As the Insights Lead Facilitator at Leaderful Action, you might well expect me to hold a firm conviction about the value that working with the Insights colours can bring to individuals and teams.
And, of course, this is very much the case! I’ve seen at first-hand, those light-bulb moments when the colour energies and Jungian preferences suddenly ‘open the blinds’ to greater self and team awareness. I’ve been privileged to facilitate powerful conversations, where individuals have openly shared their strengths, their weaknesses and possible blind spots and, in response, their colleagues have given heartfelt, supportive feedback. At such moments you can actually see and feel the positive change/vibe in team cohesion.
Best of all is during the post workshop follow-up call, usually 3-4 weeks afterwards, when I hear that teams are talking through the language of colour, that they are making changes to how they communicate, how they make adaptations to style and that they want to explore further how to improve effectiveness, resilience and leadership. That’s when I know that they’ve got it, and it makes me happy!
However, I wasn’t always this positive! Go back several years and you’ll find me as a Director in the public sector, with a broad portfolio, many challenges and a rather sceptical view of personality profiling – be it Insights, Myers Briggs, or whatever. Having undertaken many profiling exercises over my long career, I’d come to the conclusion that they were interesting in themselves, but were not significant in the toolkit of achieving organisational change. Nine-times out of ten, you’d read your latest profile once, try and figure out what it meant, then file it in the bottom drawer and forget about it.
Thankfully, folk wiser than me, gained agreement to put the leadership team through an executive development programme that included Insights. And thus began my series of light bulb moments and blind-opening!
The Insights colour model provides a framework for exploration of self, team and organisation, in terms of strengths, weaknesses, values, inclusion, effectiveness, style and decision-making. All this is achieved in a simple and safe language that is memorable and relatable – and it really works.
So, if you are like I was – a bit of a sceptic – but you would really like the good things that I’ve described then just maybe an Insights workshop might be the way to begin the journey ‘into the light’ for you too!
Dave Tosh
