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When We Clash: Seeing Strengths and Recognizing Weaknesses

 

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!

Adapting and Connecting

relate

The world is full of personality types- we all know that just by looking around us! From the coffee shop to home, our office to the drivers of the cars commuting alongside us we deal, indirectly and directly, with a huge variety of people every day. Some of these people we click with automatically. These people become our best friends, our significant others, our confidants, our go-to work buddy. Other people grate at our edges, never quite meshing with how we think or live our lives. In the middle we have acquaintances, people whom we can work well with and may even be friends with, who are also different and talented and strong in ways we may not entirely understand.

How we interact, react and work with other people can determine the success of our personal and professional lives. Understanding your personality type, your strengths and your weaknesses can help you better know how you deal with situations that pop up in your everyday life. The four color personalities are a good guide for knowing yourself and for knowing the dominant characteristics of the people around you.

The importance of adapting

Almost every job requires some interaction with other people; whether you are interacting predominantly with clients or entirely within your company, there are elements of everyone’s job that demands social interaction. To keep clients happy and your office running smoothly it helps to adopt an attitude of compromise and adaptability, morphing how you think a job should be done with the realities of the situation at hand.

Sometimes we aren’t good at adapting, and listening to other peoples’ opinions on how a job should be done can be frustrating. The four color personalities spectrum applies to everyone and can be used in a professional and personal environment to help you learn to adapt to other people’s dominant personality types to increase connection with them.

Adapting means to consciously make an effort to connect with another individual by changing your opinions or behavior. Adapting happens from the outside; you change your behavior, which in turn changes your perception and opinions on the inside.

The importance of connecting

Connecting is the second half of building strong relationships with the people around you no matter their individual color personality. Connecting with co-workers means adapting to their individual personality and working styles just as they are adapting to you. Making an intentional effort to work with others’ strengths and weaknesses, over time, will increase interpersonal connection and improve working environments, too.

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!

Influencing the Individual: Nature versus Nurture

nature v nurture

Carl Jung not only founded the field of analytical psychology but revolutionized how people thought about the major theories in psychology during the late 1800s to the mid- 1900s. At this point, scientists and psychologists mostly focused on the group- groups of people, how they interacted with one another, and what influenced them. Carl Jung flipped the script, in a sense, and took psychology even further by moving popular interest to the individual.

Some cultures value independence while others value dependence on others for society and family structures to function normally. The Western world beginning with the advent of the Roman Empire became more and more individualistic while Eastern cultures are traditionally known for being group-focused. This, then, begs the question: how much of our personalities are influenced by our environment, and how much is influenced by our genetics?

Discovering the individual

Jung’s focus on the individual mirrored that of Freud, who took the information he gleaned from his patients and the people around him to either prove or disprove the psychological theories of the day and to develop his theories. Jung followed suit, creating his theories of personality and analytical psychology using data he had and new information he was constantly gathering.

Jung invented an almost entirely new way of thinking about people and how we interact with each other and our world. Far from being just reactionary beings, we are capable of movement and thought and words and actions all at the same time. Combining this outward display of behavior with internal mental processes continues to the present day.

Jung didn’t know everything about the human brain; in fact, we still don’t! What he did know, however, influenced the field of analytical psychology dramatically. Jung paired what he knew of neuropsychology with human behaviors and asked his patients what they were thinking and feeling when they were interacting with themselves, other people and their environment.

Nature and nurture

Before Jung’s discoveries, nature was the go-to explanation for why people behaved the way they did. Jung acknowledged the influence of nature, but also brought to light more information about the individual’s influence on their personalities. The individual conscious and subconscious was brought to light by Jung’s line of analytical and psychological inquiry, and through answering his questions he opened up an entirely new way of thinking about human thinking and behavior.

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!

Practical Applications of Personality Analysis

personality

Personality can be tricky. There are hundreds of tests and analyses designed to piece out the individual characteristics and behavior patterns that make us who we are. Discovering the intricacies of personality has fascinated scientists and individuals for hundreds of years, and in some ways, we are nowhere near knowing exactly why we are the way we are.

Thankfully we do have ways of knowing what influences peoples’ actions and behaviors. Empirical evidence about the human brain connected with first-hand observations and assumptions have allowed us to compile information about personality and temperament. Scientists and researchers like Carl Jung, Myers-Briggs and others have used this knowledge to create tests to label personality types for a mass audience.

Labelling temperament

Creating personality tests and labelling temperaments for a broad audience can be challenging. Most tests are designed with the empirical data backing them up in mind; they make the assumption that personality is something genetic, that we are born with. In many ways this is indeed true- we are a product of our DNA. In other ways, our surroundings, or our environment, influences our personalities. Factors like cultural tradition, family, and religion can also affect how a person thinks and behaves.

Planning for all these eventualities explains some of the differences and abundance in personality tests and temperament analyses that exist today. Each of these tests were created for a purpose based on a preferred psychological theory, of which there are many to choose from.

Some tests were set up to assist with personnel hire for companies. Human Resources departments are looking for the right people to place in the jobs where they will be the most effective. Certain personality types are suited for different kinds of work; for instance, an extremely detail-oriented person may find themselves quickly frustrated in a job where projects are open-ended and their role isn’t clearly defined. Likewise, highly creative and artistically strong individuals might have trouble adapting to a job that is rigid, not allowing them to utilize their creative thinking skills to do their job well.

Practical application

Understanding the strengths and unique qualities of different personality types isn’t just the arena of company hiring squads. Psychologists use their knowledge of human temperaments to assist with therapy to tailor what they know about their patient to make treatment plans more effective. Personality types are important when training sports teams, when teaching students in classrooms, and when traveling the world and engaging with new people.

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!

The Versatility of Jungian Psychology

jung

Carl Jung is, of course, famous for being one of the founders of the field of analytical psychology. His psychological theories revolutionized the study of psychology and brought many new insights into human thinking and behavior. He focused on the individual rather than the group, which allowed him to create theories of individual behavior as well as greater group theories of social psychology.

Critical thinking was a massive part of Jung’s method of psychological analysis. He took the empirical knowledge he had about humans, their characters and the inner workings of their brains and combined this with his observations of what people did in specific situations. He asked questions and pursued the answers to what he considered the conclusion.

Using Jungian philosophy

Jungian psychology turned out to be more versatile than anyone ever thought it could be. Jung’s work influenced thinkers in the past and present working in areas including physics, comparative religion, eco-psychology, and philosophy. His work has been utilized in creating new counseling and therapeutic techniques as well as being the basis of other psychological studies throughout the years.

Part of what make Jung’s theories and ideas so versatile is that they are based on the individual, but can be expanded to explain greater concepts. Jung’s ideas about the typology of human behavior can be used in a variety of other research areas. Jung’s work boils down to relationships; relationships between people and themselves, relationships between people and other people, relationships between people and situations, and more.

Of course, Jung wasn’t the first thinker to have a significant impact on global thinking and academics. Carl Jung was influenced by the works of Immanuel Kant, Frederick Nietzsche, and Arthur Schopenhauer among others. These thinkers themselves were pioneers in their areas and impacted psychology and philosophy in their own right.

The influence of Jung

Jung’s influence passes across countless fields of study and has doubtlessly influenced academics around the globe. His work defined how we think about human behavior and the individual characteristics that make us who we are. These concepts can be used in light of other areas of life and academic study to determine our relationship with ourselves, the environment, and the organizations we live and work with every day. From politics to therapy, ecology to religious philosophy, Jung’s theories continue to influence many areas of study.

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!

Measuring Emotional Intelligence

The idea of emotional intelligence and our ability to measure it is interesting. We refer to people by emotional adjectives- they are ‘happy,’ they act ‘maturely,’ and we interact with different people in different ways based on our own emotional intelligence. Some people never pick up on the cues other people are placing down. Does that indicate a lack of emotional intelligence?

Reuven Bar-On created the Bar-On Emotional Intelligence Test in 1995 to answer some of the questions he had involving emotional intelligence and how to accurately measure this abstract construct. Using theory and psychological application he created a system used by many organizations and people today.

Discovering emotion

Emotional intelligence doesn’t just mean having the ability to have and express emotions in various settings. There are thought to be three main models of emotional intelligence which include the Mayer-Salovey model, the Goleman model, and the Bar-On model. The Mayer-Salovey model defines emotional intelligence as the ability to use, perceive, and understand emotions to facilitate thinking, while the Goleman model measures emotional and social competencies that influence how a person manages and leads.

The Bar-On model changed its definition of emotional intelligence to include an array of emotional and social abilities, skill and behaviors that impact a person’s intelligent actions. These social abilities, skills and behaviors include problem solving, independence, assertiveness, optimism, stress tolerance, self-regard, flexibility, interpersonal relationships, happiness, self-actualization, empathy, emotional self-awareness, social responsibility, impulse control, and reality testing.

The Bar-On model breaks down its emotional intelligence components into five categories which are Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Adaptability, Stress, Management, and General Mood.

Discovering Theory

The theory behind Bar-On’s emotional model includes some of Darwin’s theories of survival and adaptation. He stressed the importance of appropriate emotional behavior for animals and humans adapting to changing environments and situations. Other theoretical influences to this emotional test included Thorndike and Wechsler, among others.

The Bar-On model was used as a way to analyze a person’s psychological well-being and has continued to change and evolve over the years. As additional research has validated or invalidated some of the claims of the Bar-On, the creator adapted his interpretation of emotional intelligence to fit the new data.

Insights Discovery used the works of Jung to change and shape their personality test, which takes a look at similar metrics as the Bar-On but with a different theoretical basis and different analytical methods. The Bar-On is certainly another interesting way to discover personality types.

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.  If reschedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker. 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!

 

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Color Personalities and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter

keirsey 2

David Keirsey created the Keirsey Temperament Sorter as another way of categorizing how people think and behave in their personal and professional lives. His test is similar to Myers-Briggs and other personality assessments and has a similar basis to all of these tests and character indicators. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is founded in the theories of Hippocrates and Plato, utilizing Plato’s four major personality types including Artisan/Iconic, Guardian/Pistic, Idealist/Noetic, and Rational/Dianoetic.

David Keirsey then subdivided these four character traits into two categories that each contained two types. This gives us a familiar chart with 16 potential character types, much like Myers-Briggs. This temperament sorter was made popular by the book, Please Understand Me, and has been used by many large companies to help with employee training.

Exploring temperament

Like many of the other personality assessments available today, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter has four major character types with subdivisions within each. The four categories have been called Artisans, Guardians, Idealists, and Rationals.  Artisans are known for having strong tactical skills while maintaining an adaptable view of people and situations around them. Guardians are concrete and organized, working well in an environment where they feel safe and secure. They excel at logistical tasks and supporting a larger project.

Idealists work in the abstract, finding meaning in their work and striving to maintain a sense of self. They are very diplomatic and can be valuable members of a professional social environment. Finally, Rationals are very much concerned with their grasp of a task and the knowledge it takes to get a job done well. They are excellent at theoretical projects that have to be turned into reality.

Comparing systems

Keirsey relied on the idea that people can be categorized into temperaments. He classified these temperaments as abstract or concrete thinkers; directive versus informative leadership styles; expressive versus attentive social skills; and cooperative versus pragmatic working methods. All of these categories aren’t replicated in Jungian thinking or the Myers-Briggs test.

One challenge with the Keirsey Temperament Sorter are the labels used to classify different character types. The categories and sub-variants of each type have been given a job description such as Manager or Conservator. While these distinctions can certainly be helpful, they don’t give any indication that people can be slightly outside any of these boxes or excel at other professional tasks.

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.  If you would like further help in identifying yourself or others as part of the four color personalities, schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker. 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!

Herrmann Brain Dominance Inventory

hbdi

There have been many discussions lately on various other psychological personality tests and inventories people have used throughout the years to categorize human behavior. One such method is called the Herrmann Brain Dominance Inventory, or HBDI. This week we’ll find out how it matches up to Insights Discovery and what characteristics the two methods have in common.

The Herrmann Brain Dominance Inventory, or HBDI, was created by Ned Herrmann in 1988. Herrmann was a management educator who worked for General Electric and developed this method as part of his education training with the company. The inventory identifies cognitive patterns in the way people think to find similar traits. The creation and theory behind the HBDI are much like that of Myers-Briggs.

Cognitive Basis of HBDI

Herrmann developed his inventory to help his employees and coworkers at General Electric find out the dominant patterns within their thinking and how this could affect their jobs and how they worked with others. In this way, it is similar to other inventories like Myers-Briggs and Insights Discovery. Herrmann focused on the cognition behind these thoughts and behaviors, creating four categories. These categories were Left Limbic, Right Limbic, Right Cerebral, and Left Cerebral.

The Left Cerebral category includes people who are rational thinkers, problem solvers, precise and analytical, and detail oriented. The Right Cerebral category includes people who are future-leaning, creative, visionary, innovating, conceptualizing, and challenging of existing rules. The Right Limbic category includes people who are strong interpersonally, social, open, caring, expressive, enthusiastic and empathetic. Finally, the Left Limbic category includes people who are structured, detail oriented, good at administrative tasks, consistent, and procedural.

Herrmann used what scientists knew about the entire brain system to create his inventory, which used the idea of dominant brain function to analyze why some people think and behave in a more rational or logical manner, and why others are more social and spontaneous. Insights Discovery uses colors to describe these similar categories.

Comparing Insights Discovery

The four categories of Herrmann’s Brain Dominance Inventory fit in a similar way to the colors of the Insights Discovery system but utilize different vocabulary terms to describe peoples’ strongest personality characteristics. Criticism of the inventory has been that it is too simplistic, but for Herrmann’s purposes, it worked well for the business environment he created it for.

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.  If you would like further help in identifying yourself or others as part of the four color personalities, schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker. 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!

Putting the DISC in Discovery: Insights Discovery versus DISC Methodology

DISC

DISC is a personality test created by William Marston. The test is based on four major personality traits, much like Jung’s work was. These traits include dominance, influence, steadfastness, and compliance. Marston used these four character traits to describe peoples’ relationship with their environment; or, how they would act or react given certain situations in their life.

While Insights Discovery and the Myers-Briggs test are based on Jungian psychology, Marston’s DISC creation is considered to be a methodology. A man named Walter Clark turned Marston’s ideas into a behavioral test in 1956.

Describing character

Marston and Clark independently realized that people think they behave differently at home versus when they are at work, but knew that peoples’ underlying characters didn’t change from place to place. The DISC idea was used to describe how people behaved when met with situations that could come up in home or work, the theory being that certain personality types will react differently than others.

DISC uses the same idea as Insights Discovery does; that is, to simplify the myriad of personality types into generic, easy to follow and easy to remember categories. However, what makes DISC vastly different from Insights Discovery is that DISC has spawned thousands of different personality type tests based on its methodology. DISC isn’t overseen by one company or person, so anyone could create a DISC-based assessment and call it legitimate.

The idea behind DISC is valid, but it can be difficult to determine which tests are better because there are so many different ones out on the market today. This choice means that people can essentially find the answers they want, rather than an accurate assessment of their personality using slightly different tests and methods.

What’s the difference?

How is Insights Discovery different? Insights Discover comes from a Jungian background as opposed to the Marsden methodology. Insights Discovery keeps things simple, as DISC also does, but keeps its categories and ways of assessing peoples’ personalities consistent. This ensures both validity and reliability when conducting an analysis of a person’s dominant personality traits.

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.  If you would like further help in identifying yourself or others as part of the four color personalities, schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker. 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!

Psychological Theories: Myers-Briggs and Insights Discovery

Myers-Briggs-Type-Indicator

There are many articles and websites that will compare and contrast various psychological theories, pitting them against one another in an attempt to find the one great, overarching theory of psychology. As the field of analytical psychology has advanced there have always been theories that have been left behind or discounted based on new evidence; in the same vein, there have been theories that have been taken apart and put back together in light of new ideas and facts that have been discovered.

Psychological theories of personality, or why people behave the way they do, have been around since the time of the ancient Greeks. These thinkers spent their time discussing the actions of the people around them, testing these behaviors against what they were able to discern about the human mind. The fields of philosophy and psychology were certainly grown during these discussions amongst the ancient Greeks.

Modern day psychology

Moving closer to the present day, many psychological breakthroughs about personality and human behavior have been made. From Freud to Jung and many in between, psychologists and scientists have taken what we know about the human brain and done their best to match it to what we know about the human mind and reasoning. Through this tests like the Myers-Briggs and psychological theories like Insights Discovery have been created.

Myers-Briggs built a psychological personality test based on Jung’s psychological types, which he created in 1921. First-year psychology students in universities around America will be well versed in the Myers-Briggs tests, as will employees of major companies seeking to build teamwork and workplace efficiency. The Myers-Briggs test is commonly used to help individuals pick jobs or careers that fit their personality type. The Myers-Briggs gives each individual a four-letter designation that emphasizes the most dominant parts of their personality.

Other theories, like DISC or Insights Discovery, were created with the same Jungian background but different psychological motivations behind them. Insights Discovery was created to break people out of a four-letter designation, which can be difficult to remember, and to give a personality description based on colors rather than words. People might feel like they are being stuck into a personality box when they are given single words to describe the dominant parts of their personality.

Simplifying characteristics

Of course, any theory that tries to boil human character down to its simplest forms will run into problems. Take any five people on the street, any five people in your family or any five people in your office and you will find out pretty quickly that none of them fit into any sort of box, psychological or otherwise! Humans are complicated, but in many ways our personalities and behaviors are predictable. Insights Discover allows people to learn their main characteristics without placing them into rigid personality structures.

Using colors not only gives people the ability to remember their personality type easier but gives people the ability to be a shade of any color in the rainbow!

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.  If you would like further help in identifying yourself or others as part of the four color personalities, schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker. 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!