What is the personality of this blog?

Apparently Typealyzer has the ability to analyse your personality type according to your blog posts. Yes, you read that correctly! According to my blog, this is me:

INTP - The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.
They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

I would be interested to know how accurate those of you who know me personally think this evaluation is. I know you won't say I'm arrogant, I'm far too brilliant. Now hurry up and comment, that is if you are intelligent enough to think of anything worthwhile to say...I'm joking of course! ;-)

This diagram apparently shows my brain activity when I am writing:

Working towards collaboration

Today in our Persuasive Communications class we were asked to fill out a questionnaire to determine our personal approaches to conflict. We were not told what the approaches were until we had found our match in order to get a true result. The approaches, by Huczynski and Buchanan (2004), include:

1. Competing/Forcing: Get your own way (my score was 12)
2. Avoiding: Avoid having to deal with conflict (my score was 7)
3. Compromising: Reach an agreement quickly (my score was 9)
4. Accomodating: Don't upset the other person(my score was 10)
5. Collaborating: Solve the problem together (my score was 13)

I am satisfied with my scores because whilst I have a spread across the different approaches, my highest score is in the collaborative method which is seen as the ideal. However this questionnaire only determines where you sit naturally, and does not necessarily mean that I have the ability to determine when an alternative approach is required. If this result is true, I am probably more likely to switch to the competing/forcing approach when things go wrong.

The five mentioned approaches are based on two dimensions - how assertive or unassertive each party is in pursuing its own concerns, and how co-operative or uncooperative each party is in satisfying the concerns of the other. The following graph that illustrates this:

There are other elements to conflcit resolution. It is not just about the approach, it also depends on the type of conflict and the methods being used to resolve it. Three types of dispute resolution are:

1. Interest-based: Attempts to help parties find a resolution that satisfies their needs and interest e.g. mediation during a divorce
2. Rights-based: Attempts to determine which party's position is more valid e.g. legal code
3. Power-based: Each party coerces the other into doing what that party wants e.g. strikes by employees
(Conrad and Scott Poole, 2005)

Conflicts may begin with one of these types of resolution and move on to another. For example, the Royal Mail strikes have shifted between all three types of resolution over many years. If only to be a fly on the wall at the TUC meetings between RM bosses and the CWU and note the conflict styles in play!

The Marshmallow Test

I showed you a video not long ago about an experiment using marshmallows to test deferred gratification in children. E.T. (Expressionable Thought) then sent me a link to the blog 'Mind Ova Matter' where there is a video of the same test being carried out elsewhere. It's so cute I had to share it with you.

The concept is that a child is left in a room with a marshmallow for 20 minutes with the promise that if they don't eat it, they will be brought another marshmallow after that time. You can imagine how that would be tough for a child, although there is plenty of comedy value in watching it.

The Marshmallow Test from Jérôme Magron on Vimeo.

I actually asked my parents whether I would have eaten the marshmallow and they answered no. They said my younger brother would have though! Interestingly we both have similar intelligence yet he is playing in a band and has his own house and I'm two years older, have no money, am studying for a degree and living at home. I'm clearly still waiting for my second marshmallow!!

Flexibility Holds the Key to Success

Sorry for the delay with this entry - third year priorities and all that! You will be please to know that my dissertation presentation (for which you followers were dumped for, sorry) went very well and I am on track with conducting my primary research. I'll keep you posted! Anyway...

Last week in our Persuasive Comms lecture, we discussed the different perspectives or 'frames of reference' for dealing with conflict:
1. Unitarist: sees organisations as essentially harmonious and any conflict as bad;
2. Pluralist: sees organisations as a collection of groups, each with their own interests;
3. Interactionist: sees conflict as a positive, necessary force for effective performance;
4. Radical: sees conflict as an inevitable outcome of capitalism. (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004, pg 792)

We were told that most of us will already hold one of these perspectives naturally, and that we will therefore deal with situations according to these views. I'm pretty sure I naturally hold an interactionist view - I agree that there needs to be conflict to achieve successful outcomes but that there is an optimum level which should not be exceeded. I am definitely most comfortable working in this way within a team.

Radical is a bit too erm...radical for me as well as highly unethical. Although I understand how they might be appropriate perspectives in some cases, I couldn't relate to the other two frames of reference very much. Afterall, 'Groupthink' is my worst nightmare! I later discovered that interactionist is the usual management view, which tends to exist in fast moving organisations that need to be open to change in highly competitive industries. Sounds good to me! :-)

I shouldn't get too comfortable though. I also learned that it is important to be flexible in your frames of reference, as there is value in being able to view conflict from different perspectives. That's a given I suppose, because at the core of any successful PR professional is the ability to understand and adopt the viewpoints of others. Our adopted frames of reference on conflict will determine:
1. What we notice in our environments;
2. How we will interpret those noticed events;
3. How we expect others to behave;
4. How we will behave ourselves. (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004, pg 792)

In organisations where there are different frames of references in action at once, interpretations of events will be very different and this can cause misunderstandings. So if we have a group meeting at uni and there is debate about what plan of action we should take, someone with an interactionist view may come away satisfied that the meeting went well whereas someone with a pluralist view may come away dissatisfied with how much hard work it was to come to an agreed decision. This explains why an understanding of the different approaches is important.

Does conflict deserve such a bad press?

We've just started a new section to the 'Persuasive Communications' unit about conflict. In an organisational context it's an interesting topic. Having just completed a report for 'Ethics, Issues and Crisis Management' about Royal Mail's internal modernisation issues, I feel like I've already had a bit of a head start.

When you first think of conflict, you tend to think of the negatives. You wouldn't be wrong in thinking that conflict can destroy an organisation, which is probably why it gets such a bad press. Not many journalists are going to report on a conflict that actually solved a company problem - where's the drama in that?

Theorists define conflict as "a process which begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected, or is about to negatively affect, something the first party cares about" (Huczynski and Buchana, 2004, pg 791).

In our PR class of around 25, we were asked how many of us actually enjoy conflict. I was one of only two to raise a hand. The other was one of my close friends, perhaps that's one of the reasons we get along so well! The thing is, I think conflict is important and highly beneficial in any situation.

For instance, in our group work in PR, conflicting ideas are worked through in order to reach a solution that everyone is happy with. Two people may come to the table with completely different views of what needs to be done to achieve our objectives, a potentially argumentative situation. However, by compromising and talking through the reasons for our ideas, we can reach an agreeable compromise. The key is to arrive with an open mind and a willingness to listen.

Huczynski and Buchanan also said that "Conflict is a state of mind. It has to be percieved by the parties involved" (2004, pg 791). Therefore, if our group had not communicated our ideas effectively to each other, in theory there would not have been any conflict...well not at that time, anyway.

I think it's better to have conflict and resolve the issues early on than to have miscommunication. It's hardly productive if we continue to work on a project with different ideas of the outcome. That's a mistake I made in my first year. It only leads to more intense conflict further down the line, often when it's too late to resolve fairly.

A video we watched during the seminar 'from no to yes' said that the three rules of conflict resolution are:
1. Active listening
2. Win yourself a hearing
3. Work to a joint solution

The conclusion I can draw from the first week of this unit is that conflict is a good thing when issues are communicated effectively and resolved with an open mind.

I will not eat the marshmallow!

I was feeling gutted about spending my Saturday night working on an assignment when all my friends were out partying. In ten minutes of indulgent internet procrastination, I came across this video.

The idea is a simple one - but it has really helped to motivate me. I'm sure I'm not the only one that can benefit from watching this video, which is why I have chosen to share it. I WILL NOT EAT THE MARSHMALLOW!

Different mindsets...???

I was being a PR geek and browsing YouTube for public relations videos when I came across some advice from Duncan Shaw, KCNC-TV executive producer. In his video he talks about how you tailor your client's story for different media, a very well known PR tactic.



However, I could not get my head around the last point he makes. He says that the way in which something is reported in the morning is different to the way in which it is reported at night because audiences are in different mindsets. Mindsets? What does that mean?
Surely you tailor stories for different channels because they have different audiences who want different things from their chosen channel regardless of the time of day. For instance, a news story on BBC1 will surely be reported in the same way at 9am as it will at 10pm, but it will be different to the type of story reported by Channel 4.