Getting an Insightful Look at Personality Types

I am a blue. I’m a coordinating observer who likes to take in my surroundings then retreat to process them…alone. A data-driven algorithm told me this, and I have faith in that, because I am a blue.

Hodges participated in an Insights Discovery workshop, hosted and facilitated by Floricane, a management consultancy firm, which helped us tap into the various workplace personalities that make up the agency. THP invested resources in this day-long activity to give us the opportunity to increase our self-awareness and to identify some ways we can apply our findings to our lives in the office.

Rooted in Carl Jung’s psychological research, Insights was developed to help segment different personas, or profiles, into a system with 72 different personality types. Plotted out on a circle, a person can move around based on their natural ebb and flow between being introverted and extroverted; thinkers and feelers; and being more sensing and perceptive. Based on all of that, the circle is divided into four color-coded quadrants:

• blues tend to be orderly and reserved;
• greens, supportive and relatable;
• reds, authoritative and direct;
• and yellows, aspirational and outgoing.

You might have guessed it, although I bet you didn’t – only four Hodgers are inherent extroverts (a THP mug to the first person who comments below with those four staffers) and we only have one true red in our ranks. While our office is scattered through the wheel of profiles, we are a little skewed towards the introverted-feelers quadrant.

After responding to the statements in the Insights questionnaire, a profile was generated for every Hodger. In addition to knowing our color, 20 pages of narrative were created. Strengths and weaknesses were outlined. Communication styles and possible barriers were included. Personality blind spots were bluntly, albeit accurately, laid out in front of us. Nuisance details about how we like, and don’t like to operate were “magically” defined.

While we were given a prominent color, almost every Hodger had a mix of all the colors. There were charts and graphs in our profiles to show our conscious and our less conscious make-up, giving us an indicator of what we are in our most natural states vs. when we’re “on” in our daily lives. We were also shown how much we have to adjust between the two states of being, which was eye opening in some cases.

Does it sting a little when your profile tells you that you can seem detached from the real world and you like to keep an emotional, and physical distance from others? Sure, but does that make it any less true?

I believe that self-awareness is a crucial ingredient to our daily lives – particularly when interacting with a professional team has both emotional and financial implications. As individuals, getting as much information as we can to make the most informed decisions possible – from how we greet someone, to how we edit others’ work, to how we interact with people in a status meeting – allows us to work as harmoniously as possible in a group setting. Since I’ve had plenty of time to digest my profile, as a good blue tends to need, I’ve set some goals for how I want to better myself at work, including taking more risks and stepping out of my comfort zone in group settings like brainstorms and staff meetings.