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My Family Care asks Clare: We've all worked, or lived, with someone who thinks differently than we do. How can we learn to work better together and what should we be mindful of?
A mixed bag
In a previous life, I was a Learning & Development Manager in a law firm. My work included a regular diet of meetings with various internal stakeholders. One regular meeting stays with me; it invariably went like this:
- Attendee 1 - would already be seated in the meeting room when I got there with a neat file of papers featuring colour coded tags highlighting key issues to discuss
- Attendee 2 - would arrive shortly afterwards and greet each of us in turn, check in on how our days were going and sort out refreshments for everyone
- Attendee 3 - would arrive bearing a fancy piece of technology with a spreadsheet ready, prepared to share with us on the screen
- Attendee 4 - would arrive a few minutes after the appointed time - this individual would sweep into the room empty handed and immediately start pacing the room whilst expanding on a new grand plan that had come to them in the lift on the way to the meeting.
It fell to me to try and bring order to the chaos and ensure that the meeting achieved what it had been set up to achieve. I didn't always succeed and it was often somewhat frustrating!
True Colors© training
Fast forward a few years to my arrival at My Family Care and the appearance of a True Colors© introduction on my induction schedule. True Colors© is a model for understanding yourself and others based on your personality temperament, developed by Don Lowry in the 1970s - other models are available, of course!
Suddenly I had a straightforward way of working out what people's preferences were and (even better!) a series of really practical suggestions for how to get the best out of my working relationship with them, as well as how to help them get the best out of me.
For a fuller understanding you'll need to look online, but in summary, the 4 colours and their typical characteristics are:
- Gold - well prepared; love to plan; punctual; belief in policies and procedures. Core value = responsibility (Attendee 1)
- Blue - caretaker; peacemaker; cooperative rather than combative. Core value = relationship (Attendee 2)
- Green - take an intellectual & logical approach; calm; complex, perfectionist. Core value = competency (Attendee 3)
- Orange - energetic, playful, impulsive, competitive. Core value = freedom (Attendee 4).
Personality spectrums
Most of us have a combination of these colours in our personality spectrum, usually with one being the most dominant. The combination can change over time. When I arrived at MFC I was pretty much solid Gold with some Orange. In my previous workplace, getting things done with a minimum of fuss was the main modus operandi. I soon discovered that to fit in at MFC I needed, for example, to incorporate some Blue traits - emails without introductory words of greeting don't go down well here!
It helps enormously that the senior stakeholders here are all big fans of True Colors© and that knowledge of the colours is embedded across the company. We are all very comfortable referencing the colours in our dealings with each other.
- My colleagues are as likely to ask me to "bring on the Gold" when we are in programme implementation mode as they are to ask me to "dial-up the Orange" when we are at the creative stage, which requires us to brainstorm and think outside the box.
- When I am working with colleagues in our development team on the latest iteration of our automated coaching process, and they challenge me about our current practices, I remind myself that they aren't implying that they think we are hopeless at what we do. They're actually operating from a predominantly Green perspective, seeking to analyse, in detail, where we now are in order to recommend a way forward; I'm thankful that they are so detail-oriented.
- If I walk past the reception desk in the morning as I rush to my desk ready to get started on my to do list, the voice of our predominantly Blue office manager asking for an update on my children's latest antics will slow me down and remind me there is more to doing a good job than just getting stuff done!
In personal and private lives
If I was to turn back the clock now to those meetings I referred to at the start, I would have a much clearer plan of action of how to manage the different personalities. And it can come in handy on the homefront too.
Spending time considering how to work well together with a variety of different personality types will reap benefits at both individual and organisational level. We'd love to hear your experiences of how you achieve this in your professional or personal life.
Clare Wooldridge, Coaching & Consultancy Manager, My Family Care
