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Tuesday, Mar. 09, 2004 - 11:14 p.m. TYPE “I” A couple years ago I took a training course for work called “Understanding Yourself and Others.” It was basically a “soft” training course I took with all the other more technical classes I was taking during training. This course was taught by some sort of human resources consultant who was supposedly an expert on human interaction in the workplace. During the class we filled out kind of a profile that measured a variety of our personality characteristics. From a broad perspective, there were four main personality types the profile would classify you into, with several subcategories under each type. The four personality types consisted of the domineering type, or “D,” interpersonal type, or “I,” steady type, or “S,” and the conscientious type, or “C.” I wish not to go into a psychology lesson with this entry, so I will not explain what all these types mean. The gist of the course was for us to discover our personality types as well as understand those of others in order to facilitate communication in the workplace. In essence, the combination of the letters for the personality type of the people involved determines how compatible they are in getting along and accomplishing tasks. Some combinations work great with each other, while others are like oil and water. Therefore, our purpose was to get a feel for what our own personalities were like from an objective point of view and then adjust them accordingly depending upon the other personalities involved in order to get along with each other in doing our jobs. When I took the profile, I believed it was flawed in measuring my personality, mainly because my whole personality changes based on my mood. During the past year, people have been quitting our office in droves, leaving many projects understaffed. This problem has made our office desperate in hiring new people and staffing them on projects the office normally would not place them on. Such was the case when the office hired Sharon, so I will call her, a 36 year-old mother of three who commutes every day from southern Mississippi, about an hour and a half drive each way. They immediately staffed her on the great laborious crunch in which I partake for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for four months straight. When the over and under manager first told us about her, they said she was a definite “I,” or interpersonal type personality. Basically, the interpersonal type is the social butterfly, the one whose mouth always talks, and can talk to a wall. Whether their own assessment was right, I cannot say. But I will say she can talk a whole lot. In fact, I owe her a debt of gratitude for talking when necessary in order to get that bitch under manager off my back. Conveniently for my office, they like to staff on our project single people with no major family responsibility so that they can work us into the ground and not risk losing us. This made Sharon’s situation appear impossible. Considering incredibly long commute, three kids at home, and a twelve hour workday six days a week, my teammates and I shook our heads when she was staffed on our project. What made things even more difficult for her was that the managers had reassigned some of the harder assignments I was doing over to her. Cheerily and energetically, she did just all these things for the entire four months, so impressively, they promoted her to her next position faster than normal office policy allows. However, she remains staffed on our project, and for the time being, I appear to remain on it with her. I have always wondered how she was able to handle so much. Today I found out why. During a conversation in our tiny closet office today, she said she was bipolar. Of course, my ignorant managers just acted surprised and went into a conversation about how they thought their relatives were obsessive-compulsive or what not. Sharon went on to say that she only took medication when she felt it was necessary and had a very light case. I was inspired by her confidence in how she could freely admit she was bipolar and not care what other people thought. After all, she had proven that she can handle anything dished out to her quite well. I also admired her frankness about her being bipolar, but I found it hard to believe she only took medication when she needed it. So when the managers left, I started asking questions. In fact, she is a rapid-cycler, but because she has such a mild case, she just puts up with the swings and takes medication when she feels it is necessary. I then told her under sworn secrecy that I was bipolar too. I also told her that as well-managed as my bipolar disorder is, I have to have medication, so my condition was slightly worse than hers. However, I told her that, unlike her, I was not willing to trust anyone in the office with information about my condition, which she completely understood. Next I asked how she was able to cope during the crunch. She said she just went through bouts of hypomania that enabled her to be extremely productive and go without sleep for long periods of time. She even went on to say that at the end of the project, she did not sleep for three days. The funny thing is, when I told her I was bipolar, she did not sound in the least bit surprised. She said she kind of knew it intuitively, like I was next of kin. Certain things she noticed about me, she said, reminded her of herself during her early days dealing with the illness. In turn, I told her that her fast rate of speech always made me suspicious of her. I remembered too going through periods where I would talk and talk, especially in my manic phase, when I had to talk. Now at work, I finally have someone I know I can talk to. |