Finding Your True Colors

When I’m clinging to the side of the mountain battling the elements, it’s important that I take use of every last thing in my arsenal – both mental and physical. If it’s an asset, you better believe I’ll be trying to use it to my advantage.  

And really, shouldn’t we always feel that way? If we want to perform at our best in any area of life, we have to know what we have at our disposal. This week’s podcast guest, Thomas Erikson, shared his fascinating method for helping people understand their core traits. He developed a personality test based on the DISC system that is both easy to understand and very powerful. The foundation is built on four colors and their corresponding personality traits. I don’t know about you, but I find this a lot earlier to interpret than the traditional Myers Briggs INTP, ESTJ, ENFP… W.H.A.T?

Though there are four core main categories in Thomas’s system, there are a whopping 19,500 different mixes. It’s simple on the surface but accounts for the nuance of real human life.

• Red: Action-oriented, fast forward thinkers. Entrepreneurial and not afraid of conflict.
• Yellow: Also action-oriented, but a bit more people-oriented. Creative problem solvers.
• Green: Introverts. Calm, reflective, very friendly, great team players. Change and conflict averse.
• Blue: Focused on details, facts, systems, and logic. These are the brain surgeons and accountants of the world.

Once you know your colors (and if you don’t yet, get yourself over to Thomas’s website ASAP!), it’s time to start becoming aware of how you are embracing them – or suppressing them – in your own life.

Try it yourself:

• Ask others for feedback. You can self-reflect to pinpoint the effect the expression of your colors has on your own life, but do you know how others perceive you? For example, my core colors are red and yellow, which means that I often behave as a bulldozer: plowing through challenges and always existing in problem solver mode. These are the core traits that keep me pushing up the mountain, but I needed to know whether always being in “extreme mode” was negatively impacting others around me. I decided to give each of my kids a blank report card, asking them to give me honest feedback. One of the glaring realizations that came out of this was that I tended to do things with my twins together, rather than with each of them individually. Filling out the report card gave them an opportunity to tell me that (rather than pushing it under the rug out of deference to my strong personality), and I have been able to change my behavior accordingly.

• Reconsider how you choose teammates. It’s human nature to gravitate toward the people who are most like us. While having a certain number of these people in our circles is healthy, there are situations where it’s important to go out of your way to add people who complement existing personality types. For example, a mountaineering team would be in serious trouble if it didn’t include someone with blue (the very analytical, detail-oriented people) traits. These are the people who are going to religiously check wind reports and map out the most treacherous areas of the mountain based on past casualty reports. Evaluate the members of the teams you’re on, maybe at work or sports. Are each of the colors relatively well-represented?

• Analyze your reactions. Make changes. While each of us has a set of colors, we do still have the ability to purposefully choose to behave differently. If you’re unhappy with the way you reacted in a particular circumstance, the self-awareness of knowing your colors can help prevent it from happening again. Ask yourself what you can learn from the situation and how defaulting to your regular patterns may have caused pain for someone else. What can you do proactively when in a similar situation in the future? Maybe you step a bit out of your extreme red or embrace your small green in a particular circumstance. Rigid things break, after all.