Pearl Diving

Ryan Mahoney

ENCE424

October 5, 2019
 Being a project manager requires you to be able to effectively communicate with others.
However, you need to know how you naturally communicate in order to evolve and be a more
effective communicator. Everyone has a unique personality which affects the way they interact
with others, and knowing your personality helps you know how to better communicate. It is also
important to know how you naturally resolve conflicts, so that you may learn ways to strengthen
your ability to settle differences. Additionally, there are certain key skills which can help you
communicate and draw an audience. One of these skills is storytelling. Being able to tell a story
to draw interest can be an effective way to share your ideas.
Preferred Conflict Management Style
According to the test, my preferred conflict management style is competing and
compromising(Blake-Group). I personally would consider myself to have more of a competing
conflict management style. I honestly wasn’t that surprised by my test results. My mom and I are
very similar when it comes to arguments. We both are very competitive and are unwilling to
change our opinions. This can make the arguments extremely painful. We just keep arguing
without either of us being willing to give any space. Our arguments literally can go on for several
days and sometimes weeks depending on the topic. Having a competing style can be beneficial
depending on who you are arguing with. The persistence of a competing style can be very
beneficial. Against more timid people I usually end up getting my way. A lot of the time in group
projects, I usually am able to decide what we do. I am just more dominant when deciding what
idea we go with. There is no arguing that having your way is definitely nice. However, as
described in the test, competing styles are like a shark and the person is usually willing to
sacrifice their relationship with the other person to get their way. I have definitely noticed this
before. With my mom, after arguments, we could go for several days without talking. It is not
intentional, but I am just so goal-oriented when it comes to the argument. Additionally, the
arguments can be very unproductive when the other person also has a competing style. It is like
two people running at each other, but with a wall in between them. No one gets anywhere, but
both are so persistent that they keep arguing. My other conflict management style was
compromising. I often try and compromise on small things just to avoid the whole conflict. A lot
of times, I just don't care enough to argue. I don’t want to go through the whole hassle of arguing
and would rather have the argument just end and move on. This completely goes out the window
when the topic is something I really care about, and my competing style completely takes over.
The conflict style I would really like to work on is accommodating. I enjoy having a competitive
style for the most part, but my goal is not worth hurting my relationship with certain people. I
wish I would be more willing to give in when arguing with people I really care about. I think that
I just really need to consider who I am arguing with when having disagreements. I need to ask
myself, “How much do I care about my relationship with this person?”. Overall, I thought that
this test was very interesting and let me know a lot more about myself when it comes to
arguments.
 Yung Personality Assessment
The personality type that I got was Introvert-Senser-Feeler-Perciever(123test). At first glance, I
really didn’t agree with the personality type I got. However, after reading the descriptions, I
definitely agree with my results. Let's start of with the first trait, Introvert. I can definitely be
extremely outgoing talking with everyone and definitely being one of the most outgoing people
at the party. However, I have to be in the mood to be outgoing. A lot of the time, I am more
reserved and I definitely value my time alone. There are certain things I do that are very
introverted. One thing I love to do sometimes is just take a very long walk and listen to music.
There is something so relaxing about just walking by myself and being free with my own
thoughts. My mind just has time to wander on and on. It is just so peaceful to me. I have driven
an hour before to go on a hike by myself where I just walked for four hours. It was a great day in
my mind, but others would not feel the same. I often go for two-plus hour walks just for peace. I
would definitely agree with being Senser. I consider myself to be a very logical person. I prefer
not to think too much about the future. I feel like if you think too much about your wants for the
future, you get too distracted and never make the changes needed now to achieve those goals. I
prefer to see the changes now and worry less about the result in the future. I prefer facts, as
concrete evidence just makes more sense to me. I am not so sure if I completely agree with the
Feelers result. I definitely am very against emotions playing a role in decision making. I think
choices should be made on facts and less on how people feel about certain things. I don’t believe
I make choices based on how I feel. However, I do have strong emotions. I think a lot of the
choices I want to make are based on how I emotionally feel. However, I make sure to make my
choices and opinions for the most part on facts. The only time I will make an emotional decision
is when it has to do with a relationship with someone I care about. I would absolutely agree with
the fact that I am a Perceiver. I definitely enjoy a lifestyle that is spontaneous, flexible, and
adaptable. I really don’t like planning ahead. I’d rather go into things not having a plan, and
figure it out on the way. I find life to be more fun when everything isn’t planned for you. Also,
some of my best memories are last-minute decisions I’ve made. One thing I would like to do at
some point is backpack through a country without any plan. Going in without a plan and just
learning from the locals where I should go seems like the best adventure. I think my results are
different from the DISC assessment, but not conflicting. I got I was mostly dominant from the
DISC which seems to not typically go with an Introvert. However, I believe I am both. I have the
energy to be dominant when needed in a situation, but I just enjoy having some time alone to
myself.
 Overcoming Adversity and Problem Solving
The most recent summer I visited one of my close friends, Sam, in Colorado. He goes to
school in Boulder, and my other friend came at the same time. We spent two weeks there hiking
and climbing. On the last night, we wanted to do something special. We went to Target in town
and ended up buying some ribs. On top of one of the mountains, Flagstaff, there were a couple of
huge charcoal grills, so we were planning to cook the ribs up there. We went to the grill section
of Target to get some lighters, and we saw some hickory wood chips. Hickory smoked ribs
sounded pretty amazing to us. However, trying to save some money we ended up skipping the
charcoal since we figured a couple of bags of wood chips would get hot enough to cook the ribs.
So, we ended up hiking up the mountain with paper towels, woodchips, lighters, BBQ sauce and
of course the ribs. We got there and started to set up the grill. We put bunches of paper towels on
the bottom and poured the wood chips over top. We light it. The fire gets blazing. Then it just
goes out. We couldn’t get the wood chips to catch fire at all. So we were stuck on a mountain
with some raw ribs, already out of the package, and were very hungry at this point. We then tried
just using a bunch of twigs with the paper towels to get the fire going, but it was just too windy.
Our final attempt was to collect a bunch of dried grass that was around on the ground. We filled
the grill with grass, paper towels, twigs, woodchips, and the ribs on top. We light it and the fire
was struggling. It was barely burning, so using our thermodynamic knowledge, we all started
blowing on the fire. We finally start to get the fire going, but we had to keep adding more grass
and at this point, we had evolved from blowing on the fire to taking our shirts off and using them
as a fan to get this fire going. If you have ever burned dry grass or leaves before, you know it
creates a LOT of smoke. So there are three shirtless guys surrounding a small fire, making a
smoke signal that could probably be seen from a mile away. It didn’t help that we were waving
our arms frantically while making caveman noises. Luckily, there were not a lot of people on the
mountain, and the couple we saw definitely kept their distance. Overall, they were some of the
most delicious and smokiest ribs I’ve ever eaten.
My senior year of wrestling was a very difficult year. Going in, I looked to have a lot of
potential. That fall, I had been training constantly, not only on the mat, but also in the gym. I put
on about sixteen pounds of muscle weighing 196. I ended up wrestling 182lbs so I was very lean
and definitely more muscular than a lot of the other kids in my weight class. I won the majority
of the matches I had, and the very few I lost were to kids that were not only some of the best in
my division, but the ones that went on to qualify for New England. My season was going great,
and then near the end of the season, I got hurt in one of my matches. I ended up going to the
doctor, and they say it looked like I tore some tendons in my back. There wasn’t much I could do
about it, besides take muscle relaxers and relax, but the muscles in my back would spasm
constantly. For a month, I was basically unable to wrestle or pretty much do anything that would
even be mildly strenuous. I ended up coming back two days before FCIACS, the big tournament
for my part of the state. Coming back from any sport after a month of nothing is hard, but
wrestling is definitely one of the more strenuous sports requiring a lot of endurance. I still ended
up getting fifth, but I expected myself to do so much more at that tournament. The next week
was States. So that week I worked extremely hard getting to practice early and working extra
after. I needed to do anything I could to get my endurance closer to what it was. Even on the
off-day before the tournament, my friend and I went to the school during a snowstorm, just so I
could practice a little bit more. When States came I ended up placing 6th, just high enough to
qualify for State Opens. I didn’t end up placing in State Opens, but for my small wrestling team,
making even State Opens was a huge achievement. Our team was definitely not known for being
good, since we had one of the smallest teams in our conference. We had maybe one kid make
State Opens a year. For me to come back after a month of doing nothing and still make Opens
was not the goal I wanted, but all things considered, it was quite an achievement.

Conclusion
I learned a lot more about myself from the two tests I did. I learned my style of dealing
with conflict, but more importantly I learned how I need to improve when dealing with conflict. I
also had a realization about my personality type. Even though I am a dominant person, I am still
an introvert and value time alone. Practicing writing stories using the methods in Five Stars
really helped my stories come to life. They had more detail and were just a lot more interesting
than I thought they would be while writing them. My new knowledge of myself and telling
stories will help me to interact more effectively with others
 Reference Page

O'Hair, Dan, et al. ​A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking​. Bedford/St. Martins, 2019.

Gallo, Carmine. ​Five Stars: the Communication Secrets to Get from Good to Great.​ Pan Books,
2019.