Kitchen provides recipe for tasty team building in Colorado Springs

The sales force and some managers here at CSBJ participated in an interesting team-building exercise last week at the Paragon Culinary School.

The learning lab combines team-building strategies and techniques within a fun and practical hands-on culinary experience.

After we all took the DISC (dominance, influence, steadiness, conscientiousness) profile administered by Dick Siever, director of the Paragon Learning Lab, we split up into groups to prepare a gourmet meal.

Members of the staff whose test results indicated they are highly dominant were assigned to prepare the entree; the folks tabbed as high influence prepared the soup and salad.

As in real life, some people were given instructions about how to complete their tasks and some people were not.

The soup-making team was given complete instructions. The entree team was not given any instructions, and found that the large piece of New York strip it had to cook was pretty much frozen solid. (Chef Victor Matthews, dean of the Paragon Culinary School, had to jump in at the last minute to help the high dominant entree team cut and grill the steaks.)

Also, as in real life, things changed.

One of the more culinarily literate staff members was whisked away from the group preparing the entree because of an "accident."

The exercise was a bit hectic - as evidenced by the people who don't spend a lot of time in a real kitchen frantically looking for spices and utensils.

There are many personality profiles tests available these days. At CSBJ we use Syntrak International to profile potential employees. The DISC profile charts where people fall on an insights wheel, such as slow-acting vs. fast-acting or high risk vs. low-risk.

As you might imagine, most of the sales force profiled as high persuaders and promoters - only two tested as more analytical. My profile revealed that I am in the high influence and high dominant groups, and my adaptive style and natural style were fairly similar.

One of the things that we learned during our culinary team- building exercise was our communications preferences, and anyone who has participated in a leadership program or has been profiled knows that it is important to "know yourself."

It's also important to know your "blindspots" - and we all have them - so that you can adjust your style to become more analytical or less impatient.

Guess what, I don't like idle chit-chat. I maintain my equilibrium even in the face of extreme time constraints and changing schedules. I also have a high activity level, work well through others, trust people, like change and can opine about things - go figure.

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