Debra Miller

When I first moved to Oregon I remember my confusion when my middle school students asked me if I was a Beaver or Duck.  Now, I know why!  I'm really a Lion.

It seems I've taken a lot of personality tests lately--we've done a lot of work on communication styles in my district lately and my girlfriends did the Myers-Briggs last weekend just for fun.  We party hard, my friends and I.  A consistency across all of these personality profiles is that I am not a feeler or an intuitive type.  I am a thinker and a do-er.

On the Free Personality Test my top score is in the Lion category and my close second score is in the Beaver category.  As a Lion I like to take charge and solve problems.  I tend to be too impatient, too busy, too blunt.  I am conscious of my need to be a good listener, and I consciously worked on that skill over the last few years.  I still catch myself wanting to bulldoze on through a conversation, so becoming a good listener is still a personal goal.

In the Gregoric Style Delineator my strongest category was Concrete-Sequential although the score was nearly tied with Abstract-Sequential.  The logical, sequential piece is very important to me and I believe I switch back and forth between concrete and abstract thinking pretty fluidly so I am going to declare myself to be Concrete/Abstract-Sequential.  This school year my team had to dive head first into a whole lot of concrete problems very quickly.  I am quite happy to stay in concrete land for weeks on end, but just recently we have been talking about the need to get back up to the abstract---big picture, philosophical level.  There are so many competing concrete needs that we need a strong abstract, philosophical framework for our department to figure out how to prioritize the concrete work that needs to be done.

I realize as a very sequential person that I need "random" people on my team.  I need people who are intuitive, creative,  and "think outside the box" to balance my tendencies towards cold logic and conservative choices.  I need charismatic, visionary co-leaders to help me dream the vision.  Which I will then happily go execute.  And then I need these charismatic, feel-focused people to help sell the vision to others.  Because I'm a lion, and sometimes people really want a Golden Retriever to talk to.  Or a Beaver or a Duck.