If you are like most people who work in an office environment, at least part of your day is spent working with others, either in meetings or sitting side by side with another person .... ...

Most of us who do so have very little insight into how to optimize that work. We learn to work with others as part of growing up - starting in grade school, and going on from there. As a result, we are often confused about the best way to work with people, especially when we find that some of the things that we do that work with some people do not work well with others.

"Working in Groups: The GPS Profile" addresses this issue. The work book gives each of us insight into the two most important behavior patterns we take with us into all of interaction with others in groups:

1. the ways in which we are verbally active (or inactive) - our verbal participation style,
2. and the way we make decisions in conjunction with others - our decision making participation style.

The GPS Profile work book is designed as a self contained learning experience for an individual. It contains everything you need to gain insight into the way that you tend to work with others. Simply start at the beginning, answer a short set of questions, score your results, read what they mean and finish by completing a set of exercises that will help you transfer what you have learned back to the job.

Your Verbal Participation Style

Working with 1 or more other people means that we have to talk with them. But if you have ever attended a meeting, you know that not everyone participates verbally in the same way. Some part of this is explained by our role at the meeting or our position in the organization. But even more, we each have a "personal" style of verbally participating. The GPS Profile helps you to first understand our own verbal style. Then it gives us insight into the style of the others present. It does so by locating your personal style in the following grid.

Once you know how you tend to verbally work with others, you can understand how your verbal patterns are the same as, or different from, the verbal participation patterns of the others with whom you are working. You can also develop new ways of "meshing" with others, so that you are jointly more effective.

Your Decision Making Participation Style

From the moment at which you start to work with 1 or more people, you are making decisions together. Some of them may seem straight forward, e.g. when to start and to stop. Others may be more complex, and require creativity and perservance on part of everyone involved.

You will have a personal pattern of decision making behavior that you tend to follow with working with others in these situations. The GPS Profile will help you understand it by locating it on the following grid.

Once you know how you tend to work with others in making decisions together, you can understand how your decision making patterns are the same as, or different from, the decision making patterns of the others with whom you are working. You can also develop new ways of "meshing" with others, so that you are jointly more effective.

Order the GPS Profile from WCI Press.

Find out about GPS Profile work shops.