How can Insights Discovery – a Personality Profile …Improve Collaboration?

To answer this question, we need to find out more about what exactly collaboration is. The Oxford English is probably the simplest definition: the action of working with someone to produce something. Why is collaboration so important in the workplace? When done properly, it can improve productivity and team effectiveness, thereby affecting a company’s bottom line. In a nutshell, it is people or groups working together through idea sharing and thinking to accomplish a common goal – team work at a higher level.

Team work is generally physical, whereas collaboration is generally a term that does not necessitate physical closeness amongst the collaborators. Advances in technology, and particularly collaboration tools such as web based programmes, file sharing, video conferencing etc., mean that collaboration has an even more pivotal part of business with many teams working virtually or remotely much of the time. This has both advantages and disadvantages; people now can work in remote or virtual teams without experiencing ‘real life’ face to face conversations. Communications can be misinterpreted in email, video conferencing – it is thought only 20-30% of communication is speech, the rest of the information is non-verbal. In other words, things you would not necessarily pick up unless you are in a face to face setting.

So how can Insights help to improve collaboration?

To understand how, we have to first understand the Insights Discovery model!

Insights Discovery is a model based on the work of Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of personality preferences. He detailed:

• How we react to experiences – introversion and extroversion
• How we make decisions – thinking and feeling
• How we take in and process information – sensation and intuition

The Insights system maps individuals on a four colour model:

• Fiery Red: This colour refers to people who have a preference to be extrovert, direct, demanding, competitive, and authoritative and have a lot of energy. They take actions and go straight to their goal. They have a desire for power and control.
• Sunshine Yellow: People who are also extrovert, but they focus on fun and good human relations instead of being target oriented. They are flexible and see many ways to get to a goal. They love team spirit and hate rules.
• Earth Green: People who are introvert and prefer listening, they focus on values and relationships. They want to take well informed decisions, it’s important for them to create understanding and that people feel ok.
• Cool Blue: These are people who want to know and understand things, introverts who take time to analyse. They aim for very high quality, you have to do it right. Make a plan and stick to the plan.

By discovering an individual’s lead energy we can obtain a better understanding of their own personal preferences, perceptions and communication styles. Teams consist of individuals working together. Individuals have their own specific beliefs and perceptions. If you know where a person’s perceptions are coming from, you can better understand why they see things differently to you and behave in a certain way. Being able to understand people, connect better and lean into their own style of preference helps to find better ways to collaborate and communicate in teams.

Email is probably one of the best examples of how misunderstanding and miscommunications can occur.

Sarah,

The report on year end is needed by COP today, send it as soon as you can.

Steve

To Sarah, who leads with Earth Green is very upset by the tone of this, she views it as direct, confrontational and too direct for her liking. Sarah is quite offended by the direct nature of the email and thinks she has upset Steve and done something wrong. She is unlikely to confront Steve due to the fact she doesn’t want to cause an issue out of it, but she discusses it with other close team colleagues. Steve is quite new to the organisation and works mainly remotely, Sarah hasn’t had the opportunity to meet him and has no idea that he leads with Fiery Red energy, which means that a lot of the time, and he is driven for results, likes to get things done and is direct in nature.

This is just a small example of how Insights Discovery when rolled out to this organisation could prevent misunderstandings, improve communications, inter-personal relations and improve productivity.

Sarah leads with Earth Green                     Steve leads with Fiery Red

To find out more how Insights Discovery can help your organisation contact Churchill Square Training & Development on 023 92 160840 or email enquiries@churchillsquareconsulting.co.uk  – more information on Insights Discovery can be found on Insights.