Good Day Versus Bad Day Behaviours

So we’ve talked about all of the good behaviours that colleagues bring on a great day when they are feeling resourceful. And you can see in the visual here that colleagues who lead with fiery red, they bring that competitive, demanding, determined energy. Our sunshine, yellows bring the sociable, dynamic, demonstrative energy. Our earth greens are caring, encouraging, and sharing. And our cool blues, bring the caution, the precision, and the deliberation. So on a good day, each of our colleagues add value and cast this wonderful shadow across the team.

Now, on a bad day, when we have got triggered, our colleagues who lead with fiery red may be perceived as being aggressive, controlling, driving, overbearing, and possibly intolerant. And it’s the same for all of the behaviours when we get triggered.

Some of these bad day behaviours may be less than helpful, but it’s really important to remember why would a good and reasonable person do this.

If you think about it, 99% of human behaviour has positive intent. It is just that sometimes the impact is clumsy.

So a colleague who leads with fiery red who leads the team, let’s just say that they have promised to deliver a project by close of play Friday. They delegate the workout to colleagues, and they check in at Wednesday lunchtime to see how everything’s going. And what they find is that the team is behind, the timelines and the quality of work isn’t at where they want it to be. Now, if this colleague, who leads with fiery red is lacking emotional intelligence in that moment, they may get triggered. And actually some of the behaviours that you see may be around micromanagement. You know coming across as being aggressive, talking over people you know, the intolerance. Now this individual’s intention is good. They wanted to deliver the project that they promised on time. It is just that their impact is clumsy because they’re triggered. And what they’re probably now doing is triggering everybody else around them. It’s the same with our sunshine yellows, when they get triggered, actually, particularly the colleagues who lead with Cool Blue will be going, they’re so over the top. They’re really getting on my nerves. They’re excitable, they’re frantic. You know, there’s just a lot of noise and not enough thought. A person leads with sunshine yellow. Their intent is good because their enthusiasm is so high, they just want to spread it even further. It’s just that the impact may be clumsy. Our Earth greens often get triggered because they feel overwhelmed. And what happens is they pull in and they want to get safe. Our colleagues who lead with Fiery Red are sitting there going, oh, do you know what? They’re docile. They’re bland. They’re plodding. Our Earth Greens are going, do you know what? When the noise calms down, I’ll come back out. And what’s happening is we are triggering each other inadvertently, even though the intent is good. And then finally, our cool blues, when they get triggered, they often ask more questions because they want more detail. So, particularly our colleagues who lead with Sunshine Yellow is sitting there going, oh gosh, they’re so suspicious. They may be perceived as being indecisive because they want more and more data and they want to spend more time in their Excel data party. And they may be perceived as stuffy because they pull away. But once again, their intent is good because they want to have the data and the knowledge and the information to make sure that they’re making a good quality decision.

So it’s just reminding us that all of the colours can rock up, be resourceful, use high emotional intelligence, and be really valuable to the team. But also each of the colours gets triggered, they have a less than positive impact on the team, even though their intent is good.