They say at work, there’s one employee that drives everyone a little nuts… they also say if you can’t put your finger on who it is, there’s a good chance it’s you. I’m the only employee here so for the sake of representation, we’ll say it’s me. (Brownie points for taking one for the team, am I right?) The possibility of working with a group of people who have the same personality type and preference is basically zero, so learning to deal with the differences is necessary and essential for surviving the work day.
When you work with friends or people that you genuinely enjoy, sometimes it’s hard to deal with differences and other times it’s hard to mask the frustrations that come from those differences. Sometimes you can’t even put your finger on what it is that’s so agitating and you just end up being grumpy all day and you feel like you should just have a sign on your head that says “leave me alone.” Trust me, we’ve all worn the sign here a day or two. I mean, on Saturday, I spent an hour that I didn’t really have organizing papers and shelves that we don’t really use just to keep my type-A personality calm while Heather and Melanie continued on functioning in the chaos and clutter. (That sounded like a calm, cool and collected way of dealing with my feelings but it was like a rage cleaning, really… like plugging the steam coming out of my ears, cartoon style type of morning).
So how do we deal with our differences in a productive way? How do we learn to accept or grow together to make our small team more effective and efficient? *Insert superhero entrance sound here* Dr. Morgan. In our early stages of opening, I reached out to my former professor about a communications question and her involvement snowballed from there.
Dr. Morgan is a communication training and education specialist, and more importantly, my favorite professor-friend from Eastern University. She has worked with the University’s MBA program, served as department chair and developed over 30 unique courses for the campus and the marketplace. She is one of the sweetest, and most encouraging women I know and I’m thrilled that my work with her continues on here at Escape.
One of the best tools that Dr. Morgan brought to our team is the Forte Communication Style Portfolio. When we first started talking with Dr. Morgan about working alongside us, she offered to show us what she does with numerous organizations to help them optimize their communication strategies and skills. As a certified Forte consultant, Dr. Morgan is able to administer and decipher the Forte test for employees of businesses and honestly, it’s one of the coolest assessments I’ve taken. (It was creepishly spot on for each one of us).
After taking the assessment, Dr. Morgan sat down with us and walked us through the results and showed us how that translates into our work environment. It’s been a few months since we’ve gone over the results and I still sometimes catch myself thinking, I bet Forte would say Heather is… or, there’s Melanie’s high scoring… or, I know I’m agitated because I prefer structure but Melanie and Heather score lower.
We’re excited for Dr. Morgan to come back to share more of her knowledge and enthusiasm about effective communication for other businesses and employees! If your team could use some assistance in working alongside one another, or if you just feel like the day to day job could go smoother, I’d highly recommend checking out the Lunch and Learn coming to Escape. on September 7th and 21st. Not only do you get an Escape. experience, you get to learn about the ways to communicate better as a corporate group and you get lunch too. I think it’s a no-brainer.