The What Goes Around Blog

Learning to Paint – Leapday

Around a dozen friends gathered in London yesterday to take advantage of Leapday. We were hosted by the very fabulous Coopers Natural Foods. Amongst other things we practiced drawing and coaching, and we got some fantastic water colour tips from V…

The image below shows one of the busy shelves at Coopers. It also shows two pencil drawings I made of a pencil. The one at the top left was before being coached, the one shown bottom right was the after result. In this image you can also see two examples of me playing with wet paint on a wet and dry background. I had not tried painting wet on wet before yesterday and the results interested me. The final part of the image is a grape, painted using the wet on wet technique.

I really enjoyed our Leapday session and I hope I don’t have to wait another four years to experience such a useful fun day again.

MBTwhy?

Here are two biiiig reasons why personality or psychometric tests suck….

You know the drill. Once in a while the boss decides you’ve all got to get together and find out about each other. What makes you tick, and all that jazz. So how’re ya gonna do that? Lucky you – it’s MBTI time (other tests are available). Forms are filled, scores are totted up, foreheads are wrinkled. And then you are ready for the illumination – the results (cue fanfare).

Guess what…the test results tell you a bunch of stuff you already know about yourself, and importantly, it’s stuff you like. ‘Ooh, isn’t it uncannily accurate’ titters the excited recipient. Well derrr, you filled out the form, what did you expect? This is the first reason these tests suck. They tell you what you already know.

And guess what else…the test results tell you a bunch of stuff you already know about yourself and don’t like. And being human, you choose to disregard it all. Yeah OK, you might buy it for a wee while, but as soon as the L&D expert’s back is turned – you’ve flipped back to the real you. This is the second reason these tests suck. You ignore the stuff you don’t like.

And please – don’t get me started on Belbin. If you want to know your ‘team role’ just take a look at your desk. It’s state of organisation or otherwise will tell you pretty much all you need to know. There you go – I’ve just saved you a bucket of cash for you to spend on something ‘useful‘.

From my experience I know many folks in the world of work agree with these observations, and I’m struggling to think of anyone who approaches these assessments with anything higher on the excitement scale than vague (and often forced) interest. What do you think?

photo c/o dumbledad

Leadership – Focus

Good leaders have a habit of making you feel like you are the most important thing in their lives at that moment.

The next time you meet folk and you think they might want to come to respect and appreciate you, please stop playing with your crackberry. You are capable of focussing your attention, right?

Being present creates presence. How will you be remembered for yours?

photo c/o George Rex