In Defense of Sharks

I participated in a experiment tonight. A woman with her doctorate in psychology and three college students came to a meeting of middle school and high schoolers and talked to us about leadership skills and conflicts/conflict resolution. And they said that there are five styles/personality types when it comes to leadership/conflict resolution(boy, I do love the / tonight). They are:

The Accommodating Teddy Bear

The Compromising Fox

The Collaborating Owl

The Competing Shark

and The Avoiding Turtle.

They displayed up on a screen various characteristics of each type and I immediately identified with the Competing Shark. The screen said that they stand firm for what they believe in, like to argue and debate, and can be a little uncompromising. And that describes me pretty well. So I walk over to the section of the room where the Sharks are. And then things developed.

They divide us into two groups turtles/bears/sharks and owls/fox and told us to build a bridge out of lego. Pretty standard social experiment behavior from what I have heard. Now, maybe you have seen a problem with this. The two compromisers are paired together while the strong willed people and the(for lack of a better word) weak willed people are paired together. Maybe you have guessed that the whole point was for the Sharks to dominate the turtles and bears while the owls and foxes get along perfectly fine.

But that is actually not what happened, or at least not exactly. The owls and the foxes worked well together, dividing into teams, recognizing skills, ect ect. But they were a fairly small group. compared to my group.

My group started off with four guys basically saying that they thought we should build this bridge(because the other needed rope and we did not have rope) and we all agreed on it. Then a few of us started building while a few others looked on and the rest chatted with each other at the back. Then someone suggested that we switch with another group and we did. Then we swapped again but there were so many people that it became a little unorginized.

So then we compare bridges(both were fine, by the way) and discuss some of the outcomes. And that is when our Doctor lady reveals her true colors, as a shark hater and Owl lover. She was, in my opinion, rather snide about the sharks, subtly implying that they were dominating the process. She also outright praised the 'head' owl(who was a total freaking shark, he stuck to his guns and controlled the situation. He also did not really care about including everybody, but hey, I'm not jealous or anything).

So then I get home and look at the sheet that they passed out and was shocked to see what I found under sharks. Apparently I do not value relationships and like to force people to do what I want. I am not afraid to use aggressive behavior and I am threatening/intimidating. I feel that this is spinning sharks in a way that is unfair. Here is how I define sharks, at least as it applies to me:

I am a passionate and intense person and I am not afraid of speaking my mind. I do not want to hurt others and I certainly do not want to force anyone to my side. I honestly believe that I am right and if you only understood my position fully you would agree with me. I love debating issues(it has been scientifically proven that good conversation sets of pheromones in your brain). I know I come on strong but I hope that others see that I am simply passionate. Saying that I do not value relationships is quite frankly silly because my way of strengthening relationships and teams is through debate and conversation. I grow closer to people through talking to them and discussing ideas. I like to see both sides but if I feel that I am right then, logically speaking, I must feel that, if you idea is contrary to mine, then it is wrong. I believe that those who fear confrontation and speaking their own mind(cough turtles/bears cough) do both themselves and others a disservice. I believe that compromise is good but that at the end of the day there needs to be a decision and compromise can only be gained through a free exchange of ideas. If everyone is a compromiser then there would be no need for conflict resolution, which brings me to the experiment.

My group was set up to fail and we did not. The sharks did not dominate we were open to others' ideas and took many of them. It was a fair and open discussion. It was not our fault that many of the others had no interest in participating. I actually feel that if we had done what the owls/foxes did then our bridge what have turned out better, but it would have been less inclusive. Actually, when you look at it, the foxes were much more dominatory(is that a word?) then the sharks. They had six people working on building and a few others working on presenting it, but what were the others doing? The answer is nothing, and I know this because after we built the two bridges we had to team up to build one bridge and the owls took over. There was no compromise and there was no cooperation. It was basically "We need six people to build. Ok, now the rest of you can give advice if you want but keep it to a minimal." We sharks were much more open and we tried to give everyone a shot. So when we are basically told that we dominated the others I personally find it insulting.

I hope that I have made sense in this post(it's kind of late) and have presented a look at sharks or at least me specifically(I am very sharky, very sharky indeed) that is more favorable.

I am not afraid of my own mind or my personality and I do not take kindly to be asked to be ashamed of myself. I am an intense person and intense people change the world and make great art. So, basically, don't diss the sharks.

---
Rock4ever
A Proud Shark