Compromisers

We just finished our Summer Program training, and our first official week begins on Monday. Here's a picture of our Summer Program team.

Remember how I said that I moved to change the colour from green to orange? Yeah, well they came out a bit brighter than we were expecting. This is on me.

For our team building activity this year, instead of going to Chicopee and climbing on rock walls and vertical playgrounds, we did Adventure Rooms. This was fine by me, since first year Chicopee ruined me, which inspired me to train and challenge it again next year, doing much better. I felt I'd already got my revenge on Chicopee, and it was satisfying, but I don't need to do it again.

If you don't know what Adventure Rooms are, basically, you're locked in a room with a group of people with one hour to escape. Clues are set all around, and you have to figure out puzzles made with unorthodox equipment to escape. I can't describe what happened in there, because they discourage you from doing so, as it could ruin the experience for someone else.

At the end, they tell you what percentage you completed. We made it 55% of the way to escaping. Sounds bad, but only 20% of groups manage to escape. We were about average.

And then you're required to have your team photo taken, with your team name, and they post it on their Facebook page publicly.

Here's our team pic.

Caption reads, "The Compromisers solved their way through 55% of The Vault."

The reason our team name is The Compromisers, is because our team did a Conflict Resolution Styles test, and all but one ranked as Compromising. The one person who wasn't Compromising ranked Avoiding and she avoided the conflict by taking the name despite it not applying to her.

We've got someone pitching the name "Team Pylon" since the first group to have pylon-coloured shirts, but I don't think she's going to pitch it hard enough to replace "The Compromisers" since it's this established.

The five conflict mediation styles are as such:

Competing                                 Collaborating

Compromising

Avoiding                                   Accomodating 

We do this every year, so I may have mentioned it once or twice before. But the ones on the top are more aggressive, and the ones at the bottom are more passive. The ones on the left are "more about me" and the ones on the right are "more about you"

So Compromising seems like a good balance, but really, each conflict style is important and teams do best when there's a variety of different styles within them. Compromising is "We split the pie" style thinking. It means both parties get part of what they want, but neither gets everything. It's good for short-term solutions.

In my Personality Dimensions test (where people are ranked as Inquiring Green, Authentic Blue, Resourceful Orange, and Organized Gold) I came out as a perfect Green-Blue split! I'm sure I've said it before, but I started out as a hard Green (intellectual) with a distant secondary Blue (empathetic) but my Blue kept creeping up and up on me, until last year it overtook. Since I've always identified as Green, and since I was quite content as a Green-Blue split, which I'd had the year previous, I was worried that my empathetic self would only continue to grow, and my intellectual self continue to fade (which is appropriate for a Social Service Worker, I guess)

But this year I ranked that perfect Green-Blue balance again (I call it turquoise.)

 It means I'm the best at managing conflict, because I can see both sides of any argument, but I'm the worst for self-doubt because of my inner conflict (should I do what I think is right, or what I feel is right?)

I learned this year that while Green and Blue contrast each other, Gold and Orange contrast each other similarly. Green-Blue is Head vs. Heart, while Gold-Orange is Order vs. Chaos. Green-Gold, Green-Orange, Blue-Gold, and Blue-Orange don't have equivalent struggles.

 We did Love Languages too, but for professional environments. This test is for how we prefer to receive appreciation. For anyone who doesn't know, the five categories are Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Physical, Gift Giving, and Acts of Service. I ranked highest for Words of Affrimation. Usually everyone ranks Quality Time, which is why I find the test boring. This year we were split between Quality Time and Words of Affirmation.

My garden's wrecked. The weeds in the community garden are just so awful. My transplants are doing well (my tomatoes and impatiens) but I only have a few zuchini plants and snow peas, and my sunflowers are completely choked out. They aren't selling vegetable transplants, althought they are still selling flowers. So what am I supposed to do? Grow a flower garden? Amongst all the vegetable growers in the community garden, I'd feel like a rebel.

I'm not even mad. You want to know why? Every year, I've tried to prophesy the coming year based on how my garden did, specifically by my sunflowers. For example, one year, all my sunflowers in Guelph died while I was absent, but one grew in Kitchener, suddenly, and just after news of my other sunflowers fate. I interpreted this to mean "What you plan will fall apart, but you will receive unexpected good fortune in a place you hadn't considered" Yeah no, everything went according to plan that year. I also had a romantic story from my first sunflower, which I don't remember if I shared publicly, but it ended in a reverse outcome as well. And last year, I had seven sunflowers, which was supposed to mean seven fortunes, but instead I got seven hardships.

So I've developed a new theory that life is balanced, and if I experience misfortune in my garden, I will experience the opposite, good fortune in my day-to-day living, to maintain the balance. So this wretched year of gardening should equate to a great year for me!