By Theresa Rossetti, Resident Humans have a habit of trying to categorize people. Winter babies, Zodiac signs, sun worshippers, rock versus country, blood type, you name it. During my working years, upper management "required" attendance at various training classes meant to increase productivity. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? (Please insert sarcastic tone here.) The first one I attended defined four personality types, A, B, C and D. We were to figure out our type and the type of our employees. Type A people tend to be very competitive, type B people are more tolerant of others, type Cs suppress anger and avoid conflict, type Ds tend to be negative, gloomy worriers. It was fairly easy to classify some people, including my husband and other family members and friends, but others were mash-ups of more than one type. At another company, we were sent to Team Building classes, where employees from multiple departments met and were assigned to teams, tasked with pretending we were running a pizzeria. We had to work together, figuring our strengths and weaknesses, to get the pizza to the customer before it was cold. Imagine how much fun this was with a world- renowned pathologist, who showed absolutely no interest, on your team! Last but not least, there was Six Sigma, a process developed by an engineer working in the manufacturing field. Oh, the joy of trying to apply manufacturing processes to healthcare management! To my mind, all three of these exercises were trying to get people to use common sense. It seems there is value in these somewhere, since after the last one the manager of another department and I successfully worked together on a very large project that improved efficiency and cooperation between our departments. Do I have a point this month? Possibly it is that using common sense and trying to understand the "other guy's" point of view and problems can help us work toward solving conflicts that come along in our daily lives with family, friends, acquaintances and even the person who tried to use the 15 or less checkout lane at Stater's when he/she had at least 40 items in the cart! Very thankfully, I don't have to do these exercises anymore but confess that I still tend to categorize. For a start, here at SDV we have the fitness/sports types versus the artsy/ craftsy types. Since I am firmly of the artsy/ craftsy persuasion, I can affirm that these people can be further broken down into the glitter versus no glitter groups. Your turn now. What types do you see around here? WHAT'S YOUR TYPE?

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