October 2021 - SAM Agency Newsletter

Fame is easier than ever to achieve in today’s world. Sometimes, it takes but a single post on Instagram or TikTok to go viral and make a name for yourself.

It also helps if you’ve got a furry friend in front of the camera.

Senior Social Media Coordinator Amanda Dunn has transformed her passion at work into what may become a profitable hobby. This past July, Amanda’s golden retriever, named Bear, enjoyed his third press appearance.

Bear is the star of the Instagram account Amanda started with her husband, titled Bear The Golden. The account boasts more than 2,100 followers and 200 posts. Bear was recently included in Bham Now’s “7 Adorable Pets You Need to Follow on Instagram” article. This is the second time the golden retriever has been featured in Bham Now. He also made it into a post on IN Birmingham.

The Dunns grew the account from the ground up, and Amanda says the skills she’s learned at SAM have supported Bear’s rise to fame.

“It’s fun because it’s an extension of what I’ve learned here,” Amanda said. “I can try new things based on what we’re doing at work, and I’ve also tried out new strategies on Bear’s Instagram that I can bring into the workplace.”

To develop her following, Amanda has relied on tried-and-true audience acquisition techniques. She began by finding other local accounts of dogs in Birmingham, or by viewing posts from dog-friendly locations, and following the accounts that posted.

Bear enjoyed an in-person celebrity moment when the Dunns traveled to a dog-friendly hotel in Panama City Beach, Florida.

“Everyone loved him,” Amanda said. “Groups of people came over to ask if they could play frisbee, and kids were asking others at the beach if they had met Bear yet. He was like a celebrity!”

The hotel noticed, too, asking Amanda to tag them so they could share the post. Her goal for the account is to generate business opportunities, like when Visit PCB contacted her for permission to use Bear on its Instagram account. Or, more recently, when Bear was shared by The Nashville Guide, an account with more than 180,000 followers.

Amanda’s next big project for the account is creating a virtual trail of dog-friendly places in Birmingham for others to enjoy as well. Make sure to follow for the latest updates of what is without a doubt a Beary Happy Life.

Have you noticed the multicolored charts under each nameplate around the agency? These are taken from each employee’s Culture Index (CI) profile. For some, these charts may be hard to read. This article gives a brief overview of the different personality traits measured by CI so you can better understand yours, along with those of your coworkers.

Why Do We Use Culture Index?

Culture Index isn’t a screening tool; rather, SAM uses it as a complement to the hiring process. It works by assessing an individual’s inherent traits, as well as which traits they perceive as necessary for their job.

The history of Culture Index began in 444 BCE when Empedocles theorized that people behave in four distinctly different ways. He categorized them according to the classical elements – water, earth, fire, and air.

This theory was expanded on by Hippocrates shortly thereafter. However, more than two millennia would pass before personality assessments regained significant momentum. Psychologists began developing more scientific approaches to categorizing human behavior in the early 20th century. In 1956, industrial psychologist Walter Clark expanded on the work of his predecessors to produce a self-administered behavior test, based on the still-popular DISC model. Subjects would respond to a checklist of adjectives and choose those that best described them. Sound familiar?

The founder of Culture Index worked for the J.P. Cleaver Company, the first to commercialize the DISC assessment. Eventually, CI founders Gary and Cecilia Walstrom branched off to develop their own version of a workplace behavioral assessment. They enlisted the help of Dr. Louis Janda, who developed the CI survey after five years of research and testing.

Today, SAM uses Culture Index to measure seven work-related personality traits. In addition to matching job candidates with positions they will more naturally succeed in, these assessments give valuable information about the best ways to communicate with coworkers.

How to Interpret the Dots

We’ll focus on the four dots in the main graph for this article. Here’s what each represents:

Red (A): Autonomy. The ability to choose and be self-sufficient.
Yellow (B): Social ability. Relating to the way people in groups behave and interact.
Blue (C): Patience. The particular speed at which somebody moves.
Green (D): Conformity. Behaving or thinking in a socially acceptable or expected way.

The vertical red line on the graph represents the average level of each trait for the general population. So, a dot to the right of the red line means you have a higher level of that trait than most people, and a dot to the left represents the inverse.

Everyone has a high and a low trait. To find your high trait, look at the dot that is farther to the right than any of the others. We’ll only focus on the high traits here.

The Four Personality Types

Each high trait has a set of characteristics that typically accompanies it. Of course, no person can be fully described using a set of words. Rather, these serve as a general guide to understanding how someone behaves.

High A

Traits: Driven, independent, future-oriented, risk-takers
Motivators: Freedom to achieve their goals, money, undefined challenges, facts and data

High B

Traits: Personable, outgoing, persuasive, external verbal processors
Motivators: Personal interaction, status, public recognition, consensus-building opportunities

High C

Traits: Patient, laid-back, procedural, steady
Motivators: Limited interruptions, checklists, limited chaos, low pressure and stress

High D

Traits: Perfectionist, detailed-oriented, historical decision-maker, cautious
Motivators: Factual information in writing, removing risk, training, knowledge

All in all, Culture Index is a valuable tool for understanding the eclectic mix of personalities that make up Team SAM. While there’s much more that goes into a full CI profile, this information should help you better understand yourself and those you work with.