Post by amy on Sept 12, 2016 11:10:57 GMT
Here is my "take two" version of my first intersession assignment. The first one disappeared when I went to post it, since I was not logged in properly.
Since leaving Oklahoma, I have returned to my busiest time of the fiscal year plus personally, my kids are back to school and their multitude of activities. This being my most stressful time of the year provides me with the additional challenge of seeing if I can implement my new skills under stress. I embrace this challenge, because if there is anything that can help me communicate and get the job done more efficiently and will less casualties, I am all for it. On September 12 and 13, I will be conducting four project reviews. I will use what I have learned about myself in the DISC assessment, as well and focus on listening more during each review. As I conclude my notes at the end of each review, I will take a couple of extra minutes to reflect on how I utilized my new skills and on the impact they may have had on the review and the responses I received from each site. At the end of the week, I will look back on my notes and reflect on what worked best, what didn't work, and where I can use more practice.
UPDATE 9/26/2016:
On top of everything else, I came down with bronchitis... The stress of all of this and traveling both to Oklahoma and around Pennsylvania just wore me out. The good news is that I was able to still communicate with my team leader through everything. While conducting my site visits, I had the opportunity to have an engineer who has been with FHWA for 53 years on my team. I listened a lot! I also took the time to observe his interactions with the different individuals we met with. Some he obviously had a great relationship with and others he was more cautious with. By our third site visit, I noticed that I was picking up on his unspoken cues. It helped a lot with our review and tying everything back together. Everything I tried worked. What didn't work, was when I would forget and just jump in without taking the time to listen. Thankfully, I had a note at the top of my review sheets to remind me to listen twice as a much as I speak. As a bonus, I also got to celebrate that engineer, Mr. Carmine Fiscina's retirement with about 150 other attendees. Carmine is a stickler for the rules, but the entire state respected him. He was honored and awarded for just being himself and doing a job that he loved so much. I hope to one day be as content as he is and enjoy coming work as much as he did.
