June 2011, Issue 12
True Colors Training--Staff
Order in the Court
I was one of twelve jurors selected for a trial and when the time came for deliberation, I was sitting with a group people that I had never met before sharing the task of making a unanimous verdict. Everyone was given the opportunity to express their viewpoints and as we went around the room, it was starting to become clear that we each had different perspectives on the same trial. Some were expressing their views from the standpoint of how they felt, others stuck closely to the laws that had been established and broken, and others were focused on understanding why an individual would have committed the crime. Each person felt passionately about their viewpoint but as we continued the discussions throughout the afternoon, we were starting to view the trial from different angles and perspectives that we would have otherwise not been able to do individually. In this case, the verdict had been unanimous from the start of the deliberation but because of the weight of the decision, it was important to understand how each juror determined their individual outcome to make sure that every possible detail and perspective of the trial was taken into consideration.
In hindsight, sitting in a room of people with the exact same viewpoint would not have provided a fair trial. If everyone was viewing the trial from strictly a policy standpoint, we would have only been looking at the rules and if they had been broken to make our verdict. A room of people focusing solely on how they felt would have not given full consideration to the laws that were in place. A room of people interested exclusively on why the crime occurred may not have focused on the details of crime itself. Each view point was valuable to the verdict since we were able to piece together a collective puzzle of our individual perspectives.
This is not the first time I’ve been assigned to work with other individuals to make a decision, but it’s more commonly in an office setting where the True Color’s “lingo” can be assigned to the various communication styles. However, we are not always going to have the luxury of someone wearing a name tag displaying their color spectrum. Telling Juror #4 that Juror #10 was simply exerting her dominant gold would not have made any sense to anyone. The True Colors lingo may be limited to the office, but the exercise of understanding the individual communication styles and motivations of individuals that we have learned from our True Colors training has many enriching applications beyond the office.
-Paul Remmert
Fall 2011 Training Schedule ------- DATE PENDING
Any comments? Please send to VPSA@utsa.edu
