Synergy

What is synergy? How do we achieve it?

Synergy is derived from the Greek word, syn, meaning together, and energy. Synergy is the special energy which is created when people work together effectively on a project or problem. This energy is usually stronger and more powerful than the energy created by individuals working alone. The secret to synergy is how people work together. The model below illustrates how teams develop synergy:

In my previous training course we did a group activity with the objective that we reach team synergy in the end. We followed this book called the Black Bear. It goes by a scenario that starts something like this:

We’re a group of hikers on the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, when our Scout Leader gets attacked by a bear. He is bleeding steadily from deep laceratations on his chest,arms,and back from the bears claws, but does not appear to have broken bones.

The trip had turned into a disaster. Some of us are concerned that the Scout Leader is going into shock. All of us fear that he won’t survive unless he reaches proper medical help in within the next  hours. There is also a fog coming.

So what to do?

We have to look at the strategy alternatives and see what should be the best way to go about the situation but first we need to look at the strategies as per:

1. Individual Choice
2. Team Choice

So as individuals we have to work out the best way to get us back to safety and have medical help for our Scout Leader, we were given several choices. Once we established it based on our opinion alone, we work it out as a team and come up with one final solution. We were given a time limit as well to complete this exercise.

Once we’ve done that we need to check our score and see if we used team synergy to come up with the correct solution. The lower the score the better. In my case my individual score was less than the team score(2/6 including me got that result), it should be the opposite. This means that only two of us came up with the most logical decision. But being the introverts in the group we kept quiet most of the time and didn’t voice out our opinions like we should have. So we learned that in order to make decisions under pressure as a team we have to:

It is difficult to practice all the team member actions in the model, even under the best circumstances. Decision-making under pressure makes practicing these behaviours even more challenging. But in high-pressure situations, use of good decision-making techniques become crucial. With practice, I believe these seven actions can help us improve  our team’s ability to make effective decisions, regardless of stress and pressure:)

Ethics of Personality

Hello world!

I recently came out of my Management training course in Dubai which was FAN-tabulous! And being the geek that I am I thoroughly enjoyed the training courseJ We were trained by instructors who originally are psychologists but are practitioners in human resource development and training. The course invites a lot of people skills, group activities, presentations, and several tests, the one test that did stand out for me which I thought was enjoyable and interesting was the MBTI. The MBTI is a personality questionnaire designed to identify certain psychological differences according to the typological theories and bleh…Boring…basically it states that everyone is characterized into 16 types of personalities (Although we all agreed that Britney Spears is the 17^th type hee heeJ) After taking the test, which consists of 80-something questions I found out that I am…are you ready….an ISTJ! Now you’re probably wondering what on earth that means….me gonna tell you! The MBTI provides a useful method for understanding people by looking at eight personality preferences that everyone uses at different times. These eight preferences are organized into four opposite pairs. When you take the Indicator, the four preferences (one from each pair you identify as being most like you) are combined into what is called a type. The four pairs of preferences, or dichotomies, describe four activities: 

• Energizing-how a person is energized, either through Extraversion(E) or Introversion(I)
• Perceiving-what a person pays attention to, either through sensing(S) or Intuition(N)
• Deciding- How a person decides, either through thinking(T) or Feeling(F)
• Living- the lifestyle of a person adopts, either through Judging(J) or Perceiving(P)

 We were a class of about 25 people and the results were as follows:   

So…why did we take this test, and what’s the point? This MBTI has been applied as a tool for many years by a variety of uses around the globe, including those in:

·        small businesses and large multinational corporations

·        Service industries and manufacturing concerns

·        Consulting and training services

·        Government at all levels

·         Established firms and new entrepreneurial ventures  

In general, the MBTI a functions as a tool that helps people in organizations understand themselves and behaviors, appreciate others in order to make constructive use of individual preferences, approach problems in different healthy ways and thus be more productive and so on.

On the whole its taught me that not everyone is the same, and not everyone fits the MBTI profile 100%, its only said to be 70% accurate, but its definitely opened my eyes to the fact that some people are more feeling than thinking , and more do-think-do than think-do-think. Diversity is what we need to make a team work, if we were all ISTJ’s for example, there won’t be a chance for advancement or new ideas, we’d all be in the same frame of mind J

So as ISTJ’s we are considered to be “life’s natural organizers”:-serious, quiet, we find concentration and thoroughness crucial, logical, realistic, dependable and work steadily (regardless of distraction) . 

PS. This test is NOT for choosing a partner, one guy liked 2 women and is considering marrying one of them so he asked our instructor if he could have a few copies of the test lol. Relationships work because you want them to, and as long there is a communication and compromise between the two of you, you’re good to go:)