At The Reveille we are concerned with building a very cooperative newsroom culture.
This means we all want to work together as efficiently and with as little bloodshed as possible.
This has been somewhat of a struggle in years past.
Almost everyone on staff has been thisclose to headbutting the living crap out of someone else in the newsroom who was behaving particularly badly at the time.
In fact, even I have had Christina Stephens’ head inches from a swirly in the sparkly Hodges Hall girls’ toilet bowl on more than a few occasions.
Last time I gave Christina a swirly, the management team collectively decided the violence must end.
One of our methods of establishing the type of environment in which we all want to work is getting to know the leadership and work styles of our colleagues.
We determine this information about each other with a very scientific exam called “the bird test.”
It’s a rather ingenious system that divides people into categories of birds based on their personality traits.
Our editor is an owl, the managing and entertainment editors are eagles, the opinion editor is a peacock and the sports editor is a dove.
(Yours truly is a unique specimen — the bird finger.)
Anyway, each type of bird has a specific leadership style.
I’ll break it down for you:
Dove = pushover
Eagle = overbearing control-freak
Peacock = obnoxious, opinionated loudmouth
Owl = non-overbearing control-freak
With all this avian categorizing, there’s bound to be a pecking order.
(Rim shot, please. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
Here’s what happens when all the birds must work together:
The peacocks won’t shut the hell up so we can do anything, so the other birds buy them food to keep their mouths full.
The eagles have agendas typed and ready. If any deviation from said agenda occurs, he/she swoops down from the heavens and tries to snap the deviant’s neck like that of a helpless baby bunny.
The doves don’t say much (because they’re wusses), and neither do the owls (because they’ll end up doing what they think is best without the consensus of the group anyway).
All this normally makes for a huge mess on the windshield of group dynamics.
But since we have implemented the bird system here, The Reveille staff is working more cohesively than ever.
We just don’t invite peacocks to anything important, the eagles to anything fun, the owls at all or the doves to anything involving a spine.
In other words, I’ve taken over.
Moral of the story: of all the birds in the nest, the finger is the best.