How would you handle it if your best friend was going through a difficult time in his life and he came to you for help?  How can you provide the best words of encouragement to help him?  Many people will find it hard to believe that the first and best way to help a friend is to practice what I call active listening. You may accomplish this by listening carefully without interrupting your friend, and at the proper pause points, check for understanding by feeding back the pertinent information in the form of a question.  This approach will confirm your understanding of his situation. The other added value perspective you may use to offer w

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The 4 “F’s” – How the 4 Colors Avoid Facing the Truth and Avoid Conflicts - Rosalie D. Gibbons, MFT and Gloria Manchester, CTACC “The Heart in Forgiveness” is a process designed by the writers to support you in releasing childhood hurts or other disappointments, regrets, or failures so that you can move forward in your life. As Oprah Winfrey has said, “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.” When someone offends, betrays, or deceives us, it is natural to feel frustrated, angry, hurt, and resentful. Our attention and focus zeroes in on the source of our injury, and we rapidly begin buil

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Today my son Chris and I had an interesting conversation about love. He is a White and therefore very introspective when it comes to observing human nature. I, on the other hand, am a Red so tend to discount emotions that seem to inflict the lovelorn. Still, even though I am missing the romance chip, I found the conversation interesting. It seems that Chris’s Yellow friend is addicted to falling in love. OK, addicted might be too strong a word, but he is strongly attracted to the high that one gets when the whole falling in love process begins. So, we will throw out the word addiction, but make no mistake…there are powerful chemicals inv

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I resolve to diet.

I resolve to exercise. I resolve to improve my relationship with a certain Blue. I resolve to (once again) work on my limitations. Does this sound familiar? As you read this, I have (most likely) failed at every one of my resolutions. Yet, every year I, along with millions of people worldwide, insist that this year will be different. One area I think we would all like to improve upon is our relationship with others. I admit that there are areas I can work on. Over ten years ago, I was given a book entitled Life’s Little Treasure Book on Wisdom. It is full of sa

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Over the river and through the woods seems mild compared to getting to Grandma’s house these days. All you want is to get your 2.5 children (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr051.pdf)  and their families together to enjoy a nice quiet holiday meal without the frenzied rush to get everyone to the next place. Sadly, family breakup is something most of us have experienced. Since the national average for divorce is near 50% for first marriages, your family probably resembles the Brady Bunch, with the yours, mine and ours thing going on—the blended family. These stepfamilies usually have many hurdles to overcome. This time of year can b

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Dear Jeremy, I work in a company with a little over 10,000 employees, and in the top leadership tier, I have two VPs that I’m currently dealing with that I’m not sure how to handle. They are both Red, and when they run their individual teams, they’re amazing, but when they work together on our executive team, they are constantly butting heads. What can I do to make this work? Gavin Dear Gavin, What you have described to me sounds like a classical Red on Red issue that actually isn’t too tough to resolve. Here’s what typically happens: Reds by nature love to fit into leadership roles, and why not? T

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Lately, I have been thinking about social networking and what personalities are drawn to it. For instance, I have accounts on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Eons, etc.--but don’t really participate. I don’t post, re-post, share, or poke. If anything, I am more of a voyeur. I will toggle through to see if there is anything interesting going on, and I do enjoy reading news from my scattered family. But, I have a hard time getting excited about the hen that my niece just bought for her Farmville farm, or working up a warm-fuzzy feeling about the plethora of cute cat posters that abound. And now, with the election heating up, I really don’t

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Create Performance in Your Relationships!

Imagine going to bed at night with one person and waking up next to a seemingly different person in the morning. What would it be like never knowing what to expect from the person next to you? Never knowing what kind of mood they’ll be in that day? Even to the most adventurous among us, it would prove tiresome very quickly. We rely on consistency in others in order to know where we stand and what to expect in a relationship. You cannot easily commit to something or someone you cannot understand. The tremendous power of the Color Code is its offering o

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Dear Jeremy, Any tips or experiences about Red-Blue relationships? Do you find that it really is a "Blood, Sweat, and Tears" combination? Thank you! Laura Dear Laura, Great question! I love it. "Blood, Sweat, and Tears" does just sound so ominous, doesn't it? I think it gets this nickname because roughly 85% of the conflicts that we deal with in training situations are of a Red-Blue nature. A lot of the personal coaching that we have done also has revolved around these two personalities. The fact of the matter is, a Red-Blue relationship is typically the hardest relatio

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While no one likes to deliver bad news, it’s something that most of us have had to do at some stage in life. Whether it’s announcing company redundancies, or telling a partner we’re moving on, it can sometimes take all we have to get the words out and our message across at the right moment. And then once it’s done, we’re often left wondering if perhaps we could have handled it a little better… There are a number of reasons why someone would want to avoid delivering bad news. Whites, for instance, might not feel confident about handling any potential conflict their news is likely to generate, while Yellows might not want to risk b

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