The Quick and Dirty of How to Work with People

It is true, if you become a doctor you need to know how to practice medicine. If you become a lawyer you should know the law. A teacher should be able to teach, and an athlete should be able to play the game. But boil these jobs down to their basics and all you need to know is how to work with people. Having worked with people all my life in numerous capacities, most recently with a class of undergraduate Outdoor Education majors, I feel that I am qualified (enough) to give you the quick and dirty run down of how to work with people.

1.       Learn the Names of Those You Work With, and Try to Remember Their Faces. – Right now I am a teaching assistant for a group development class that meets on Thursdays. During the first class I facilitated a name game. Let’s be real though, those games don’t do anything for anybody’s memory concerning names. On Friday I am a student in an instructional strategies rock climbing class where we learn to climb, we don’t do name games. Fast forward to the next Thursday’s group development class where I am making small talk with the student next to me. Curious about his class load I ask if he is taking any instructional strategy classes. Quicker than you can say “teenage mutant ninja turtles” he turned, looked me straight in the eye, and said “Dana, I am in rock climbing with you, I was even in the group you were teaching knot tying to”. Oops! Like I said, learn names and faces…quickly!

 

2.       Get to Know Each Other – Nobody likes to sit around and learn mundane things about each other, that is just boring. I suggest you get outside, play some games, run around, get the blood flowing. Nothing says “getting to know you” like slapping the sweaty back of a stranger during a game of Tag.  

 

3.       Learn How to Work Together – Take some time to learn about everybody’s personalities. Are there Visionaries in your group? How about Drivers or Artists? Are people quiet, shy, loud, outgoing? I guarantee you will have all of these people in your group. To find out who has what traits put yourselves in a frustrating situation where a decision needs to be made through a true consensus. GOOD LUCK!    

 

4.       Trust Each Other – It’s simple. Without trust there is no group. Maybe you should do some blind trust walks through a mine-field of random toys...just a suggestion.  

 

5.       Solve Those Pesky Problems – Now that you know the names of your group members, you’ve done your fair share of sweating and slapping, you have come to a consensus on something, and you trust each other as if you have never lived a day apart you are ready for some problem solving.  One way to do this is come together over a problem your organization is having and solve it. However, the best way to practice problem solving is to get a small ball, a ring for that ball to sit on, and some strings at least 10 feet long (tie this string to the ring). Place the ball on top of the ring and each person holds onto the last 2 inches of the stings. Move the ball from point A to point B – which is up a hill, over a bridge, up some stairs and through some doors! Oh, and if you drop the ball there will be consequences.

 

6.     Have Fun – If you can’t have fun (at least some of the time) while working with people you might want to find a job where you can go and live under a rock or something.

 

Clearly working together as a group should not be limited to activities done as part of a team building exercise on a ropes course - otherwise all the governments, economies, and educational systems in the world would collapse and we would have no reason to work together as human beings anyway. Besides the fact that this list might possibly save us from a 15th century throw back, the cool thing is that every idea can be modified to fit the mission and values of any hospital, law firm, school or sports corporation (among many, many others) so that people can begin working together in a manner that brings about the best in others. And that right there is what working together is all about.  

Time to Start a New Adventure

The first blog post – probably the scariest post of them all. What do I talk about? Do I introduce myself? No, that seems too mundane, too boring. Do I jump right in with a story? Maybe, but without any background information the story might fall on deaf ears. Or worse, it will be relegated to the section of things to read that people don’t actually want to read. So back to my original plan – introduce myself and give people a reason to read what I have to say, or at least skim through it. Yes, after Googling how to write a first blog post I have decided that it is best for my readers (I’m assuming I have some) to understand who I am, where I come from, and where I want to go.

To begin I know, for a fact, everybody in the world has an inner self. I’m not talking about the scary inner self, (though if you have one I won’t knock it – it just might be something you want to control). I am talking about the inner selves such as your inner child, or your inner dreamer. For me, it is my inner adventurer – I’m pretty sure you have one too. Maybe you have let him or her out, or maybe they are still waiting to be found. Either way I know you have one and this is why. It’s pretty much human nature to want to understand the world around us; and to do that we must be adventurous. Contrary to popular belief adventures don’t have to be daunting, though they are often associated with risk, real or perceived. Adventures don’t have to happen in an outdoor setting but there is usually an element unfamiliar to the adventure seeker. And finally, adventures don’t have to be harrowing to be considered an adventure – they can just simply be.

Considering the above definitions of adventures I have been on hundreds of them. Road trips, plane trips, boat trips, trips by foot, any kind of trip you name it and I’ve done it…except an acid trip, I haven’t been on one of those. I don’t limit myself to trips in the travel sense through. I have also ventured into the wilderness of Colorado, Utah, California, Georgia, Australia, and Samoa (if you count sleeping on a beach as wild) to watch the sun rise, among other things, from mountain tops and meadows and beaches! Sometimes I don’t even get to watch the sun rise at all because I am hunkered down in a tent to avoid the onslaught of rain – or I’m just lazy and I am actually sleeping in! I have tried new things that scare me; I have tried old things that still scare me. Really anything that can be done to further my understanding of the world is an adventure waiting to happen.

Now, I haven’t really told you who I am, where I come from, or where I want to go. But isn’t that the beauty of a blog? You get to find out as you read along. Basically I am writing a public journal, a story if you will, that will give you (my reader) a special insight into my everyday life through my stories and experiences. So I hope you enjoy what you read. If you do, awesome! If you don’t, bummer.

 

 

 

FYI - postings will be sporadic at best. You see, I am in the middle of a new adventure…I am a graduate student! Though it doesn't look like it from this picutre. But I assure you, grad students can have fun too!