Unlocking the Power of Behaviour Preferences
A Guide to Stress Reduction and Performance Enhancement
Having facilitated hundreds of workshops for teams focused on resilience, stress management and leadership, one of the first things I often tell people is that there is no blueprint for any of it. That I don’t have a formula. My job is to share what the research has found works for many, and through a series of interactive and experiential exercises, help build self awareness and reflection as to well they might work for them. We then explore how we can garner the motivation to ensure those techniques we think will be most useful to become habit.
In recent years I have found that Insights Discovery can be a great way of adding that all important self-awareness. A psychometric tool based on the psychology of Carl Jung that helps people understand themselves and others. Given the high number of people who experience stress because of poor workplace relationships, it also importantly helps build an awareness of why some relationships can be more difficult than others, and what we can do about it. It uses a four colour model to help people understand their style, their strengths and the value they bring to a team. These are described as colour energies, and it’s the unique mix of Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow, Earth Green and Cool Blue energies, which determines how and why people behave the way they do.
I’ve used many personality profiling tools over the years, but what drew me to Insights was its ease of use and memorability, helping us become more nuanced in our understanding of what causes us as individuals stress, the visible signs and what approaches are most likely to help us stay out of stress. In addition to the knowledge of our preferred colour energy, in the 23 page profile report produced by Insights, we also find information about our ‘Possible Weaknesses’ and ‘Blindspots’ which can often reveal those internal causes of stress.
Being able to acknowledge and accept these provides a hugely rich source of self-knowledge to help us plan how we can address them, and the support we might need from others to do this.
By understanding how our personalities interact with each other, we can better understand ourselves and others, leading to improved communication and collaboration. To find out more about Insights Discovery and how it can help your business then contact me.
Using your Insights Profile
Your Insights Discovery Personal Profile is a mine of valuable information; the more familiar you are with it, the smarter you can be about leveraging yours and others’ behavioural diversity to fill in the gaps and reach enhanced effectiveness, alone or as part of a team.
Conclusion
Being open and communicating about mental health and stress in the workplace is vital – it is not going away.
Increasing the self-awareness levels of your people arms them with the ability to keep an eye out for potential stressors. Running self-awareness through a team or even an organisation gives everyone the tools to manage their own and others’ stress-responses more effectively and more collaboratively, with honesty, acceptance, and fewer sick days.
Self-awareness can prevent stress
When people don’t understand what happens to them under stress, the rational brain can be lost at sea in an instant. The switch between positive stretch to floundering in the face of all-consuming panic can happen with no awareness to it at all, leaving individuals feeling not in control of the events that seem to have overtaken them.
Promoting self-awareness and helping people understand their personal style at work, and how that influences their stress-response, gives people the opportunity to see stress coming, to feel more in control of how they respond to situations that might arise, and to become more open to talking about this overwhelm everyone experiences.