|
|
Character-Building.CharacterTesting.comGet "back-to-the-basics" with your Marriage, Dating, Family, Friends, and/or Employment Relationships.Solving Conflicts LLC Presents: |
|
Pure Gold: "Engaging, wise, and chock full of ideas ~ Paul Coleman, Psy. D., author of "How to Say It for Couples: Communicating with Tenderness, Openness, and Honesty" |
Can We Dance? “After reading this book, I have a new-found appreciation for the importance of really exploring myself to know what character qualities I need my mate to possess.” “I love the combination of information, reflection, and interaction with the arts. This approach is present, reflective and emotionally, spiritually provocative.” “Can We Dance? helped me to examine my beliefs, clarify my motivations, and analyze every step from friendship to a serious relationship. It is full of great tools that are both fun and immediately useful.” |
| (Back) (Next) |
|
Example One: (A non-adversary) Alex was involved in a relationship with Martha. Alex had a college education. He was working as business accountant for a large firm. Martha had not been to college. She had trouble finding a satisfying job that either fit or challenged her abilities. She seem to lack the knowledge of her own self to know what she might be good at or qualified to do. However, Martha was a qualified person. Alex knew that she was a talented person, perhaps even more than she did herself. Alex put his assessment skills to work on Martha's behalf. By using the forward method of assessment, Alex was able to identify eight excellent genuine qualities in Martha that were a match. Unfortunately for Martha, Alex could see clearly that she was a Strong -- Strong match in each of the eight qualities. Martha was willing, and Alex gladly helped her to better understand both the genuine and the counterfeits.
Alex looked at Martha's job resume' and could see that it came nowhere close to selling her skills according to her true self. Alex took her resume' and without a shred of dishonesty, he was able to rewrite her resume' and add better representation of her true skills. He included those eight qualities, which were alertness, courage, amiability, decisiveness, honesty, frankness, flexibility, and cooperativeness. With two weeks, Martha landed a job that she never thought she would be qualified to do. However, Alex had assessed her character correctly. The job was a management job that involved hiring, interviewing, and managing five co-workers. She had never done that before, and it took all the courage Martha had. It also required her to manage and provide care to an extremely challenging group of clients. That not only took courage, but it also required great flexibility and cooperation with her upper management. Looking back, Martha could see that she was selling herself short of her true qualities, and she was grateful to Alex for his assistance. Example Two: (An adversary) Rebecca was both the office manager and accountant for a movie distribution company. She loved her job, but she hated her boss. You see, Rebecca was very frugal. At times, she used the counterfeits of those, which are stingy and miserly. Her boss was anything but stingy and miserly. She knew because she counted the money every day, and she could see it disappearing faster than it was coming in. If her boss did not stop doing that, it would leave 30 employees out of work, including her. To make matters worse, the boss happened to be married to her sister, and her sister was a stay at home mom with three small children. If the boss did not curtail his spending, her sister would be out on the street with no money and no home. It got to the point where every time he would spend a nickel she would argue with him about the money problems they had. The more she nagged at him; the more he would spend. The ship was sinking, she needed a new plan, and she finally found one. She assessed her boss's character. She had no clue what to look for, so she started with the forward method. The only thing she could find on the list that seemed to resemble the problem was generosity, yet she knew that his behavior went far beyond generosity. However, it was the closest match she could find. Then she looked at the counterfeits of generosity. They are extravagance, spend-thriftiness, wastefulness, and squandering. Never before had she understood what was really happening. You see, her boss was a Weak -- Strong in generosity. He was weak in the genuine use of generosity; however, he was strong in all of the counterfeits. She assumed correctly that her boss likely perceived of himself as simply being generous, when in fact genuine generosity had nothing to do with his spending habits. She learned that due to his propensity for genuine generosity, that if she addressed him through the topic of generosity it would not create conflict with him. She came to work one day with a plan that actually appealed to the use of genuine generosity. Her plan acknowledged his generosity with encouragement toward using it in genuine ways. She learned that by acknowledging his generosity she could earn his trust. The more she earned his trust in the area of generosity; she found him to be willing to listen to her advice about wise generosity. By changing her attitude toward her boss from a view that he was all-bad, to a view that he had great potential for true generosity, she was able to redefine him from being an adversary to being a friend and ally. |