Belbin profile

My company recently paid good money to have us profile ourselves using Belbin profile - a tool to understand teams and the people who make up the teams.  It was a 360-degree evaluation - my peers, my bosses and I answered a simple questionnaire about, you guessed it, me.  The results were rather telling.  Apparently, I'm a plant.  What in freakin' hell in a plant?  That's what I thought too.  Was it my green fingers or the fact that I'm green (in an ecological sense) or worse still that I was as non-descript as a plant?  Apparently, none of the above.  Plants are generally creative, imaginative, unorthodox people who enjoy solving difficult problems.  Basically, the idea generator in a team.  Sounds pretty good eh, yeah, until you get to the flip side.  Generally, plants tend to be too pre-occupied with their own thoughts and neglect practical matters and details.  Problems with strong plants are that they may look down on others and have too strong an ownership of ideas that they don't cooperate. 

All I could think of was shit, it does sound like me!  And the worse part is, the problems sound more like me that the positive aspects of being a plant! 

Anyway, here are snippets of the write-up on me.  

"Your profile shows that you are a strong thinking type."

"Do not be tempted into a general debate that can lead to "paralysis by analysis.""

"Your operating style is closest to that of strategic leadership, which is usually available only at senior positions. However, before such an opportunity could present itself, you are likely to need credibility at the operational level. That might pose problems in your case.  Possibly, you would be well advised to make a team-role sacrifice by dealing as effectively as you can with issues that don't excite you. That may be the necessary prelude to reaching the position to which in the long run you are best suited. The good news is that the longer you survive, the more likely you are to become a valued contribution and to gain the greatest sense of personal fulfilment. "

Ok I'm not at a very senior position.  So does this mean I have to grit my teeth and bear the increasingly mundaness of things?  By the way, all this underscores what I've been feeling the past few months, that I'm in the wrong job and that I should be heading back to policy-type work.  I don't think that's what the company intended when they did this profile.   Anyway, it seems like a good time to look for a new job, considering how many people have left my department for newer and better positions, its high time I got off my lazy ass and did the same!

Student Meals

Ok, I must admit I don't quite look my age, particularly on Friday when I'm no longer in heels and a jacket. Friday is dress down casual day and I take full advantage of the fact that I no longer need to squeeze my little feet (little as they may be, they still hurt in heels!) in my closed toed heels. In fact, I'm usually in jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers. I used to dress up a little more on Friday, with more casual heels and sometimes a strange flowy flowery top, but what the hell, its Friday, if I wanna wear sneakers, who's going to stop me?

Anyway I digress. So Friday. I was in my t-shirt and sneakers and was heading for lunch with my boss and another older colleague of mine. We finally decided on Pizza Hut (god knows why) and we sat down to peruse the menu. The elderly waitress, who was probably 50 or so, kudos to Pizza Hut for hiring older workers, kept telling me about the student meal discount.

"If you have your student pass with you, you can get $2 off the set meal. But you will need to show your student pass. Do you have your student pass with you?"

I just smiled and said no. I didn't get the student rate and my boss and colleague were laughing their heads off. It would have been funnier if this didn't happen in front of my boss, who as cool as she is, I don't quite want her to think I'm a child... 

Work

Work is in turmoil.  I've mentioned that I've joined a new team (we merged), and the preggie in my team, who is now working from home (man that's really an incentive to get pregnant!) drives me nuts sometimes.  I'm not sure if its the hormones or the fact that she can't see her feet that's making her brain turn into slosh.  The things she says, the suggestions she makes, and yes even the sentences she constructs generally don't make any sense!  Yes I'm a snob when it comes to sentence construction, but god, can't she at least TRY to construct a grammatical, understandable sentence?  Since she's working from home, our main means of communication is through email and how can we get anything done if I can't understand what you're saying?  I kid you not.  You'd figured someone with a degree would be able to spell better, or at least have the sense to use spell check, but again, I think her swollen feet has spread to her brain.  Help.

Conference Calls

Part of my job requires to me have conference calls with other countries.  More recently, we've started a project with New York and working with the upside down timing is driving me crazy.  We either rush into office early morn to have a call (our 8am is their 8pm) or we stay late in the office for a call or we rush home to take evening calls.  Either way, lots of rushing is involved.

The reverse is true of emails.  You don't get responses until the next day.  No such thing as quick questions.  Everything has at least a 24 hour turnaround.  With all these logistical issues, I'm not surprised why this project is moving at a snail's pace and honestly, while the project seemed exciting at the onset, I'm getting bored already.  Arg.

Early Day

I usually never get home this early. When I’m on my way back, I never see the sun set, simply because most times, the sun has already set.


These couple of days I’ve been at course and today I got home really early. I just thought I had to take a picture of this because I wasn’t going to see this again anytime soon.


I should really try to work on a better work life balance... I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun set on a week day.

Work Stuff

Things are starting to get complicated at work. Factions are starting to develop, particularly between my team and another unit. And now, my boss has started to say “no, we can’t share this with them...” and “see how they try to take all the credit...”. Sure I understand where she’s coming from. No one wants someone else to take credit for their work, but its just strange to me that the animosity can be so blatant. Maybe its a big bank thing, I don’t know. Frankly, I don’t like to play, but I’ll play along.


In other news, stuff - like the audit review of another team - has landed on my lap. God knows how that happened, and all I got was the sales pitch that this is good for me, its for people with high potential, you get to learn a lot and all that jazz. Frankly, I’m not sold, but what could I say? Sorry, too busy to audit some other team, find someone else. Yeah right. Its all a sham. Our bigger boss likes to ask my boss for volunteers and my boss just happens to like volunteering people, mostly me. Our team is a strange mix, I’m the projects person, I don’t do day-to-day things which means I’m quite obviously the one wearing red when everyone else is wearing white. I need to learn to say no, I really do.

Training

I was at a course today and my trainer turned out to be an old friend from church. She wasn’t someone I knew very well, but we nonetheless knew each other.   


It wasn’t as awkward as I imagined it would be, then again, I’ve come to realize that most things aren’t. My imagination usually makes things out to be far worse than they really are and my over-inflated sense of self imagines everything to revolve around me - like people would even bother with the kind of person I had become. I actually had a nice time catching up with her and how my old friends were doing. Its amazing how such conversations make me feel so old. Her son, whom I knew when he was just a pimply teenage boy (ok I wasn’t much older, only 4 years older, but when you’re 20, a 16 year old just seems soooo young), is now a young man. God, he was a teenager when I knew him, and now, I could well be dating him! Strange how age gaps really get smaller when you get older eh? I better go put more anti aging cream...