As explained in the prior blog, members who attended Turner construction’s “Make Your Mark” event featuring Cathy Dolan Schweitzer learned the importance of staying open and connected with your team through the sharing of unique skills and qualities. Along with explaining importance, viewers of the presentation were encouraged to take part in practice exercises which helped with opening up.
Completing practice exercises like these with your team regularly are essential to make consistent progress in working for the most productive team possible. They encourage members to share their unique qualities which may either be beneficial to the project, or enable bonding between team members who share similar interests and experiences.
The exercise that the presentation was focused around was finding your own brand. As mentioned in my previous blog, everyone knows what an elevator pitch is. To find your personal brand is like taking the typical elevator pitch and accessorizing it with things that make you, you. ‘Who am I?’ you may ask yourself before completing the exercise; ‘Who am I to my friends and family before my professional accomplishments?’
To complete the exercise, participants were asked to write down the story of their career in three to five sentences, and repeat three times. Each time was supposed to encourage the use of more power words as well as personal strengths, passions, family descriptions, and more. This repetitive strategy was used in hopes to get participants more comfortable in writing and talking about themselves outside of their professional selves that everybody already knew.
As we know, talking about ourselves is hard. Changing the poor stigma surrounding it is something that we need to do. Additionally, to be productive in the art of collaboration, teams need to continue talking and learning about each other. If we do this, there is no doubt that healthy teams will thrive and thus contribute to the health of the country. To read more on promoting healthy people, teams, and projects, go to https://healthwelldone.com/blog, and read our past blogs.
