April 2014 – blog.colorcode.com

Filters That Can Affect the Bottom Line

Life is all about relationships. We have them, to some extent, with everyone we meet, from your best friend, to the person who checks you out at the grocery store. In each situation, we modify our behavior to meet the needs of the person with whom we are in that relationship. After all, you wouldn’t behave the same way in front of your Grandma as you would a peer. Whether you recognize is or not, that is the Color Code in action.

There are many factors that come into play that define our outward behavior. Your core motive (color) is innate and will never change. But, what about other behavioral influences that play a part in your personality?

Secondary colors certainly play a part. For instance, if you are a Red with a secondary Yellow, you might be more playful, and less stern. Or if you are a White with a Blue secondary, you might be more relationship oriented, and so forth.

Filters derived from life experiences can be another factor in your outward behavior. As we experience life, we are exposed to countless outside influences that shape who we are and how we view life, often causing incongruent behaviors. For example, if a White is born to Red parents, he might begin to take on Red behaviors. Or, if you have worked with someone you admire greatly and try to emulate his behavior, that too, is a filter.

Hundreds of filters just like that exist in our society. Gender, religion, intelligence, shyness, relationships, and cultural influences can all be filters.

Workplace Filters

Culturally speaking, think of the diverse group of people you work with–men, women, young, old, and with varying ethnic backgrounds. All of these groups come with their own set of culture filters you should be aware of to best understand what motivates employees and coworkers beyond their driving core motive. Following are a few examples of what you might see:

Generation

Three generations are actively employed in the workforce today. Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Gen Yers all have different ideas about their role in the workplace.

Possible generational filters might be work ethic, technology use, leadership style, and especially, communications.

Baby Boomers, as a generation, are workaholics, placing job before life balance. The younger generation wants balance. They work at work and play at play.

Baby Boomers are motivated by being valued and told so. Gen Xers like to be rewarded with freedom, and Gen Yers want meaningful work.

Gen Xers and Gen Yers are content to communicate via email, or even texting. Baby Boomers prefer face-to-face, preferably in a meeting.

These generational filters can cause frustration and create derision.

Gender

While the time when “a woman’s place is in the home” is long gone, one thing is certain… filters continue to exist among the sexes. Society has taught us that men are stoic, and women are emotional. Studies do show that women—no matter their driving core motive—are more interested in relationships, and have a tendency to show more empathy than men.

Men are stimulated by the competition, and are motivated by financial rewards. Women are more motivated by acknowledgement.

Ethnicity

Ethnicity filters are not only important to understand now, but will be critical in the future. With the steady migration from other countries, it is imperative that managers understand the cultural filters people bring with them from their country of origin.

For instance, a Hispanic person is accustomed to a rigid socioeconomic class structure. They may have a difficult time learning to trust a supervisor. Family is the most important thing and their job often comes second in time and dedication.

Happy employees are proven to be productive, faithful workers. Cultural filters, in addition to the day-to-day filters we all have, help identify the needs of your employees, and create an understanding vital to smooth operations within the workplace. Learn to respect and adapt to those needs. Reward based on those needs. If a baby boomer needs validation, validate. If an employee values family who are away, reward them with a calling card. If a man needs competition to be motivated, challenge him.

While you’re at it, contemplate your own outward behavior. Do you have filters that have a negative effect on your personality? If so, identify them and work on correcting them. CC

Teresa Glenn has been working with the Color Code since 2006, where her main focus is product development. She has been in the publishing and product development field for over 20 years. Teresa is a core Red with a strong Yellow secondary.

Baby’s Huge Personality

Today my newest grandchild was born. As I hold her, I can’t help but wonder who she will be. Will she grow up to be a leader? An entertainer? A caregiver? Or will she quietly go about her business?

Color Code teaches us that we are born with our personalities. They are innate. Looking at this small, perfect form, it seems that a personality is too unbelievably huge to be contained in her little body. After all, our personalities are huge—they help determine the direction of our lives.

That’s not to say our destiny is controlled by our color. How we use the strengths and limitations of our driving core motive is up to us.

Take Mother Teresa. A Blue right? Wrong. Mother Teresa was a Red. She used her Red strengths as a natural leader to accomplish the impossible.

Walt Disney must be a Yellow—he created the happiest place on earth—but no. His Blue strengths of creativity and perfectionism kept him up at night so he could create the perfect place for you Yellows.

I think we can all guess the color of Albert Einstien. His genius is legendary, but he avoided the limelight and preferred quietly doing his theorizing in private.

If you think growing up Yellow is just one party after another, consider that many of our most popular Yellow presidents—John F. Kennedy, Ronald Regan, Bill Clinton—Yellows, all, and all achieved the highest office in the United States.

No matter her driving core motive, this little one has the potential to do whatever she wants.

So, for now, I see physical characteristics of her parents, like her Blue mother’s mouth and her White father’s eyes, but it will be a while before I will identify if she takes after either in the driving core motive department. CC

Ask the Expert

This month, I wanted to share a great question that was sent into me by one of our Certified Color Code Trainers. Her name is Lisa Hall, and she does an amazing job. Recently, a participant of hers who had attended a Color Code training in the past asked the following question after learning about the Character Code.

Here’s the question, “If our Driving Core Motive does not change, then why not just take the Character Code assessment?’

This is actually a great question, and I can understand where the participant is coming from – especially since we’ve all been conditioned to look at behavior-based personality models. In fact, if this were a behavioral model, the best thing to do would be just to take the Character Code assessment!

Of course, it’s not a behavioral model, and so it’s an important question to carefully consider.

I think you have to look at your Driving Core Motive or “DCM” as the engine that powers the rest of your personality – your needs and wants, your instincts and preferences, the values that you adopt and even the behavior you learn to display. Your DCM is innately present at birth, and as your participant correctly mentioned – it does not change throughout your life.

That means that your need for Power, Intimacy, Peace, or Fun (depending on what your DCM is, of course) will always be there no matter what. You can’t discard it or change it. It is, therefore, one of the very most critical pieces of self-awareness you can have. It will explain why you do what you do and why some things are easy for you to accept or to change while others are terribly difficult. It is also critical that you learn to value your DCM no matter how frustrating it might be at times.
Learning to value yourself is the first, essential part of the personal growth process. You have to know “how you are” naturally to know where you are going. Acceptance of that Core Color ensures that you will be striving to change for the right reasons (meaning that your motives for wanting to change will be clean).

If it were not so, and we tried to change because we never developed a sense of intrinsic value for who we are (i.e., we never learned how to have self-esteem), our efforts to become something else would always leaving us feeling unfulfilled. Even though our behaviors might change, we would still feel a nagging, unsatisfied need from our DCM that was not being fulfilled.

The key is to learn to value your Core Motive and then look for ways to add to it. We can keep all the good stuff and eliminate the behaviors that we don’t like while we strive to add strengths from the other Colors as well.

That’s why we start with the Color Code and then move on to the Character Code.

I guess you could say that it helps to know (and love!) your natural self when you are trying create your future self.

I hope that helps you all.

Very best of living!

Jeremy

Jeremy Daniel (Core Color: Yellow) has been working with the Color Code since 1998 in various capacities from training in the field personally with Dr. Taylor Hartman to designing customized corporate solutions and new training programs for various industries. To ask about Jeremy’s training or speaking services, please email and inquiry to jeremy@colorcodetraining.com.