ARE YOU A FINCH OR A HUMMINGBIRD? Apr 97

To rest and refresh after a national disaster experience, I sought refuge and solace at our get-away lake house in the Ozarks. After a swim, and while enjoying a good scotch and water, I relaxed and tuned into the flora and fauna surrounding me. On the finch feeder, our golden friends were busily pecking away at the niger seed, sometimes as many as eight birds filling the eight perches. No matter, they seemed not to notice the other occupants and tended to their own nurture. Once in a while another finch might sit on a nearby branch waiting patiently for an opening, but not for long. A gentle nudge was sufficient to get one of the finches on a perch to gracefully give way to the unserved one.

But the action on the hummingbird feeder was entirely different. Actually, there were two feeders, because earlier I had seen when there was one feeder there was most frequently a boss hummer that didn't have time to do much sipping because it was constantly driving other arrivals away. The aerobatics would have put a jet fighter pilot to shame. The speed of the pursuit, the sharp angled twists and turns were a spectacle to behold. To stop this, I installed a second feeder a short distance away, and now we had eight feeding positions. Surely, the hummers would quit the senseless acts chasing their colleagues away from such a rich and plentiful source of nourishment. But, no, whoever was the momentarily dominant bird still tried to drive all comers from both perches!

The contrast is striking. Finches collaborate, hummingbirds compete. In human groups, we observe the same range of collaboration/competition. What point on the spectrum a given team on a disaster assignment falls, depends largely to my thinking, on the team leader, or manager. Understanding the backgrounds and strengths of the mental health workers is the first need, then making assignments accordingly will go a long way toward building individual and team morale. When, as is sometimes the case, the numbers of mental health workers far outstrip the possible number of assignments available, the manager's leadership skills are called on to divide the work equitably among team members. The same situation provides an opportunity for the more experienced members to give specialized training to the "first timers." And, there are innumerable other ways to optimize utilization of all the team members, and, therefore, optimize satisfactions of volunteer MH workers leaving the disaster experience.

Let's emulate the finches, not the hummingbirds.