Are You A Blue?

If you’re not, dealing with a Blue can be quite challenging especially if you’re a Green or an Orange. Everyone has some colour combination but one colour dominates each one of us. What does that mean?

True Colors is a personality system which can help people better understand themselves and others with a simple system which is not as complicated as Myers-Briggs. You can read more about it here: https://truecolorsintl.com/about-us/what-is-true-colors/

Blues Can be Frustrating

If you’ve met someone who is predominantly Blue, you’ll want to be with them because of their calm and loving manner. However, to work with them can be a big challenge and you may want you to tear your hair out trying to reason them logically. Why? Because their world is one which they want to help at all costs. They see the whole world and its people with true rose-colored glasses. They “feel sorry” for others or refuse to see dangers from others even to themselves. The person in front of them could literally shoot the Blue, and Blue will still try to find a way to justify the shooting as incredible as that sounds.

It makes you wonder if they value themselves at all. It’s almost like dealing with someone who has been physically abused but keeps returning or continuing to live with the abuser knowing full well that the abuser could someday go too far and kill Blue.

Blues on the Job

Usually, in every day life, we can accept the difference and even marvel how Blues can “love everybody”, however, in business, Blues can become a detriment to the organization.

Non-profits mostly attracts Blue types – helpers, self-sacrificing, always there when you need them even if it means tremendous inconvenience to themselves or their families.

For line workers in non-profits, this can be a good thing especially when Blues work in the care giving world such as hospitals, care homes or hospice environments. However, because their thinking almost borders on irrational, clashes can happen with those who are more concerned with the bottom line – paying for the services being delivered. Blues response is often – “Who cares about money? They need help.” While Orange and Green types will respond, “We can’t spend what we don’t have.” What a challenge!

How Can the Difference be Reconciled?

How do you get these people to work together effectively? Communicating – not in meetings but communicating with one another every day so that the “tug and pull” becomes a symbiosis of directed energy taking into account what can be done with the money available and the need to help others.

Appreciation of one another’s strengths builds quality relationship. The key is communicating every single day in some way, on the job, not in meetings.

The pay-off is that, as individuals everyone grows because they learn something valuable from each other – a different way of looking at the world.

In terms of relationships, because there is respect for one another’s differences, the relationship becomes stronger. For the organization, this symbiosis creates an environment of more balanced and solid decision-making – everyone’s voices blended together.

Though you may think that True Colors is simplistic, think about the impact it could have in your organization amongst all the people involved – staff, board of directors, volunteers, beneficiaries of your services, donors, sponsors, government agencies and all the other groups who are involved with your organization.

The more we understand each other, the better we can harmonize and work with one another’s differences for the best possible outcomes.

Lorraine Arams

On Contract Only