Month: June 2021

Personality Dimensions Pandemic Pastimes – PD in the Wild

People around the word have had to adjust to a new reality over the last 16 months or so, and make the best of what we are able to do. Next up in our series of Personality Dimensions® Pandemic Pastimes with Master Trainers is Angela Shik. Angela is the director of Dr. Motivate, the Personality Dimensions® distributor in Hong Kong and Macau SAR, People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan. Angela checked in with us after completing her first PD in the workshop…

As we are rearranging our lives around COVID-19, we are experimenting with new ways to keep our training alive, while maintaining social distance. More importantly, we would like to bring positive energy to our clients through the Personality Dimensions® training program. We hope people could take their minds off the stress related to COVID-19 in the few hours they are learning about Personality Dimensions® and enjoying the outdoors.

Although we have been conducting Personality Dimensions® training for many years, we have never delivered a PD workshop in the wild outdoors. Therefore, we consulted Plain Hiker, a company which specializes in designing trail journeys to meet different learning goals.

After detailed planning and route testing, we finally conducted our first PD in the Wild at Tung Chung on Lantau Island in Hong Kong. We had 12 participants and to minimize social contact associated with the distribution of assessment materials, we asked them to complete PD-Online prior to the outdoor workshop. This not only saved us from having to carry all the assessment materials to the outdoor site, it also allowed the participants to complete the assessment in a location of their choice.

In terms of activities, we designed them with social distancing in mind. For brightening, we modified the Survivor Challenge from the Team Building Toolkit by asking each brightened group to find 10 essential items for their survival on the island. For blending, we developed a Campfire activity, and asked blended groups to start their own campfire with the materials provided. We then finished the day with Circle of Self.

We did not have a computer and screen to go through the PowerPoint presentation in the outdoor setting, but we used the PD for Youth pamphlet as a guide to go through the core needs, characteristics, likes, skills, strengths and potential weakness. We also decided to just give out the score sheet from the online report on the day of the event, and send out the soft copy of the full profile report after the event has been completed.

Overall, we had a lot of fun, and the feedback was positive for PD in the Wild! I think using PD-Online is a good way to minimize contact, and holding activities in the outdoors is a great way for our participants to get a breath of fresh air. We still have a lot of improvements to make for PD in the Wild, but I think we are off to a great outdoors start!

Angela W. Y. Shik is a Personality Dimensions Master Trainer. She is the Director of Dr Motivate, the Distributor or Personality Dimensions® training materials and programs in Hong Kong and Macau SAR, People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan.

All three cofounders of Plain Hiker, Judy Chen, Heyman Chan, and Ferdinand Tsang are certified Personality Dimensions® Level 1 Facilitators

Personality Dimensions Pandemic Pastimes

What an interesting time we live in! There have been so many changes in our lives in the last 16 months or so and for some of us that means that we’ve become less and less connected than we otherwise would be. The same is true of our Personality Dimensions extended family.

So… I asked our active Personality Dimensions Master Trainers to take a few minutes and put together a brief note that could be posted on the various Personality Dimension online groups. It didn’t need to be any ‘latest and greatest’ tips and tricks; it could be a fond memory of something that happened at one of their Personality Dimensions workshops, or perhaps an “Aha moment” that has stayed with them. Or they could just let the rest of us know what they’ve been up to during the pandemic.

Over the next several weeks we will be sharing with you their responses. The first person to respond was Wayne Jones and he has shared with us some insights into what he has been doing during the pandemic. Enjoy this brief insight into Wayne’s world.

This is an open invitation – we want to hear your Personality Dimension stories and special moments too.

Yours, from the back office,

Denise

Being an Introverted, Organized Gold individual, my mind immediately went to two places:

  • what is Denise’s deadline on this delightful task (so I can submit it ahead of time and check it off my “to do” list?
  • what is the best organizational format that will allow me to be succinct, yet somewhat pithy?

I decided, then, to divide this brief summary into two sections: Professional and Personal.

Professional

Like most of you, my professional interests are diverse, and Personality Dimensions certainly holds a key position in that portfolio. I enjoyed doing some virtual online training with Sandra Summerhayes. Lifelong learning is so important! As Henry Ford said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”  I recently was asked to be one of the speakers for the 2021 Virtual Conference of the Ontario Association of Parents in Catholic Education. My webinar “Victorious Living! Victorious Parenting!” was based on temperament and has now been posted to YouTube. All conference participants received a parent toolkit package which included a copy of our book “Great Parenting Skills for Navigating Your Kid’s Personality”.

My other professional role is a Faculty Advisor with Nipissing University, in which I monitor the progress of 24 students, about half of whom will enter the teaching profession next September. With the many changes in the Ontario educational landscape this year, we all learned to pivot quickly and adapt to emerging realities. Many of these students also contributed their thoughts on the challenges of online teaching and learning, which were embedded in the recent 4 blog series found earlier on this page.

Personal

Of course, family and friends are the most important facets of my life (even though the Authentic Blue part of me is my least dominant). With my daughter and two grand daughters living with me, and my other daughter’s family ten minutes away, we are in constant contact!

My other two big personal interests are running and records.

I have always enjoyed sports and physical activity. In the past fifteen years or so, I have focused more on running – doing 5 and 10K races from time to time. After Kate’s passing, my daughter and I ran the New York Marathon in her memory (well, we walked and jogged). I decided that I could actually “run” a marathon, so just before the pandemic, I ran one in Celebration Florida, and was fast enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I was accepted, so on October 11th, I will be running the Boston Marathon – another bucket list item to be checked off.

My other hobby is record collecting and selling, and I have over 3000 records (mostly classical and jazz). I have about 750 listed on www.discogs.com  for sale, and I’m always looking for interesting vinyl to add to my collection. I recently purchased a 1919 Victrola to play the 78 rpm records I have.

So, that’s my story in a nutshell. I look forward to reading the stories of my colleagues.