Picture the scene: your team has just delivered one of the best years of performance your division has ever seen, and the varied collection of characters is gelling well; all tolerant and respectful of how their colleagues work.
Suddenly, your top performer announces they’re leaving for a new challenge. Within three months, two or three more people resign. When you eventually rebuild the team with new recruits, jarring frictions creep in and performance slips, despite all being strong performers. Targets get missed, quarterly figures drop, and the Board is not happy.
It’s a common scenario that can happen for many reasons; perhaps in your case, it was the team leader who moved on, unsettling the team and creating low morale and high attrition.
The missing skill: awareness!
In the calm before the hypothetical storms above, the teams didn’t participate in any team development or awareness training, they just happened to collaborate well thanks to a fortunate blend of personalities.
But with the lack of training, they didn’t know their blind spots; they weren’t well prepared to deal with change nor did they understand how to connect to or get the best from contrasting personalities. When it came to conflict management, they were woefully under-equipped…
Why including awareness training in onboarding makes a massive difference
This is why Insights exists: to help colleagues understand themselves and others better, and to appreciate and respect difference using the language of color energies, so that relationships at work become less stressful, more mindful and more productive.
If employees can increase their self and other-awareness awareness from the outset, their teams have a stronger chance of enhanced performance, or in the plagued scenarios above, sheer survival.
“Insights Discovery had a profound impact on my self-awareness and how I saw and communicated with the whole team.“
Chris McGillan, Nzime Strategy Director
Onboarding covers the new job, the setting, the tech and the goals, but what about the people?
As well as helping new hires acquaint themselves with the practical parts of a new job, enhanced onboarding involves learning about the team. This goes beyond an org chart and scheduling one to ones. It means learning your colleagues’ preferred working styles, how they differ from your own, and the impact that varying styles are likely to have on collaboration.
This part of the settling-in process is as important as getting comfortable with the organizational aims and values, company culture and operational processes. It sets the tone for how everyone can best work together, it makes acclimatizing less daunting and is useful for early check-ins and performance reviews.
Leaders can rely the language of Insights color energies, a memorable shorthand for team communication based on Insights four-color model, to help reports understand their own and their colleagues’ preferences, styles and motivations, creating the foundation for smooth teamwork and meaningful conversations.
A closer look at Insights Discovery language of color energies…
Since the mid-1990s, the Insights Discovery and Discovering Team Effectiveness programs - both ideal for onboarding individuals and whole teams - have made transformative differences for people at work.
Leaders, managers, longstanding employees and new hires at all levels experience the opportunity - through the language of color energies - to see themselves and their new colleagues in a more informed light.
They use what they learn about their ‘color energy hierarchy’ to develop more aware, more communicative, more tolerant working relationships, even with people they seem less likely to gel with naturally.
Accurate personal profiles, and immersive team workshops to build learning around the profile’s practical focus areas, are integral parts of the onboarding experience. They also provide an early opportunity to semi-socialize in a less formal workplace setting.
True, it may not appeal to every new hire to delve into, analyze and share with others why they behave the way they do. It might even seem a touch overwhelming for more introverted colleagues or less curious team members who simply want to crack on with the new job. But we think the risks of not engaging all team members early in their journey are arguably more uncomfortable. Better self-and other-awareness lead to more productive conversations, less friction, a healthier approach to disagreements and a more united approach to achieving shared goals.
How to use Insights in your onboarding program
Insights bring leaders, managers and their immediate teams together -as early in their evolution as possible- to discover their dominant color energy and their unique blend of all four color energies.
Some organizations invest days and others may invest a week exploring how the detailed personal profiles generated by Insights affect personal and team interaction, but even a few hours will make a difference.
The core discovery is that our personalities tend to be dominated by one or two of the four main color energies. The information reveals a host of insights into why we behave the way we do at work and what impact that has on our colleagues and on team dynamics.
Now, there is potential for a more close-knit working environment that intentionally supports different communication styles and ways of working. Not only does increased awareness make a welcome difference for people in their first months in a new role, it helps later on with retention and succession planning. When people understand themselves and feel understood and heard by colleagues and line managers, they’re more likely to perform better and navigate difficult interpersonal situations with greater finesse.
How Insights helps build better relationships on teams
The Insights Discovery model shows us that we’re most likely to lead with either Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow, Earth Green or Cool Blue. As well as learning more about ourselves, we begin to understand how others see us, and whether we’re understood and appreciated the way we’d like to be. Crucially and often the most revealing and possibly challenging part, we learn about our opposite type: the person we may find it hardest to connect with or work with effectively unless we adapt our style.
Lightbulb moments = breakthrough conversations
For many people, it’s a game-changer to realize that approaching workplace situations and colleagues differently will get a better result. Facilitated discussions around their personal profile helps them see themselves and their interactions with team members through a clearer lens, especially colleagues they thought they didn’t gel with.
The model shows us that some people are more ‘facts and figures’-driven, and others are more values- and people-centred. It can feel challenging to work smoothly with opposite types if you don’t understand them
Talking about four color energies with such a personal slant shines a powerful light on team dynamics. For new hires or unsettled teams onboarding as a new unit, it can be the difference between surviving and thriving.
We’ll leave you with typical lightbulb moments that Insights participants have experienced over the years...
Insights Discovery is an L&D training system, based on Carl Jung's psychology, that creates high-performing teams by enhancing awareness and workplace relationships. It employs a memorable four-color model, Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow, Earth Green, and Cool Blue, to illustrate different behavioral styles and strengths. By creating a common language that connects colleagues across geographical and cultural boundaries, it helps people understand themselves and others, fostering collaboration, driving productivity and transforming workplaces.
