For me to progress to the next stage of y career and life my Personal Development Plan will focus on gaining theoretical knowledge to apply to my daily life as well as in the working environment. on the 28th June 2013 1 was faced with a sensuous challenge whilst working within a very dynamic team from Standard Bank and British Telecoms. I realized the team was newly formed, from various disciplines, cultures and companies, but that the relationships were “untested and unknown” (Left & Ingram, 1955). This challenge was about to lead to potentially serious problems on a ROR million project.
Figure 1: Shari Window 2 The unknown entity was that we had two unique and very challenging individuals. Using the Interrelationship Digraph Aeolian Day, 2013) it was clear that we had two people with completely opposite “Drivers”. (Appendix 1: Standard Bank/British Telecoms Interrelationship Digraph) Applying the Honey and Uniform learning style model, (Honey & Uniform, 2000) the Client’s Head of Trading Systems had a theoretical learning style, his position being consistently based on theory, whilst his arguments in support of his position displayed a lack of flexibility.
In contrast, the Technical Resource from British Telecoms had a Practical Learning Style, where his penchant for facilitating results, and “make it happen style” was indicative of an ability to identify and contemplate unlikely alternatives, I. E. The ability to “think out of the box”. The two individuals were unable to reach consensus on critical aspects of the service level agreement under negotiation. Their learning styles, while not completely incompatible, were reinforcing their respective positions, rather than allowing them to identify commonality.
In order to resolve the deadlock of finalizing he agreement and leveraging off my skills, I clarified the goals for mutual benefit (Beeline, 2006). I initiated the sourcing of an external mediator to diffuse the situation, save the relationship and by the mediator was the relative incompatibility of the protagonists’ cultural and religious backgrounds Dadaism and Salamis). 3 The mediator was only able to rescue the negotiations by compromising, if not completely acquiescing, to the Client’s demands in a session which included the respective legal teams.
