Reviews True Colors, a personality profiling tool

The tool

What is it?

True Colors is a simple personality profiling tool that looks beyond people’s behaviour to their core values. It helps clients to develop awareness of their motivators. By going back to basics and using Carl Jung’s personality profiling, True Colors streamlines all the personality types found in many models down to four colours:

  • Gold: high quality, loyalty andpride. Golds value order, tradition and authority
  • Orange: excitement and a fiery nature. Oranges need variety, freedom to act and hands-on challenges
  • Blue: Calm, reflecting a harmonious nature. Blues put others’ welfare first and seek authenticity and close relationships with others
  • Green: Coolness and detailed thinking. Analytical and innovative,greens need to be experts and prefer not to show emotions

Most of us have a dominant colour but are influenced by the other three. By using True Colors, clients can develop an understanding of why people carry out certain tasks in a certain way. For example, when it comes to developing others:

  • golds will develop others because it is the right thing to do;
  • oranges because it is fun,challenging and requires skill;
  • blues because they care about realising that individual’s potential;
  • greens because it will generate new ideas in the team

True Colors is popular in leadership development and training in the US and Canada, and is widely used in the education sector to help teachers understand learning preferences and communication.

How does it work?

True Colors follows a three-step process:

Step one: The four True Colors cards are placed face up on a table,and the client is asked to rank which card they like most down to the least.
Step two: The client turns the cards over and reads the descriptions on the reverse. They can now change the card order to represent their preferences and values better. When clients change the order it often throws up interesting discussion topics regarding self-perception.
Step three: The client is asked to look at 11 sets of four statements and rank how each best describes them.

The client’s profile percentages are then calculated. The exercise takes 15-20 minutes and can form the basis of coaching on a wide range of subjects. For more information on True Colors, call Lequin on 01225 338893 or visit www.lequin.co.uk or the UK authorised supplier, Sparkology, at www.sparkology.co.uk

The administrator

Using the tool

At Lequin Executive Coaching we use True Colors both in one-to-one coaching and in team development. We find that while a lot of personality profiling tools are useful for helping people and teams to develop self-awareness, knowing what profi le they are may not help them to translate this into workable behaviours. True Colors develops self-awareness and empathy to improve social, influencing and conflict management skills. We recently used True Colors on our two-day “Sailing 4 Success” teambuilding event, and it helped teams from Future Publishing and its distributor, Seymour, to build greater understanding of one another and develop strategies for working and communicating more effectively.

The editor who shares his experiences here says his levels of self-awareness have improved considerably and that it has helped him to understand where his boss is coming from. Depending on whether you believe the same or opposite personality types work best together, we also find the tool is helpful in matching coaches to clients.

Peter Willis is a co-director, coach and trainer with Lequin Executive Coaching

The client

Future Publishing is a large consumer publishing company with more than 120 magazine titles in the UK and US.

The experience

When I was asked to rank the True Colors cards then turn them over I thought they were tarot cards, since the descriptions from the pictures on the cards I’d chosen were so spot on. It was a real eye-opener as I realised that others in my team were motivated to come to work for different reasons.

The application

I had this issue with a colleague for a long time. He would ask for everything to be written down, would minute every meeting and was very structured and inflexible in his approach to work. It really bugged me, as I prefer to do things on the spur of the moment. So while I wouldn’t read his four-page meeting minutes, which frustrated him, I got annoyed when he wouldn’t change agendas at the last minute. The True Colors exercise made sense of his approach and behaviour. He was a dominant gold, which was at odds with my orange values. I worked with my Lequin coach to develop a better understanding of his motivations and values, and how I would change my approach to accommodate him while still keeping my values intact.

The verdict

It’s been useful for developing my emotional intelligence. Because you use colours, unlike in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, it’s easy to remember and discuss with colleagues.

By an editor at Future Publishing coached by a Lequin coach

Coaches’ workout

Keep your distance

“I’m finding it hard to get along with the person I’m coaching. What should I do?”

First, remember that you don’t need to be best friends with the person you are coaching. While you do need some warmth between you in order to have influence, too much can be counter-productive and may reduce your objectivity. Aim for a balance between warmth and neutrality. Decide what your issue really is:

  • Are you concerned that the client doesn’t like you?
  • Do you dislike them?
  • Are you worried that this may be affecting results?

One option is to ask for feedback: “How are you finding our conversations?” “How is this going for you?” Hopefully their answers will inform your thinking. You need to distinguish between:

Is this something your client is also struggling with (and if so, how can you deal with this appropriately)?
Understand what your client is thinking, how they experience you and ultimately decide whether you’re the best “fit” for them as a coach. Gather more feedback and make a joint decision on the way forward.
Is this only an issue with you (real or imagined)?
If it’s imagined, the very realisation will probably solve things. But if the issue is your dislike of the client, then you need to let that go or let the client go. Your commitment as coach is to serve your client, regardless of your own likes and dislikes. If you can’t maintain that, your ability to coach is flawed.

Julie Starr is director of Chrysos Consulting and author of The Coaching Manual www.chrysos.co.uk

True Colors: pros and cons

UPSIDE

  • Quick and simple to use
  • Values-based so helps to develop greater understanding than behaviour-based tools
  • Easy to understand and the profi les are memorable
  • Fun, so can be used with young adults and children
  • Unlike other profi ling tools, it doesn’t work on the notion of opposites but on the idea that we’re infl uenced by all four types to a lesser or greater degree

DOWNSIDE

  • Simplistic nature may put off academic types and can appear gimmicky to some clients
  • Clients receive a booklet rather than a formal report
  • Clients can sometimes be intolerant of other colours, assuming that their values are more important
  • Clients can use their colour to shake off responsibility for their actions: “I’m an orange, what do you expect?”

Core competencies

This column explores the key competencies of a coach at mastery level. Looking at best practice from established coaching competency frameworks, such as the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) and the International Coach Federation (ICF) and drawing on expert opinion worldwide, ICF master certified coach Lisa Wynn takes a regular look at what best practice looks like in the different competencies. This issue: The ICF competence of “establishing trust and intimacy”, in particular looking at how we go about creating greater intimacy in our coaching relationships.

The words “trust” and “intimacy” tend to merge into one with this coaching competency, although it helps to separate them for a deeper level of awareness and learning. We could investigate trust at deeper levels but my fascination is with how we create intimacy in the coaching relationship. With intimacy, we have a greater opportunity for breakthroughs to occur and potential to be realised.

When the client is able to open up fully and intimately, they are able to see more clearly both the big picture and the current issue or potential in greater detail. In a space of shared intimacy, the opportunity to challenge more deeply and more widely is greater. We can ask more of those with whom we share such intimacy.

Intimacy is defined on www.dictionary.com as “the condition of being intimate”. How can we create this?

Building a foundation of trust

By following the competency’s stated behaviours of continuously demonstrating personal integrity, establishing clear agreements and keeping to them, we create a base of trust from which intimacy can flourish. Everyday acts of personal integrity have an exponential effect on trust, and therefore intimacy.

Being comfortable with risks

Many coaches struggle to really challenge their clients; to take risks within the coaching conversation. They fear upsetting the client, breaking rapport or losing them. Ironically, it is when we are prepared to take risks and bring a sense of experiment and adventure into the sessions that our clients get real and lasting value.When we play it safe, we bring a particular energy to the space. When we are happy to follow a client, even if we have no idea where they are going, we break down limitations.

Being with clients in their strongest emotions

When we sense strong emotion and step over it or rush to make it more “positive”, we lose an opportunity to facilitate a depth of learning for the client but also the chance to create a deeper, more dynamic level of intimacy. Much as it may be our humanity and compassion that lead us to try to cheer people up, it may also be our own fears of being in that challenging space. Showing you are prepared to be with clients when they are full of emotion is a powerful way to create intimacy.

Being in acceptance

A key ingredient of intimacy is acceptance. The coaching relationship can sometimes be the first time a client has experienced acceptance. When the coach knows that the client is “okay”, it opens up a space where the client can accept themselves and choose to change. Gone is: “I am not okay and I must change”. In its place is a lightness that says “I am okay as I am, and I really want to change too”.

Explore for yourself what you mean by intimacy and think about relationships that are intimate what makes them so and how can you transfer that to your coaching relationships?

Lisa Wynn is a master certified coach, an ICF assessor and director of coaching for Corporate Potential www.corporatepotential.com She is also a business mentor for the Prince’s Trust.
Next issue: the Association for Coaching’s competency of “effective communication”
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Volume 2, Issue 6