Team Personalities

Sharon Seely contributed today's thinking.

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Last week, waiting at the copy machine, talking about upcoming meetings with another teacher, I said that at an earlier time in my life, I had chosen to be very quiet and to not contribute to conversations at meetings. The teacher looked at me and said…that’s hard to believe, I can’t see you just sitting there and not saying anything.

I thought, "Wow! I have changed." Years ago, I didn’t contribute because I both feared there would be rebuttal from someone saying I was way off base or didn’t know my material and I questioned my own experience/knowledge.

This prompted me to think about teachers meeting and their sharing with their teams (grade-level, building-level), how are they feeling about sharing?  In the Leadership and Coaching training, I learned about team design. This began with understanding how we all contribute and communicate within a team.

One method is called the True Colors Personality Test.  The True Colors Personality Test is an inventory to help understand your own personality style/type and the personality style/type of your teammates.  This method promotes an appreciation of individual differences and the unique blend of the four styles.  There is no good or bad color and a wide individual variation does exist within each color. At a glance personalities are grouped into four colors:

• Gold – “Be prepared and organized!”
• Green – “What’s the Big Picture?
• Orange – “Just do it!”
• Blue – “How does that make you feel?”

What can we learn about ourselves and others from this personality test?

• How we direct our energy
• How we make a cohesive, effective team
• How we solve problems
• How we deal with conflict
• How we build on strengths
• How we coach and lead

When we did this at the training, the colleagues I attended with and I were three very different colors/color combinations; blue, gold/green and orange and we continue to function well as a team.

What color are you?  What colors are your teammates?