Scale up resort - remaining questions about Insights Discovery

The profile you received is based on the answers you gave in the questionnaire. As mentioned, this is not a model at the personality level, but at the level of behavioral preferences. If you do not recognize some words or phrases in your profile, this can be for several reasons: 1) this is a tool, a model, which obviously cannot describe your whole unique self. You are more than your behavior and your behavioral preferences. You are a unique person, and that cannot be fully captured in a profile. 2) sometimes we recognize certain behavioral preferences from the past, and today we have already adjusted our behavior so that we no longer recognize certain words and phrases. 3) sometimes they are blind spots: that is why it is useful to discuss your profile with colleagues who know you well. What do they recognize and what not?  Compare the profile with feedback from colleagues or a manager.  4) sometimes words are used in the profile that are a bit too strong or not strong enough. Would you recognize yourself if a synonym were used? Would you recognize yourself in the meaning but with different wording? some statements are generalizations meant to capture patterns, not every moment of behavior. 5) if in the summary on pages 5 to 7 you would have placed more than 10 question marks and exclamation marks (that is, words and phrases you really do not recognize at all or about which you have major doubts), then your profile may possibly be invalid. We will examine this more deeply later in the course of the process.  Please, use the profile as a development starting point, not a definitive label — pick a few areas to explore or check in real situations.

The graphs are not always easy to interpret for a person who is not an insights accredited practitioner.  We will try to be as clear as possible here, but again : we hope to be able to facilitate workshops in smaller groups in the future so that we can talk about it together.

The graphs represent the answers you've given to the questionnaire : it is your perceived behavior in a working environment.  Your behavior in a private context can be different.  Since you answered the questionnaire in a working environment, this is your professional behavior.

The first chart is your conscious persona. It actually describes how you see yourself when you are active in the world. It is the combination of the following elements: your natural behavior, influenced by the behavior you want to show and the behavior you perceive your environment expects of you. It is what you present of yourself to the outside world. Sometimes I describe this with the following metaphor: it is the photo taken of you on your wedding day, when the photographer stands directly in front of you, you turn to your 'best' side, you tighten your abs and give your best smile. This is how you want to appear in the picture and this is also what you show.

The less conscious persona (so the 3rd chart) describes your more natural, instinctive behavior. It depicts your more natural behavior, without all the adjustments needed to meet your inner and external expectations. This is you without your 'mask'—in both positive and negative ways. In my metaphor, that is the photo taken of you during the evening party, when you are no longer aware the photographer is present.

The middle chart shows the preferrence flow; that is the movement of energy you make to present yourself to the world. It shows the amount of energy that flows between the right and left charts. It reveals in particular which energies you are currently showing to a greater or lesser extent to meet perceived demands of the environment and to realize your current self-image.

If the two graphs look very similar and the preference flow fluctuates between 0 and 10% because there is little movement between the two graphs, then in short that is because the person behaves largely the same in the conscious situation(s) as in their more natural state. There is therefore little difference between preferred and less-conscious behavior. "What you see is what you get," 

In practice we see that this sometimes shows that the self-image largely matches the actual behavioral nuances, because the person either has good self-knowledge or answered in a highly socially desirable way. 

These scores say nothing about the strength of the profile: real strength lies in the capacity to adapt behavior to the needs of the situation. That willingness and capacity to adapt, however, is not visible in the graphs. 

That the less-conscious graph resembles the conscious graph but scores slightly lower everywhere therefore means that you raise your energy to present yourself to the world. That is a move many people make.

In the paragraph about your opposite Type, you can find information on how you (the person who's profile this is) can recognize and communicate with your opposite type (a collegue, customer, ...) who has a completely opposite profile from yours.  In this section is explained how you can adapt your behavior to better connect with this other person.

We talk about the opposite type because the real strengh of a person's behavior lies in the adaptation to connect to other people or to the behavior that is needed in a certain situation.

We start from the idea that if you are able to adapt to connect to your opposite type, you will also be able to adapt to connect to different types because the opposite type is probable the most difficult one to adapt to because it is the largest stretch to do.

If you want to help your collegues on how to make communications more effective to you, please check the section 'Strategies for communicating with x (your name)' and also 'When communicating with x(your name), do not ...'

This profile  is certainly not intended to be used as an evaluation document. Ethically, that would not be appropriate. Therefore, we do not provide this profile during a hiring process. However, once the decision to hire has been made, it can be useful to have an insights profile as a basis for development. After all, this is not an assessment but an overview of a person’s behavioral preferences. Actual behavior may differ, depending on the person’s level of adaptability and their ability to adjust behavior to the needs of the situation to increase effectiveness. This tool is intended to enhance self-awareness and to suggest development paths at the behavioral level.

If you want to truly integrate this tool into your company culture, the real question is : what do you want to install into your culture with this tool ?  Insights can be used as a developmental tool as well on a personal as on a team and organisational level.  But please : make sure to not stigmatize and put people into boxes.  I would suggest to talk about the profiles, give people the opportunity to tell what they recognize and what not, to ask questions to collegues and to give each other feedback.  This tool can also be used in personal development plans, for as long as the person concerned validates the profile and the developmental suggestions in it.  I am not sure if a general board (accessible for everyone) will not be used as an over-simplification of the richness of the profiles.  On the other hand, sharing the key takeaways per person during a meeting where people realy listen to one another and support each other in their growth, is something completely different.  

Also, if you want to use the profile during onboarding (I would not recommend it during the recruitment proces), I suggest we discuss this further with your management team to make sure the profiles are used in a way that people feel supported by this and not evaluated or stigmatized.

First, let me say it would be great if the management team leads by example and shares their insights with the rest of the company.  But please, don't do it just through sharing the profiles.  Make a human dialogue of it.  Tell people how it was for you to read your profile for the first time : what did you appreciate ? what are you proud of ? what surprised you ? what was confrontational ? what was hard to read ? what questions do you have ? what do you want to check ? ask for feedback and do something with the suggestions given.  Use insights discovery as a starting point to start a conversation about effectiveness in your team, about communication and about how you want to work together.  

I know AI is very important in your company, so I will also help you out with some prompts (although I am not a AI-wizard, sorry for that). 

"Our team is composed of 3 people with colour energies in the insights discovery profiles : person A has red 85%, blue 65%, green 2% and yellow 20%, person B has red 58%, blue 22%, green 24% and yellow 62% and person C has red 44%, blue 22%, green 82% and yellow 72% in the conscious persona." and then you ask a question : 

-  can you make some suggestions about do's and don'ts in communication during meetings" or

- can you tell what strenghts and weaknesses we have in making decisions together" or ...

You could make a kind of team communication charter, and make a line per person in the team and a column of 'do's in communication' and one with 'don'ts in communication' and one with 'greatest value in this team'.  If you ask people to put their most important do's and don'ts in it, it will even be more accurate.  The greatest value can be filled in by the nearest collegues, which makes this an appreciative exercise too.

It can be great to make this kinds of matrices, but please make sure not to make it too stigmatizing.  If you put people into boxes, this is misuse of the tool.  Insights discovery is made to make people aware of their preference behaviour, but also to make them use more of the different colour energies and to make them more flexible.  

Don't forget : it is the flexibility of human behaviour and the adaptability of each of us that will make the difference in this technology driven world, so keep it a human touch exercise above all.

It would be great to integrate this insights discovery self-knowledge into the teams now.  We hope we will be able to help you with this further, but a first step could be that in your weekly/monthly/ ... meetings you share parts of your profile.  And maybe start with giving voice to each one around the table to explain how they perceived their profile.  To what degree do they recognize themselves in it ? what are the things they recognize but also : what are the things they don't see, and do the others see it ? help each other with possible blind spots.    But you could also make use of the rest of the profile : E.g. each one's value for the team : if you read this in your own profile, what value are you already giving to the team and what are your hidden talents that are maybe under-exposed in the team ? or give each other advise on how to communicate and what certainly not to do.  In a near future we hope to be able to facilitate these teamconversations and look at the specific dynamics within each team.

By all  means, use the profiles to increase personal flexibility and adaptability, these are the skills of the future !