After working with Deb as an executive coach for a year, I decided to extend the benefits of her expertise to my team. There was some dissatisfaction between team members that I had been addressing by having multiple conversations with staff. Deb recommended a Myers-Briggs workshop to bring some of these issues to light in a productive way that would honor people and how they work instead of labeling them.
The workshop engaged staff in an affordable way that made a difference and had a lasting impact. It wasn’t just, “Oh, this is fun now”—the insights people gained as a result of doing the exercises had lasting value, and they looked at their colleagues with new perspective.
Deb didn’t cast it as anyone was right or wrong, that anyone was good or bad. She framed it as this is who we are: Let’s get a better look at what makes our colleagues tick, how we work, what we like, and what we don’t. If we know more about them and they know more about us, we can make better choices about how we interact. We all came away from the workshop with a sense of relief.
Deb used surprisingly simple exercises to give people a direct experience of one another, not an analytical, conceptual one. She gave people the space to make their own discoveries and to draw their own conclusions. The skillful and conscious way that Deb led the work allowed staff to see that everybody has their own needs and drives, and that teams that function at high capacity understand their teammates and do their best to meet those needs.
Since the workshop, our team dynamics are more transparent. Team members are vocalizing their differences and where the limits are. We better understand some of the underlying issues and have been addressing them more effectively.
Finally, the workshop was complementary to the individual coaching work I was doing with Deb, and helped me to become a better manager and develop a more productive team.
John Fisk
Director
Wallace Center at Winrock International
Arlington, Virginia
