Colour Savvy: Helping You Achieve Success in Your Work Life
| Susan Geary and Anne Bulstrode, 2010
What’s It All About?
At every stage of your workday, it’s important to understand your team! By having a greater understanding of how your team members think, communicate, and handle stress, you’ll be better prepared to handle any challenges, and can find creative and productive ways to show up for your team.
To better understand the many different personalities you may encounter, one place to start is Susan Geary and Anne Bulstrode’s 2010 book Colour Savvy: Helping You Achieve Success in Your Work Life. In this book, the authors break down different personality types and assign them each a colour:
- “Inquiring Green” personalities seek the big picture using logic, data, and systems. They’re in control of their emotions and tend to be analytic and determined, though they can be perceived as insensitive or argumentative by others.
- “Organized Gold” personalities are responsible, practical, and like to maintain traditions. They’re dependable and excel at planning, organizing and follow-through, but can have a narrow focus and a resistance to change.
- “Authentic Blue” personalities need interaction from others. They are excellent listeners with a knack for motivating and developing others, but may have issues with saying “no” and taking on too many responsibilities.
- “Resourceful Orange” personalities like to look for new ways of doing things—and they like to have fun while doing it. They’re flexible and great at producing results, especially under pressure, but can be seen by others as pushy and confrontational.
With exercises along the way, Colour Savvy takes you through detailed descriptions of the four personalities, plus shares insights on how each type deals with stress, how they prefer to communicate, and the right career fits for each colour. It also broke down the specific abilities of each colour and provide examples, which was my favorite part.
Favorite Quote
“People with different temperaments bring different gifts to the table and we all need to acknowledge and respect these.”
Biggest Takeaway
You have the power to help others better position themselves in life! Once you understand yourself and the people around you, you can really help them harness their strengths, improve their gaps, and open themselves open to endless possibilities. This is the foundation of leadership development. Colour Savvy is a definite gamechanger, as it teaches you to be conscious of your own personalities and the personalities of people around you.
Bonus Information
This book is important to me because it was the first real applied personality profile I ever used. I really dove into its ideas around 2007, when my organization’s executive team went through training. Whenever there was a conflict or disagreement, it was helpful to think about the personalities type of others on my team, so I could find the best way to approach them. While we might not have a measurable financial impact, it’s still something we still talk about today, even ten years later!
This book ties into the Personality Dimensions assessment tool, which was one of the first certifications I received as an entrepreneur. If you’d like learn more about getting your own team assessed, reach out here and we’ll work together to help you take your leadership team to the next level.
Reviewed by: Trevor Blondeel, January 13, 2020
At Manufacturing Greatness, Trevor Blondeel works with manufacturers to connect the top to the shop. If you’re ready to improve your own organization, contact Trevor to learn how Manufacturing Greatness can help you build stronger leaders and develop a dynamic, high-performing workplace.