How Big Brother can teach us how (not) to live together

If you’ve ever watched Big Brother, you’ll know how easy it is for people who don’t know each other in enclosed environments to wind each other up! Admittedly, this structured reality show is designed for this purpose and increasingly contestants play to this to get their 15 minutes of fame.

For our Transeuropa Caravans, we will have five people who each will have individual roles & responsibilities with associated skills – film makers, cartoonists, researchers, social reporters / communicators & field operations.

We will be travelling in a much more enclosed…claustrophobic-friendly environment – whether that’s a caravan or a campervan, living quite literally on top of each other.

But unlike most caravan trips, the vehicle will act as much as a co-working space as a co-living space…and even a meeting space when we meet the initiatives throughout the continent.

Like Big Brother, we’ll also be filming…and be filmed for a fly-on-the-wall documentary of how travelling through different environments to uncover groups using creative methods to tackle social issues.

So, we’ve used the internationally-recognised Myers Briggs test to self-assess our individual personality traits and perhaps more importantly, to share these with our caravan comrades, so that they can get a better idea in advance of what makes each of us tick…and what winds us up!

How personalities interact?

We have three Diplomats who are each at the edges of this interaction style, the INFJ with the Analysts and two ENFPs with the Explorers.

We have one Analyst and one Sentinel, but surprisingly, given all these people applied to join the caravan team, there are no Explorers!

What we’re using the personality profiles for our caravan journey, is that even if some personalities have a need for particular needs to met, its important that these are met for everyone on the caravan, including:

• Celebrate people’s achievements on the caravan so that people feel their work is valued

• Encourage people to review each other’s work, whether it’s a plan of what we’re going to do for the day or a blog post

• Provide a space for people to voice their concerns to avoid being overloaded with work

• Provide space for people to unwind and relax and have some “me time”

• Encourage open and honest debate between people on the team, but be sensitive about how you criticise someone’s work

• Encourage people to think creatively about how to approach a task

• Provide a clear definition of the roles and responsibilities of each person on the team as well as the collective responsibilities that we all have

• Be aware of what motivates other people on the caravan, but also what frustrates and winds them up

These set of principles are based on the personality types and interaction styles for the people on our team. They might not work for people in your team, look at each others’ personality types and interaction styles and discuss what principles work with everyone’s personality types! It’s easier said than done…