Scott Schwefel

Defining Success

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success

What is your definition of success? Many of us might not have thought much about what success means to us. All too often we accept someone else’s definition of success- a college degree, a career, marriage, kids, a mortgage. These paths aren’t always the right one for individuals to take; each person needs to define success for themselves.

Defining success can be difficult. We often aren’t sure of who we are or what we want to be, even if we have already grown up. What we are passionate about might have been left by the wayside or never discovered in the first place. Defining success for ourselves is a journey, just as life is.
Finding success
Finding success is, of course, as elusive as finding happiness. When we have it, we don’t always know it, and often we are so intent on finding it that we forget to enjoy the moment we are in. These moments, the everyday moments, are the ones in which we can find what success means to us as individuals. Without considering other peoples’ expectations or definitions of success, we can learn to define who and what we want to be.
Finding success starts with a starting point and a goal. Knowing where you are and where you want to go can help define success to you personally. Starting with where you are can mean categorizing certain parts of your life, such as your physical life, spiritual life, family, friends, work, and finances.
Some goals are small; in fact, the smaller the goal, the greater the accomplishments. Life is lived in moments, and successes aren’t just those big life changing moments we occasionally have. Some successes come in increments, making the larger journey that much more attainable.
Success on life’s journey
Success isn’t always where you are today, but where you have come from. Having the ability to look back and see how far you have come in meeting your personal goals is part of defining success on your terms. Success doesn’t always mean climbing a ladder- sometimes it means taking a step back and reassessing what is the most important to you and moving in that direction.

Part of success is also recognizing that failures will happen. Society tells us that to fail is bad; however, failure makes us learn faster and often pushes us towards life lessons that need to be learned. Failure can be beneficial to individuals in the long run when it comes to defining successes later on.
Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Discover Yourself: Finding Your Passion

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passion
We talk about passion in an abstract way. Many of us associate passion with the dreams we once had or the hobbies we maintain as adults. Along the path of life, we’ve gotten caught up in things like having to pay rent, keeping up with bills, settling down and maybe raising families. We forgot the dreams of our childhoods and instead opted for the path traveled.

Discovering your passion in life means having to rearrange some of our preconceived notions about what success means. Success for many means the job or career that makes the most money. If you’re making money, you can afford to do the things you’re passionate about on the side, right? All too often we get caught up in the money-making, forgetting that money isn’t the definition of success.

Rediscovering passion

As children, we lived passionately. We ran around our neighborhoods, climbed the tallest trees, and played with abandon. As we get older, these impulses are dulled by the necessity and stress of holding down jobs and paying for the things we need to keep ourselves going. Our former dreams of becoming firefighters or astronauts or scientists may have been lost by the wayside as life happened.
What can we do as adults to rediscover passion? First, we have to define what passion is, what makes us passionate, and how this feeds into our definition of success. Passion can be something that you get to do every day that you love to do, that you are good at, and that pays you well. Many people have a job or a hobby that might fulfill some of these requirements, but not all.
People who are passionate about what they do often understand that success isn’t related to a dollar value. Success means that they are personally fulfilled by what they do; they have goals, can achieve those goals, and have made a living out of something they enjoy doing. Instead of slogging through a work week and relishing their all-too-short weekends, passionate people remain engaged in the game.
Discovering yourself
As an adult, it isn’t always easy to find out what it is you are truly passionate about. You may be entrenched in your job and unable to see a way out that would maintain your social or financial status. You might be unsure as to what it is that you are indeed passionate about. Part of knowing your passion is knowing yourself, and discovering who you are day by day.
Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Communicating Personalities

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personality

Getting along with others isn’t easy, especially in a working environment. Not only do we have to deal with our jobs, but we also have to deal with the people around us as well as the individuals who may work above and below us in the professional hierarchy. Being in tune with all these factors is complicated, made all the more so by how we react and interact with each piece of the puzzle.

Understanding how personality fits into all this can add another factor to an already complex arena of life. Personality in the workplace is often underestimated- we expect, or our bosses expect, people to act in a way that is beneficial to them, the company, or the task at hand. With individuals with different working styles, jobs, and personalities whirling about, this can prove to be a chaotic chore.

Working with personality
Utilizing the strengths of each personality type is vital to the success of professional environments. When people feel the freedom to be themselves and feel like their strengths are being acknowledged, great things can happen. When people run up against managers or co-workers that don’t recognize what they have to offer, jobs can become stale, dull, and frustrating.
For instance, a Fiery Red personality does well when they can work quickly and effectively. They may be personally frustrated when they need to work on a project that requires a lot of planning; far from being hasty, Fiery Red personalities are quick and decisive. Working with a Sunshine Yellow personality means that people will come first, and the social aspect of a project is emphasized. Sunshine Yellow personalities can be frustrated when others aren’t considered, or when there isn’t enough time to get to know those around them or that they may work with.
Emphasizing strength
Just as it is with communicating and adapting to each other’s personalities, recognizing each personality type requires patience and clarity. We can’t be expected to know everything about another person, but we can notice their (and our) habits that stem from our personality types. There needs to be an effort made to adapt to one another’s working styles, and understanding how personality plays into that can make a big difference.
Personality isn’t the only thing that makes a work environment successful, but when the power of personality is utilized it can make an average workplace into something much bigger.
Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Leading the Four Color Personalities

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leader

Being the boss is the best. The boss is the top of the pile, the head honcho, the person to whom everyone else looks for guidance and insight. The boss knows the inner workings of the business, knows how to steer the company through thick and thin, and manages projects and people with grace.

Of course, being the boss is a difficult job, and sometimes bosses turn out to be just as flawed and human as anyone else. The leaders of a company, leaders of an individual division, and leaders of teams within a company all have their strengths and weaknesses, both personally and when dealing with their co-workers. Taking into consideration the personalities of all people involved can help create better leadership styles as well as working relationships with others.

Leading by example

Successful leaders lead others in a way that inspires. These leaders don’t yell, cajole or threaten to get a job done. They know that respect will get them a lot further than emotional manipulation will. Unfortunately, the stressors of being a leader or being a boss very much exist. We don’t always operate the way we would like to under pressure, and bosses can take out their frustration on those working for them.

Acknowledging the personality and leadership strengths and weaknesses of bosses and leaders within a company can help pave the way for respect and success in business. Not everyone will always get along, but leaders are the most visible when it comes to adapting and communicating with people around them.

Learning and leadership

People don’t and shouldn’t stop learning just because they’ve advanced professionally. When it comes to being a leader, there is still a lot left to be learned just about yourself and how you function when in charge of managing many projects and people well. Leadership can be a struggle because you have to take into consideration the personalities of the people who are working for you, as well as your knowledge of your personality. How you interact with your employees can bring insight into how you may be adapting and communicating at work in ways that can be beneficial or harmful.

The best kind of professional leader isn’t one who necessarily has all the answers, but is one who commits to their job and their team. Part of this commitment is understanding the important role personality plays in the workplace.

Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

When We Clash: Seeing Strengths and Recognizing Weaknesses

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cooperation

A lot of knowing who you are is knowing what you’re good at. Sometimes we know right away- as kids we’re the first one to volunteer, the first to speak in a group, the first to run outside and jump on the swings. We might show signs of leadership from a very early age, inspiring others to follow us to greatness or misadventures. Other people prefer the middle of the pack, speaking up when they have something to say, but not dominating the conversation.

Some of these people are expert negotiators not because they were taught, but because their strengths lie with keeping the peace among conflicting ideas and groups. From an early age, they’ve cultivated this talent, whether they knew it or not. Some of us are born to meet deadlines, operating swiftly and effectively under stress when the rest of us buckle under the pressure. What differentiates all these different groups of people and their reactions?

Recognizing Weaknesses

Carl Jung put together the basis of psychoanalytical theory by studying the conscious and unconscious minds, the environments in which these minds lived, and the ways in which they reacted to the world around them. Humanity has a tendency to recognize the faults of others far before we ever acknowledge our own; just think about the last time you were on the road, and someone cut you off. Did you immediately jump to conclusions about their driving ability or general intelligence? Or did you sit back and think, maybe you weren’t paying as close of attention to your surroundings as you could have been?

How we react to our own and others’ weaknesses can define our workplace relationships and our lives as a whole.

Recognizing Strengths

Unfortunately, our strengths can get us in as much trouble as our weaknesses can! There might be someone you know or work with who you seem to clash with, even though the two of you are very similar when it comes to working and communication styles. The strengths of Cool Blue types runs through their conscientiousness, attention to detail, and their thoughtfulness. Sunshine Yellow personalities are strong when they can be sociable, dynamic, and persuasive. Earth Green types are loyal and supportive while remaining personable and genuine. Finally, Fiery Red personalities are strongest when they can be direct, precise, and purposeful.

Recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of ourselves and the people around us can help us build better workplace relationships and increase communication with all the people we interact with in our lives.

Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Using Other Color Personalities

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When it comes to adapting and communicating, we sometimes miss the point. We get more caught up in finishing a project or assignment than actually hearing what someone else is saying. We rush through directions with our team without understanding that a person in the group might have a better idea, or might be caught up in their concept of the project or idea. We forget that adapting to others’ work styles can make our professional lives easier, even as it teaches us to change our perceptions and behavior.

Work can be tough. We’re expected to lead a group of people we may not know well; we’re expected to follow directions, even when they don’t make sense to us. Somehow we all have to form some cooperative agreement to meet our work goals, and some of us might have the chance to build personal relationships with the people we work with.

The skills of others

Finding people you trust and mesh with at work can make a professional environment a lot more friendly and welcoming, especially when you spend the majority of your week there. Building personal relationships in a professional environment is possible, but can be difficult. You may be surrounded by people whose strengths and personalities are much different than yours. You’re also surrounded by people who may not want a personal relationship with their co-workers as they vie for professional accolades or promotion.

Stepping back and gaining a new perspective on a professional situation can help you deal with it better, no matter your personality or the personalities of the people around you. Noticing where you are in conflict with others can help you determine how you can change your attitude or approach to a professional situation.

Having someone you trust at your job can also help you notice where your personality might clash with others and how you can prevent these clashes in the future. A good action plan for adapting and communicating better with those around you might take an outside pair of eyes to create. We can’t always see where we might be reacting wrongly in a situation, but an objective bystander may be able to shed light on the problem.

Strengths and weaknesses

The personality strengths we have depend on what Color Personality we are. Other people have different strengths and weaknesses that we can use to better communicate with people around us. Using their insights and trusting their judgment can open up our professional lives in many ways.

Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Strategic Communication

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communication

Strategy and communication are often two words that cause a buzz in a professional environment. Some people cringe when they hear the word strategy- it means a coordinated plan, or at least what seems like a coordinated plan to those who came up with it. For those who have to implement these workplace strategies, it can simply mean a lot more work.

Ditto with communications. We often talk about communicating better in our professional lives, and even in our personal lives. We wonder why someone misinterpreted our email or other digital communication, forgetting that other people don’t know what’s going on in our heads. Our tone, vocabulary, and structure of our communications can carry a larger message than the content of our communication efforts.

Implementing strategies

Putting together a strategic plan for communicating better with others doesn’t have to be a pain, but it will lead to a shift in your perspective and attitude toward other people and situations that may come up with in your life. The Four Color Personalities idea is built around the concept that we each have different personality strengths that can be built into broader categorizations about how we interact with and react to the world around us. These categories not only help us understand why we think and act the way we do but why others behave in the ways they do as well.

Coordinating your personality and matching it up to what you know about someone else isn’t the final solution to strategic communication- far from it! Strategic communication means learning about yourself, who you are, and what your personality is like so that you can better grasp why some people are easy to work with and why others might not be.

Creating an intentional atmosphere of strategic communication is something that can take place at home, at work, or even out and about during your everyday life.

Intentional Communication

Sometimes it can take more than a little bit of effort to break through a communication barrier with a co-worker, a boss, or a business partner you have contact with. You may need an outside pair of eyes to see where your communication skills may be lacking, and what you could do to improve your connection with another person. Think about what strategies you could use to communicate better with the knowledge of someone else’s color personality in mind.

Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Building Sustainable Professional Relationships

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personality

The Four Color Personalities system is designed to give insights into your personality as well as the personalities of the people around you. When we get along with family members or certain people we work with, we may attribute it to our good natures or synchronicity. When we don’t get along with someone, we are likely to blame it on a defect in their personality and can begin to act differently towards them because of our dislike.

This unconscious (and conscious) hostility can make workplace relationships rocky, to say the least. When you know your personality strengths and weaknesses using the Four Color Personalities, you can start to notice where and why you are succeeding in certain relationships and not in others.

Workplace personalities

Sometimes you don’t get along with someone because of something they’ve done; a manager failed to credit you for an idea that turned into something big, or your boss consistently treats you as less-than. Unfortunately, these behaviors are all too common in the professional world and certainly rear their ugly heads in some work environments more than others. While we can’t always make our bosses appreciate us or our co-workers acknowledge our work, it can help shift our perspective on our professional relationships.

Examining the relationships with people you get along with is beneficial for understanding how complimentary personalities can get along. You may even find that your more productive professional relationships are with people that are very opposite to you! Figuring out why you don’t get along with certain people in your office can help you begin to smooth over the bumps in your work relationships and make your professional environment more productive.

Work towards relationships

There are a few things you can do to begin changing your behavior towards those you may not get along with. Using the Four Color Personalities system, you can determine where their personality falls on the scale and use this to plan how you interact with and react to them. Make a list of the things that bother you about them ad strategies to overcome these personality differences based on the ideas of adapting and communicating.

Remember, it’s not always someone with an opposite personality type that you may have trouble with… it could be someone very similar to you! Any conflicting relationship means taking a good hard look at yourself as well as the other person to come to a suitable solution.

Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Eight Color Personalities Put a Spin on Workplace Communications

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You know better than most that there are more than just four generic personality types around you at home, at work or even when you’re out and about around your neighborhood. Personality is like color; there are as many shades and hues as the eye chooses to see. Strong personal characteristics can certainly follow similar patterns for different people, but they always take slightly different forms depending on the person.

Our individual histories, both environmental and genetic, teach us how to display our personalities. We subconsciously and consciously adjust our behavior in new situations whether we are at a party meeting new people for the first time or interacting with a different team in our company. We each display our personalities differently, even if there are many similarities between us.

Four more personality types

The four color personalities chart can be broken up into eight color personalities, or even 16! There is no way to represent every single personality out there in the world, but by breaking major character traits down into easy categorizations, people can begin to understand why they are the way they are.

Aside from the main four color personalities- Cool Blue, Fiery Red, Earth Green, and Sunshine Yellow- there are also four more subsets of these types that can be created. Rather than call them by a color they are called by a role they might play in the workforce that fits their personality type. These four personality types are known as the Coordinator, Helper, Motivator, and Reformer.

Coordinators are negotiators. They are willing to toe the line between two groups to come to a consensus and to make sure everyone’s voices are heard. They respond best to people who are willing, relaxed, and easy going.

Helpers seek agreement to reach a consensus during a meeting or about a project. Helpers are in tune with others who trust one another, are inventive with their solutions, and who are receptive to new ideas.

Motivators, Coordinators, Helpers, and Reformers

Motivators want to get things going and are particularly in tune with people who can match their active nature and fast paced problem solving style. Motivators don’t respond well to people who don’t speak up or who cause friction in a group.

Reformers get things done. They rely on thought and logic to solve problems and don’t always appreciate emotional appeals when dealing with a professional problem.

Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Intentional Connection

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communication

Intentionally connecting with people spanning the range of the four color personalities can make your personal and professional lives run that much smoother. Understanding the details of good communication and adapting your behaviors towards other people can not only improve business environments but completely alter your interpersonal interactions with people you know and those whom you’ve just met.

Adapting and connecting to other people is the hallmark of the four color personalities. Knowing where you fit on the personality spectrum gives you a firm foundation for beginning to build strong connections with others. As you get to know them better, you can adapt your personality and style of communication to better fit their character strengths.

How to successfully engage

Successfully engaging others in meetings, one on one interactions, and during presentations can dramatically alter how you interact with the people around you. Using the strengths of each of the four color personalities, you can create lasting partnerships and open communication with the people around you.

Sunshine Yellow personalities are open and sociable. They are very relationally-driven and value the connection they have with other people. Taking time to establish a relationship opens the door for further cooperation and communication with all of the color personalities you may find around you. Working with a Sunshine Yellow personality will be the most successful if a relationship and rapport are established before any discussion of projects or work tasks comes about.

Earth Green personalities show others the importance of a listening ear. Rather than listening out of one ear and mentally forming your next response, seek to actively listen and hear what the other person is saying. This ensures that both parties are on the same page when it comes to projects or business arrangements and that the Earth Green personality doesn’t feel ignored.

Establishing a relationship

The third step of most communications is discussing what you need or what you want. In business this could be help, partnership, or requesting information from someone else. Demanding what you need right off the bat isn’t always conducive to a successful relationship with your employees or co-workers. Fiery Red personalities are very direct when they need to get something done.

Finally, Cool Blue personalities are strong when it comes to discussing things logically and rationally. Use these skills when negotiating or when discussing potential problems and solutions to current work projects. These skills are highly important when finalizing work details and when preserving open lines of communication with business relationships in the future.

Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!