In 2010 I was part of a group of intelligent, talented, highly qualified and/or experienced people at Little World in Liverpool. The individuals at this place were either looking for work that fitted their interests, aptitudes, and qualifications or were looking for a change in direction. It was quite an assortment of people across the arts and sciences. One of the things we did here was undertake the Belbin’s team roles questionnaire in order to determine what role in an organisation our talents suited us for. The woman in charge of the exercise had by now almost gotten used to my quirky character, and couldn’t conceal her merriment when it came to my results. She paused when it became clear that I was in a category of my own. ‘You’ve done this on purpose,’ she said, before I even knew the outcome. She had it written in front of her. ‘Whatever this is,’ I told her in front of the group, ‘this is me by a mile.’ My results were overwhelmingly in this category, almost exclusively so. My category, it was revealed, was Plant. I am a Plant. I am so much of a plant as to be green all over.
So what is a Plant? And why was the woman in charge of the exercise smiling and giggling uncontrollably? I think she rather liked to have confirmation of my oddball character in print.
I still have my results here at home, and should take a photograph as evidence. Why I keep things like this as ‘evidence’ is part of my tale as someone with AS. 'I'll keep this for evidence,' I have been known to say. I do, too. People need to understand that when you are forever at cross purposes with people and the world, you develop an urge and aneed to justify your existence and worth, backing everything you do with visible tangible proof and evidence.
I remember what the results said clearly. As a Plant, I am ‘individualist’ and ‘unorthodox’ in my approach and am noted for ‘genius,’ ‘intellect,’ and ‘imagination.’ I wasn’t too keen on being identified as an ‘individualist,’ but understood it to be a very true description of the way I work - alone and under my own steam.
'Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne
He travels the fastest who travels alone.'
- Rudyard Kipling, The Winners
I work alone and achieve my best results when I am complete control (and know what I am doing, which helps when it comes to taking us to Heaven and avoiding Hell). In terms of strengths, I am the ideas person in the group, the one who is the rule-breaker and game-changer, the one who innovates, makes the incredible leaps and unimaginable connections. I am the one who upsets and outrages the bureaucrats, the administrators, and the scientists. I do things the way that those who think they know better say can't be done. I do them anyway, and the organised world readjusts accordingly.
The possible weaknesses noted were a 'tendency to have one’s head in the clouds' and a 'tendency to disregard protocol.' I immediately recognized myself in these characteristics but responded by claiming these were also strengths rather than weaknesses. I even presented a paper to the group which argued precisely this. The ideas may be generated up in the heavens but they don’t stay there; they are drawn back to Earth and can change the world for the better. Fair enough, being considered somewhat impractical, I leave it to others to do the drawing down and implementation. But that’s precisely what the working out of different team roles is all about, assigning people to their proper place in the organisation. I had found my place. As I presented my paper, I started to talk as if the other members in the group were servants of my fantastic Earth shattering, world changing insights and ideas. As to the 0disregard of protocol, I am guilty as charged: I always struggled with it. I disregard it because it takes an awful lot of time and effort for me to meet it, time and effort I can spend better elsewhere. I am a maverick, not by choice but by design. I like to go direct. Protocol rarely helps me and usually hinders me.
I have done some further research on the Belbin’s team roles and the category of Plant. Here are some definitions:
Plant (PL)
The Plant is the creative innovator who comes up with new ideas and approaches.They thrive on praise but criticism is especially hard for them to deal with. Plants are often introverted and prefer to work apart from the team. Because their ideas are so novel, they can be impractical at times. They may also be poor communicators and can tend to ignore given parameters and constraints.
That’s me, in a nutshell. I love praise and I bitterly resent criticism and become defensive, aggressive even, in response. I can go to lengths to explain why my critic has misunderstood. At the same time, in launching these fairly vigorous defences, I can absorb the criticism in my conscious mind, respond in due course, and in such a way as to claim I was saying some such thing all along, with the implication that my critics were too stupid to understand. I am a little bit of a rogue in doing this. I assimilate and absorb, but at least it proves that I do listen, to some things some people say, some times.
I am introverted, this is true. I like the ideas of ‘quiet power’ and ‘quiet revolution.’ Susan Cain's book Quiet Power: Growing Up as an Introvert in a World that can’t stop talking makes total sense of my life. I’ll just add that I do my talking through my writing. In my writing voice I am extroverted. In fact, I can’t stop writing. It’s a form of over-compensation.
A Plant has these attributes:
- Presents new ideas and approaches.
- Tends to be highly creative and good at solving problems in unconventional ways.
I do this in my written work. If you read it, and if you understand the terminology being used, you will see the innovation and creation, the incredible leaps and connections. But you have to immerse yourself into the work in order to appreciate its dialogic and multi-layered qualities.
The strengths of a Plant are:
Creative, imaginative, free-thinking, generates ideas and solves difficult problems.
I do this in my written work. I don’t do it in interaction with others, because I find that others either don’t listen or don’t understand with the result that most of my time comes to be wasted schooling others than generating new ideas. I have absolutely no patience with the people who don’t listen and just screen them out. With the people who don’t understand, I struggle hard to explain. If they challenge and criticize, or still fail to understand, I become defensive, protective, and sometimes passive to avoid conflict. If they persist, I become aggressive as if threatened and challenged. And then the fur can start to fly. Their persistence is indeed a threat and a challenge, and I feel like I have every right to defend myself. Kicking tables and chairs over may be a step too far, though. Especially when a person is still sat on them.
This is perhaps not allowable behaviour.
The allowable weaknesses of a Plant include:
- can seem to be ‘in the clouds’;
- canfocus on concepts to the detriment of practicality;
- might ignore incidentals;
- may be too preoccupied to communicate effectively.
There’s no ‘can,’ ‘might’ or ‘may’ about it in my case, I simply do. I have more important things to be thinking of than rules, protocol, and the meagre understanding of others. It is all about complementing strengths. The more practically minded folk miss the bigger picture and true ends of action, so that what they end up getting done isn’t worth doing in the first place.
I read further:
Don't be surprised to find that: They could be absent-minded or forgetful.
For absent-minded, read preoccupied with important things. When I burn the kitchen down for the umpteenth time, or fail to meet some important time, date, or deadline, it will be because I have been absorbed in some activity or question. It’s not that I forget, but that I lose track of time. And time flies and meals burn when you are having fun. I manage to eat, and keep a roof over my head. Just about.
Further reading here confirms the above:
Plants are often described as individualistic, creative, and unorthodox.
This is me. The point I would make here, though, is that others need to understand this, and not treat a Plant as though they are the same as they are. Plants are different beings. A Plant needs just the right environment, with a little light and a little shade, and just the right amount of watering, care, and attention. A Plant likes to be spoken to every so often. And to be left alone to grow. In the wrong environment, when pressed into a forced growth, a Plant withers, even dies. If it grows at all, a Plant grows strong.
“Introversion is a preference for environments where there’s less going on. That’s where you feel most alive.” (Susan Cain).
Less going on externally means an awful lot of growth going on internally:
Plants can be highly creative, whether they’re providing the seeds from which major developments spring, or the (sometimes unorthodox) solution to a complex problem. Plants are independent-minded, often clever and always original.
I told you! I am a ‘one-off.’ I’m not being precious and boastful and asking for special treatment in making these claims (actually, I am asking for the latter). I’m just stating a fact. I use terms and make connections that can strike moderately clever and fairly well-educated folks as either incongruous or just plain wrong. And I have to torture my brain if I make the effort to have them try to understand. They rarely do. It doesn't even help me much even if they do. But some do. People pick from me what they can understand, and either reject the rest, or keep an eye on it, thinking I may indeed have something, even if it is less than clear what that may be. In the main, I weave together many different strands into an original tapestry, only to have people unweave it again in the attempt to pick out the threads that they do understand. I am expansive, they are reductive. And then, having missed the point by a wide mark, they turn with a strand in their hand to tell me that I have a point, a point they already know and with which they agree.
The main contribution of a Plant is to act as a prime source of ideas and innovation for the team by generating new proposals and solving complex problems.
This is what I do. But try to get anyone to listen!
Of course, the whole exercise at Little World was to establish team roles. It should be plain to one and all that I am the maverick in the group, I stand out a mile. But exercises like this give me the licence to roam. It is for people in other roles to determine how to apply the ideas I generate. What you don’t do is put me in charge of aproject or a team – which is precisely what happened! I couldn't blieve it. That’s a different role entirely! I don’t need to become what I am not. I think laterally, and that needs time and space to be done properly. The fur flew. Again.
Behaviours to avoid:
- being prickly if ideas are evaluated/rejected by the team;
- not listening to other team members’ input.
These behaviours are my default position when not understood, when misunderstood, or when criticized and questioned. In fact, I become more than prickly. I start off as prickly, anticipating the worst before people have even said or done anything. Then the worst happens as expected. I have been here so many times before, having to explain unorthodox ideas to the clever people who insist on thinking and doing things by the book. What makes me all the more tetchy is that I know fine well that they may be right in what they are saying, and therefore I can’t correct them in their own terms. It’s just that in being unorthodox and original, I am making leaps and connections that to them are not just illegitimate but beyond their comprehension. They do the basic things and I do the relations and the co-mingling that send things into another sphere entirely. I am therefore tasked with explaining what I feel is inexplicable. It’s the next step to take in problem solving, but I see that people can’t take it. Whilst they may be right in what they say, their thinking is limited. I find it annoying and, if I cannot escape the environment, it makes me angry. In the main, though, it makes me sad. I start off being prickly, expecting a failure to understand and accept. And then I take it from there. There can be escalation.
As for not listening to the input of others, I do listen and, occasionally, take something on board. And if I disregard something, it is not because I haven’t understood it, it is because it doesn’t fit my purposes. Which, I suppose, is another way of saying I don’t listen. I screen things I consider to be irrelevant out. And I screen people out too.
Top tips for Plants as managers:
- exercise self-discipline and listen to the team’s comments;
- try not to let the stresses of managing a team stifle your creative input.
You can’t do the latter if you do the former. I was made project manager in light of being revealed to be a Plant. It didn't end well. I stormed out of the building uttering oaths aimed in the direction of the woman who had massive but misplaced faith in my abilities.
It’s not that I don’t listen to others, but that I don’t agree, and have neither the time, the energy, nor the inclination to disagree. I work better and go farther alone. From that it follows that I may be a better tyrant than I am a manager. I see that some people are increasingly indulging their fantasies for enlightened despotism in order to deal with the demands of climate change. I would make a good despot, I think, a failrly enlightened and occasionally benevolent one to boot.
“There was no one near to confuse me, so I was forced to become original.”
Joseph Haydn
It is about being awesome (autism = awetism)
I read everything
I hear everything
I see everything
I remember everything
I keep everything
I breathe it all in and breathe it all out
I live a very ordinary life
filled with extraordinary love.
How awe-ful!
.
