Who am I? How am I Wired? How do I Communicate? Insights Discovery Color Energies

Summer is a time for vacations and relaxing for many people. In education, it is a time when students and most staff are gone. However, for those of us in educational administration working year round, summer is a time to get caught up on projects, get ahead on things for the coming school year when students and teachers return, and also a time for learning. As part of my annual summer learning, each August we have an administrative retreat with a guest speaker/trainer. Over the past 15 years I have been in this job we have had speakers on innovation, change, teams, and other topics. 

By far the most memorable and impactful training we ever had was a few years ago led Scott Schwefel from Discover Yourself. Scott is a Minnetonka Schools parent. His company helps individuals, teams, and entire organizations learn more about their personality style and preferences. He travels around the world giving keynotes and helping individuals and organizations improve how they work with one another. 

You've likely taken a Myers-Briggs test or something similar before  in which you as an individual are categorized as an introvert vs. extravert, thinking vs. feeling, etc. The Discover Yourself training also categorizes individuals into their personality types, but in a much more memorable way (using colors such as cool blue vs. fiery red) and takes it further by helping you realize how each personality type reacts on a good vs. bad day, how others interact to you based on your personality, and ways you can become more aware of and improve your interactions with others and overall leadership. You learn what your dominate and secondary personality energy and communication methods are and the order of preferences you have for all the energy levels. For example, I am Cool Blue followed by Earth Green. 

Prior to our one day training, our group of about 45 administrators each took an online assessment. At the training after learning about the four personality types and doing a number of fun activities to learn more about one another and ourselves, we were given our assessment results and a detailed individual, multipage report about our personality, our preferences, our quirks, what gives us energy and enjoyment, what drains us and what we dread, and more. The report was dead on accurate. It was fascinating to read so much about yourself as well as learn about how you interact with and are perceived by others. Each personality type and energy has its own leadership style and we learned how our styles mesh as well as conflict with others' styles. We learned how to help the members of our team work best with one another based on their personality types and preferences, as well as lead with a much more acute awareness of our personality and its affect on others. 

I would highly recommend this training. It was so impactful years ago that we invited Scott back a second time to do a follow up training session. We also continue to have our new leaders take the personality training assessment and attend training so they are familiar with it. Besides our administrators, we have had our teacher leaders go through this training, too, such as the instructional technology coaches with whom I work. To this day we still talk about individuals' personality types and it has helped us to be so much more aware of how and why people act they way they do. Just yesterday a colleague was confused by the actions of another, and I brought up the personality colors and we talked about the differences to help understand why someone had reacted a certain way. 

You can watch Scott's TEDx Talk above and learn more on the Discover Yourself website.