Teambuilding Day

This one should probably have been a number of posts. Since my last update, I've done a teambuilding workshop, EAFY Day happened, it was my birthday, my boss had his 25th work anniversary, and I attended my first Core Competencies meeting in five years. Once I gained regular employment, I was concerned that I wouldn't have much to talk about, or at least, anything interesting would be confidential. So far, that hasn't turned out to be an issue.

I'll start with the teambuilding session. My boss did something really sweet, in that he scheduled an entire day of team building to help me and the other new employee find our place within the team, which required our entire organization to shut down for a day. The session was based on our Personality Dimensions, which I've talked about at length as I have done that test at least seven times. It's the one that separates personalities into four different colours.

The person who usually hosts the exercise for Summer Program, and who has evaluated my results at least four times, was the one who covered this session. We actually spent it over at her house. We did the usual review of the four different colours and discussed the ways we connected with them, and then our main activity was castle building, which I've done once before at a Summer Program. You take a bag of material that includes popsicle sticks, streamers, balloons etc. and, within a team, you are tasked to use all the materials to build and present a model castle. The teams are divided in a way that puts people with different personality types together. Last time I did this, my team won. This time, we lost.

In addition to the Personality Dimensions, we looked over Introversion vs. Extraversion. Team of seven, we had three Extraverts and three Introverts. I was, of course, on the Introvert side of things. Of us three, two of us were prominent Introverts, while the other one was pretty blended, and then I was the only one who came out as having absolutely no Extraversion in me.

After this we did an exercise where we state what we feel about the other group, how we think they see us, and what we would change about them if we could. During the section where Introverts say how they feel about Extraverts, I went into detail about how jealous I am of them. Even though I find attention draining, I'm so jealous of how much attention they get, I'm jealous that they wish we would be more like them, and we wish we would be more like them.

My boss gave me a really insightful look and said "If you're that Introverted and have that strong of a Green personality, your need for recognition is never being met".

Never thought of it as a "need for recognition". I've always thought of it more as a character flaw. A petty aspect of my personality that I didn't like to advertise.

Blew my mind. Apparently it's just a quality that Green personalities have. In addition to everyone agreeing to point out my accomplishments, the person who ran the session told me I should point it out when I've done something praiseworthy. I was like "I couldn't, I would feel so selfish!"

In the end, when we talked about what we need from our teammates, I said "A word of acknowledgement, just so I know my efforts have been perceived". My boss said "I'm the same as Gryphon, it's just how Greens are".

Recently, there was a murder in Kitchener, really near the place I subletted for five months. Place I'd walked by on a daily basis. Happened in the morning, with lots of people in the area. Someone got out of a car, put three bullets in a teenaged kid's head, then drove away. I know a guy who knows a guy, who knows the guy that was sitting next to the kid when he was shot. Apparently it was a gang-affiliated thing. These acts of violence are getting closer to home all the time, yeesh.

A neighbour of mine got an article published. It's about how her toilet doesn't work, and our landlord refuses to cover it, and the landlord even went so far as to tell our plumbing suppliers not to service her. Here's the link:

https://www.kitchenerpost.ca/news-story/8932158-uninhabitable-conditions-in-kitchener-townhouse-complex-not-being-addressed-says-tenant/

This guy is the one who refuses to give a copy of the lease or rent receipts to tenants, who tried to charge me for an extra half-month of rent when I moved in, who sent the Super to my place to say that my cheque had bounced in the hopes that I would issue him a second one for the first four months I lived there, who always stops paying his Super Attendants after the second month of work, and who has physically assaulted tenants on multiple occasions.

So, hopefully he gets stung.

After three paycheques at my new job, I thought I'd be wealthier than I am. I wanted to get a dartboard, a YMCA membership, a cat, and a driver's license. So far, I got the dartboard and my credit cards payed off! So that's at least something!

I'm cutting off here. I will be back soon to detail EAFY Day, my birthday, my boss's 25th, and my Core Comp meeting. See you soon!