Understand Yourself and Others: A 5 Day Colour Works Challenge
As specialists in people development and the psychology of relationships, we’ve helped hundreds of thousands of people over the years to become greater team workers, leaders, and customer service ambassadors, and we’ve implemented organisational culture change in organisations across the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors.
Over the past few months, The Colour Works Challenge has focused on a variety of areas; the Leadership Challenge aimed to help people identify and utilise their leadership skills more effectively, and the Mental Health challenge encouraged participants to identify the signs of stress and create a healthy workplace culture.
This month, the spotlight is on you.
Throughout the week you’ll be participating in five activities designed to help you unleash your potential and work more effectively with others through the lens of the Insights Discovery Model. We’ve laid out five activities over the next five days.
Introducing the Insights Discovery Model
The Insights Discovery model brings self-awareness to teams, leaders, and organisations across the globe. The Colour Works are platinum partners of Insights (we sell A LOT of Discovery profiles) and have been working closely with Insights for over 20 years.
The Discovery model uses four colour energies to describe distinct personality preferences. Dating back to 500 BC, Greek physician and philosopher Hippocrates identified four groups of characteristics which he labelled the ‘Four Humours’. Once an individual's ‘humour’ had been identified, Hippocrates believed he could predict their behaviour in any given scenario.
Many philosophers, researchers, and psychologists have expanded on this theory over the years until a Swiss Doctor called Carl Jung grounded our modern understanding of personality and published his work on psychological types in 1921.
In the early ‘90s Insights Learning and Development took the work of Jung and set out with the sole purpose to make the theory of behavioural psychology accessible, immediately impactful, and incredibly memorable. Insights’ vision was to help individuals, teams, and leaders be more self-aware, build better working relationships, and ignite corporate spirit.
To achieve this, and along with world-class personal profiles, they presented Jung's theory of preferences into four colour energies, believing that although we can be all four, we typically have a dominant or preferred style. The four colour energies that describe behaviour are:
- Fiery Red
- Earth Green
- Cool Blue
- Sunshine Yellow
You can find out more about each of these colour energies here.
The 5 Day Colour Works Challenge
By identifying your dominant, secondary, tertiary, and least preferred colour energy we can understand so much more about our strengths, weaknesses, communication styles, perceptions, biases, and blockers to success. Another huge benefit of the model is that once we’ve acknowledged our style, we can recognise the colours in others, making relationships relatable and more meaningful.
The Discovery Model is even more effective when we start mapping the dynamic of teams within a work environment. An in-depth understanding of how your team works can create a greater appreciation of cognitive and behavioural diversity and improve communication, decision making, and the effectiveness of your meetings. This then creates a vibrant working culture that everyone can be proud to be a part of.
As this challenge is all about you, we won’t be focussing on your team so much. To get the most out of this experience, we’d highly recommend getting your colleagues involved! You can share the challenge with them using the hashtag: #ColourWorksChallenge. We want to see all of you getting involved so be sure to tag us on social media!
Over five days, we’ll be helping you increase your self-awareness through the Discovery Model. You’ll partake in activities designed to help you identify and understand more about your dominant colour energy, and experience what that means to you when working with others.
Without further ado, let’s break down your daily activities.
#ColourWorksChallenge
Day One
What's Your Style?
If you have received a profile or have an understanding of the Insights Discovery colour model, you probably already have a good idea about which colour energy you lead with. If that’s the case then check out our guide to the styles for a refresh and ask yourself ‘how do I show up in these different situations?’.
If you haven’t experienced the impact of Insights Discovery your first task is to head on over to our interactive quiz where you can find out your preferred style.
The Colour Energy Personality Quiz asks you to choose from four cards. Each card has a statement and it’s over to you to decide which is most like you and which is least like you. It’s a really quick and easy exercise to help you identify which colour energy preference you might lead with.
Once you’ve played the quiz, follow the link above and ask yourself ‘how do I show up in these different situations. Then, forward it to a colleague to start the conversation.
The interactive quiz also helps you identify your opposite type - make a note of this, you’ll be needing it later on in the week!This will give you an overview of your colour energy and, between us and Insights Discovery, we’ve got loads of free resources to help you dig deeper. Want to know more? Speak to our team about completing your Insights Discovery profile.
Day Two
Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses
How we are seen by others can differ significantly from how we wish to be seen. In the eyes of those who are NOT like us our strengths can be seen as weaknesses. If I’m lively and sociable I can be seen as distracted and flighty. If in meetings I ask practical questions from the perspective of a realist I can be seen as overly critical, as if I’m crushing someone’s creativity. If I seek consensus from others before making a decision, I can be seen as slow and unsure, or if I just say it how it is, others might see me as rude and uncaring.
Today’s challenge is to summarise, celebrate and understand your top three strengths and to expand your self-awareness to how others might perceive them:
- Write down your top three strengths.
- Bring to life examples of when these have served you well.
- Consider how these strengths could be perceived as weaknesses.
- Write down examples of when this perception could take place.
Having trouble articulating your strengths? Turn to your profile or go back to our Guide to the Styles – you’ll find them there! P.s for more useful information about the colour energies, and to discover more about the style you lead with, make sure you are following us on Instagram for fresh content daily.
Day Three
Map Out Your Typical Work Day
Now that you’ve identified your dominant colour energy and worked with your strengths, it’s time to turn these behaviours into tangibles for greater personal effectiveness.
During the day we all end up doing things that don’t contribute to efficiency; we don’t mean to, but we just fall into patterns, and before we know it, tasks that aren’t necessary or important take up a large proportion of our day.
Today’s challenge is to become more streamlined in what you do.
Consider the strengths and weaknesses of your colour energies, and with every task you turn to today, apply the Drop/Delegate/Do filter:
Drop – does this task add value, or should I be doing it? No? then drop it!
Delegate – is there someone that could complete this task better than you? Yes? Then delegate it or seek assistance from a colleague.
Do – are your behaviours and skills required for this task? Yes? Then do it… and take a moment to consider how your personal style benefits the task.
This simple process isn’t about ‘slopey-shouldering’ your workload, or avoiding stuff that needs to be done, it’s about helping you to realise how much of your valuable time you spend on things that might not play to your strengths. It’s a bit like those unnecessary email newsletters that you delete every day... how about taking the extra 10 seconds needed to unsubscribe… one less email to think about each day.
Day Four
Get to Know Your Opposite Type
One of the best things about enhanced self-awareness is having a deeper understanding of how you work with others. It’s not always easy, especially when other people you work with lead with your opposite colour energy. If you need a reminder of the behavioural styles, go back to our Guide to the Styles.
Now it might be that your most difficult person isn’t your complete opposite, but what is important is that you work out why you find them so challenging.
Today’s challenge is to recall some frustrations and bring to mind someone who’s annoyed you over the past few weeks. This can be at home or work. It can be for a big, or small reason – either way we want you to reflect upon the behaviour you observed in them.
Then:
- Assign a colour energy order to them
- Compare that order to yours
- Ask yourself what impact the difference has
- Consider how you could adapt your style to meet theirs
By becoming more aware of your opposite type you’ll be able to compartmentalise your triggers and recognise the behaviours that irritate you and just remember, it’s likely they feel the same way about you and your strengths!Once you’ve identified your opposite type, take some time to get to know them and understand how they like to work. It will be different to your preferred working style, but that’s okay, and the benefits of doing this can be huge!
Now that you understand more about yourself, you can identify the reasons that you find it difficult to work with certain people, and you can talk to them about it. If you both feel the same, maybe you can find a way to communicate and collaborate that will make you both work better together.
Day Five
Hold Yourself Accountable
By now you've learnt a lot. You've become more self-aware and got to know your colleagues better. Everything we've done so far this week has led to this moment... so how can we utilise this new knowledge?
Considering the week you’ve had, list one thing that you will stop doing, one thing that you will start doing, and one thing that you will continue doing as a celebration of your wonderfulness... and then by following these through you will maximise your performance and achieve greater success!!!
And That’s A Wrap
Now you’re all set to own your dominant colour energy, there is one thing we must never forget. Nobody is just one colour. We’re all a mix of Earth Green, Cool Blue, Sunshine Yellow and Fiery Red energy in varying amounts - everyone is unique and brings their own weird and wonderful ways to the party, and that is something to celebrate!
Did you complete all five activities? Well done! Now it’s down to you to get everyone on your team involved.
Share your experience on LinkedIn, be sure to tag us, and use the hashtag #ColourWorksChallenge so everyone can celebrate your self-awareness journey.
The Insights Discovery model has the potential to make us all self-aware and, when implemented in the workplace, improve team dynamics forever! If you’d like to know more or dive deeper into your dominant colour energy, get in touch with our team.
