COURSE PREWORK SELF CHECK Completed: ☐ Date: An integral part of communication is a sense of self-awareness and an understanding of the individuals that we interact with daily. To best understand our own behavior types, we will be using the DISC inventory. Please read the on-screen instructions carefully and set aside 15 minutes to fully complete the exercise. Answer the questions in the context of your behavior at work. Once you are done, you will not receive the results; they will be provided to you at our training. Below are instructions to complete the DISC inventory: ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ Visit the assessment website: https://www.finxs.com Enter the Access Code: (SEE PRE-WORK EMAIL FOR ACCESS CODE) Fill out the required information (Last name, First name, Organization (Division), Gender, Email address) Click the “I can do it now” button Complete the inventory PERSONAL PRACTICE Completed: ☐ Date: “If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.” – Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Prior to attending this course, we recognize that many individuals have taken forms of communication training in the past. To serve as a check of your own success in the class, we ask that you complete a pre-course assessment. This instrument should take no longer than 10 minutes. You will be invited to complete this at future points to gauge the growth of your learning and help you set goals to make the journey more meaningful. Please click the following link to begin: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LLALSELFCHECK MONITOR MY MOTIVATION Reflect on and respond to the following questions: ▪ What drove me to apply for this course? Completed: ☐ Date: COURSE PREWORK ▪ What do I hope to gain from this course? ▪ What concerns do I have about participating in this course? REAL WORLD REFLECTION Completed: ☐ Date: Reflect on and respond to the following questions: ▪ What am I concerned about after I complete this course? ▪ What do I want to be able to do as a result of completing the course? CONNECT WITH ANOTHER Completed: ☐ Date: Connect with a trusted colleague, friend, peer, mentor, or family member and share your responses to the Monitor My Motivation and Real World Reflection sections. Discussing expectations, successes, and challenges is an integral part of one’s learning—it fosters the growth process. *Please set aside 10-15 minutes for this conversation. COURSE PREWORK REAL WORLD REFLECTION Completed: ☐ Date: How to Use Your Super Power for Good By Peter Bregman Article was originally published in Harvard Business Review: http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2011/02/how-to-use-your-super-power-fo.html I folded my bike and carried it into the lobby of the office building in midtown Manhattan. The security guard behind the desk looked up at me, grimaced, then looked down again and growled something indecipherable. "Excuse me?" I asked. He sighed loudly and didn't say anything for a moment. Then, without bothering to look at me, he said, "You're not coming in here with that." I was already jittery because of a near miss with a taxi on the ride over and this deflated me even more. It wasn't his message — I've faced many security guards who don't like to permit bicycles into their buildings — it was his cold, disdainful tone. I tried to stay calm and upbeat. I showed him how small it was, folded. I told him I had a bag I could put it in. He repeated the same line. Finally, after citing the “Bicycle Access to Office Buildings Law”, which requires New York City buildings with freight elevators to admit bicycles, he let me in. When I made it to the freight elevator, I smiled at the operator who was joking with some construction workers. He looked at me then looked back at his friends and kept talking. I waited uncomfortably for several minutes, and then asked him if he would take me to the 19th floor. He said something rude to his friends about tenants, took me up in silence, and left me in a small vestibule with a locked door but no clear way to enter. He shut his door as I was asking him how to get in. "Try pushing the button," he barked through the closed elevator door. I saw the button he meant and pushed. At this point I was feeling lower than low. Then, like magic, my morning changed. "Hi! You must be Peter. Welcome!" Lisa, the receptionist, sang as she opened the door. She smiled, and then looked worried. "Why did you come up in the freight?" I explained my morning and she frowned empathetically. "I'm so sorry, that’s terrible. Here, let me take your bike." I could have cried from happiness. In one second, Lisa turned my emotions around, from the negative spiral of anger, frustration, and despair to the positive spiral of relief, appreciation, and happiness. COURSE PREWORK And that's when I realized: We all have super powers. We can make people feel good or bad by as simple a thing as a gesture, an expression, a word, or a tone of voice. Here's the good news: Barsade's research found that positive moods are just as contagious as negative moods. Is it really a choice though? If you're in a bad mood, can you decide to be happy? I find it hard, inauthentic, even dishonest, to do feign happiness. But I have found a pretty simple solution to turning it all around: Kindness. No matter how bad a mood I'm in, I've found it pretty straightforward to treat others with kindness. And that, invariably, has a positive effect on those around me, which, as we've seen, has a positive effect on me. And, voilà, my mood changes for the better. When Lisa brought me to my client's office, I told him how my ugly morning had been turned around by his delightful receptionist. He responded with a story of his own. Once, when Lisa was sick and couldn't come to work, a quiet and reserved man named Frank, acted as receptionist for the day. Frank was not the sing-song type. But he was used to Lisa's good cheer. Each morning, like everyone else in the office, he received her buoyant emails welcoming people to the office. And, on this particular day, when he was asked to fill in for Lisa, the mere memory of her lighthearted emotions was enough to influence Frank. First thing that morning, on his own initiative, Frank wrote an email to the whole office that read: "It's Pizzaaaaaaa for lunch! I hope everybody has a Happy Day!!!!!!" Reading Reflections ▪ What moods are you generally known to infect others with at work? At home? ▪ How could a shift in your mood, the message you send others, improve cooperation and decrease conflict?
