The Five Foundational Building Blocks of Insightful Relationships
Every tool has a set of basic skills or concepts that drive its use. Utilizing personality styles and temperament types in everyday interactions is no different. Researchers over the years (thousands of them) have found that by understanding someone’s personality type, you can learn much about that person. However, in order to successfully put this understanding into practice, you have to start with (and remember) the basic building blocks.
Over the years, there have been a variety of descriptors for personality types. Many of these descriptors were, at best, difficult to remember and, at worst, held negative connotations. In recent years, companies such as Insight Learning, Four Lenses, and True Colors have tried to make the task of implementation easier by using four common colors (Blue, Green, Gold, and Orange) as the handholds for creating connections between temperament characteristics and our common language. Those connections are crucial if we are to put theory into practice.
Within this framework of understanding lie the building blocks — the concepts that form the foundation. Without these basics, the understanding that we strive for will never be fully acquired.
Building Block #1: Everyone is Unique
Every person you meet has some characteristics of each temperament. The specific combination of motivations and behaviors demonstrated by any individual make up their temperament spectrum. Most people have one color that is more like them than the other three. However, some people have points distributed equally among two, three, or even all four of the colors. Because of the nearly limitless variations, a person’s color spectrum (and personality) is a very unique thing.
Building Block #2: Celebrate Differences
Differences are among the first things that we notice about the people we meet. It is easy to do a quick comparison of characteristics. Often, it is even easier to make judgments or, at the very least, wish they were more like us. In reality, each temperament has its own set of values and standards. These differ so dramatically that comparing them is much like the old saying about apples and oranges. It’s simply impossible to compare.
Building Block #3: Rely on Strengths
Have you ever wanted, just for a second, to be like someone else? Have you wanted to possess a skill or ability that seemed to come easily to another? In that moment, you recognized and valued a strength that was not your own. Each temperament type holds a set of natural strengths that the other types do not. In order to work and live in the most efficient way possible, we must rely on, and place more value on in both word and deed, the strengths of others. In turn, we need to begin to recognize that others depend on our strengths as well.
Building Block #4: Sometimes Less is More
People with a positive self-image know how to make the most of their strengths. However, when put in a stressful position, even the most positive person can begin to feel out-of-esteem. When this happens, traits normally considered as strengths can become grossly magnified or abandoned altogether. In times of stress, it is important to remember that any behavior (even a positive one) taken to extreme can become a liability.
Building Block #5: Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover
In what some might consider a perfect world, we would all be motivated to behave in a manner consistent with the preferences of our temperament type. In the real world however, this simply isn’t practical. Sometimes we have to act in a way that seems at odds with our temperament. Circumstances at work, church, home, or school may require us to adopt characteristics of a temperament not our own.
Learning to do other colors is part of our growth process. It helps us stretch our abilities and become more adept at handling any situation we come across. While undergoing this stretching exercise, balance becomes the operative word. Be sure the goal is to do another color rather than to become another color. Bending and stretching are productive; breaking is not.
These are the five basic building blocks. They need to be positioned at the foundation of the relationships we are trying to build. In understanding these, and building upon them, we begin to find no use for descriptors like good and bad or right and wrong. These are replaced by nonjudgmental descriptions as understanding begins to come into focus, and our relationships start to sizzle.