We at Priority Consultants took a break two Fridays ago, decided to stop running around for a day to review where and how fast we were going in a company retreat cum workshop cum team bonding/building session. With a tight 8.30am start, the session kicked off with an analysis of who you are – sanguine (we have a few of those in our midst), meloncholy (again we have those), choleric (woah there….), and phlegmatic. What was interesting was how people reacted and recognised themselves – ie the disconnect between their self perceptions and their personalities.
This became a focus point for me through the course of the day. You see, I am very much interested in why some people go on to achieve great things in life and fulfilling their potential while many rarely ever realise that they can do great things. The self perception is quite often different to what they are, want to be and potentially should be.
As a manager of people, and hopefully leader of men, we have the express duty to recognise, identify and help people realise their potential for success and great things. It may take a lot of talking, sharing of ideas, cajoling, prodding, some bullying, threatening, definitely a lot of chatting, smiling, laughing and even some crying, and then you might have just gotten to step 1 with your proteges! But ultimately, people want to succeed. They want to be appreciated for their contribution and valued for their skills, personality, quirks, sense of humour and smiles.
I found that the group of people that I hung out with in the workshop cum team bonding cum retreat, were a truly a funny, quirky, hilarious, interesting, talkative and extremely personable bunch. Everyone, from the Liverpool supporting would be business executive; our Leeds United die hard, web geek; our other soft spoken street smart web honcho; our cool dude tech savvy marketing graduate; our violin impressario pop philosophy expounding organiser; our photobug finance guru; our quartet of extremely charming, attractive and stylish women – the sanguine foodie, the stylish fitness obsessed netball enthusiast, the Aussie chick with heart of gold and steely determination and thinking, the deep and philosophical doyen of all things sensitive; to our fearless, globetrotting, leader; was different – we surely had a motley crew.
I was glad to be part of the this group. More accurately I was pleased they accepted me and allowed me to be part of them. That was truly a good feeling. Afterwards (later in the afternoon) I found out that this was also a mean dragon boating crew. I was impressed.
It was fun.