I work in Human Resources.  It’s important for our employees to know if we are in the office when they come to the department with questions. The admin of our department (a purist Blue) sets up a weekly meeting reminder for us to submit our calendar for the following week to her by Thursday morning at 8:30 AM.  Seems simple, right?  The question really is, when is the deadline?

We have three of the four of the color personalities represented in our department.  The majority of us are Blue personalities.  This makes sense, given Blue’s natural talent to serve others.  Many of us think the calendar is silly, but we do what the admin requests. Well, some of us do.

What I find interesting is how important this calendar is to her and the random value that is assigned to it by the different color personalities.  

The Blue personalities submit it ahead of the deadline. Personally, I send it Wednesday afternoon.  It’s one of the tasks I do before I leave for the day on Wednesday.  If I happen to forget and send it Thursday morning before 8:30, I feel late and apologize to her for the delay.  On the off chance that I miss it totally, I get an email from the admin, and feel as though I was called to the principal’s office.

The White personalities in the group see no reason to submit their calendar and be beholden to others in that way.  They like their independence and feel that no one needs to know where they are every day. 

This is somewhat true of the Yellow personalities as well.  “No one needs to know where I am. I’m here somewhere,” said one of my yellow team members.    

Their opinions manifest differently than the White personalities, who show up blank on the calendar. The Yellow personalities hand in their info at the last minute, because they know it annoys the controlling Blue.

The problem originally occurred with a bright, sparkly Yellow in our department.  She knew the deadline was 8:30 and would submit her calendar closer and closer to the deadline.  First it was 8:15, then 8:20, then 8:29 AM.  

This infuriated our admin, the Blue personality.  When she confronted the Yellow co-worker, the Yellow personality said, “The deadline is 8:30 and 8:29 is before 8:30, so I submitted it on time.  It wasn’t late.”  

This was unacceptable to the purist Blue. She ranted to me about how lazy and inconsiderate our co-worker was.  She even tried to get our HR Director to reprimand the Yellow.  He’s a White personality and had no interest in starting conflict over something so small. Clearly, the deadline meant something different to each of the color personalities. 

I tried to help when she vented to me how she needed ALL the schedules on the calendar otherwise it looked bad on her. I said, “I don’t think it looks bad on you.  It simply shows that the person did not send you anything.  Leave it blank, and send the calendar as you would.”  So that’s what she does.  She recently said to me that leaving it blank isn’t working either, because team members send it late and she is re-sending the calendar with corrections.

What is a deadline, really?  In our department, it means different things to different people.  Make sure you are not imposing your definition on others.  If you’d like buy-in from team members, tell them why you are doing something and why you need help.  Tell them why you need this information and what is affected when you don’t get it on time.  Taking 100% responsibility for our communication means working on our part of the communication, too.

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Mary Frances Mika is a Blue who has been facilitating Color Code classes for years. She has a degree in Psychology and has PHR, SHRM-CP, and CPTD certifications.  When she’s not training, Mary Frances connects with her White secondary self by gardening, bird watching, and reading.  She loves to see the impact the Color Code has on her participants.