What is Insights Discovery®?

What is Insights Discovery®? 

Jonny from Coaching and Motivation Limited is a licensed Insights Discovery® practitioner who is unbelievably passionate about the value that Insights Discovery® brings to elevating team performance. The tool provides individuals a framework to better understand themselves and others, bringing about benefits such as better collaboration, stronger communication and, as a result, sustainable high performance. But what exactly is Insights Discovery® and why is it so useful? 

Insights Discovery® was developed by Andi and Andy Lothian in order to help people understand more about the way in which they like to work and be treated by others. The Lothians based their work on the psychology of the famous Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. Jung argued that human beings are all found somewhere along two crucial spectrums. Firstly, we all have a position somewhere on the spectrum between being highly introverted and highly extroverted. Secondly, we also find ourselves somewhere on the spectrum between having a strong preference for rationally calculated (thinking) based decisions and a strong preference for emotion (feeling) based decisions. It goes without saying that somebody who is highly introverted with a high preference for thinking will be very different to a person who is highly extroverted with a high preference for feeling. The Lothians took these ideas and realised that these critical differences between individuals will mean that different people will approach work, and social interactions, from very different perspectives and will thus benefit from being treated, and managed, in a way which actually aligns with these unique preferences. This inspired them to create a world-renowned personality test, Insights Discovery®, for working out whether people have a preference for introversion or extraversion and for thinking or feeling. The Lothians referred to these preferences as ‘Energies’ and gave them all names based on colours as follows:

· Extrovert thinking preferences are referred to as ‘Red Energy’

· Extrovert feeling preferences are referred to as ‘Yellow Energy’ 

· Introvert feeling preferences are referred to as ‘Green’ Energy

· Introvert thinking preferences are referred to as ‘Blue’ Energy

Each of us has a unique combination of the four colour energies which come together to give us our own unique work and social preferences. By completing an Insights Discovery® profile, you will find out the order in which you prefer to use these four energies as part of a detailed and personalised report that is generated for you after you complete the Insights Discovery® online self-assessment questionnaire. Some people find they have a very balanced profile with no huge preference between the colours whereas others have massive differences between their top and bottom colour preferences. Once you have your own profile you can compare it to other colleagues in your organisation who have also completed the profile to see how similar or different your colour preferences are. Crucially, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ when it comes to these preferences and there is certainly no link to performance in respect to which colour comes top in any individuals profile. However, it is immediately obvious that there are huge differences between the ways in which different individuals like to work and how they tend to come across to others between profiles so reading your own profile and seeing, and discussing, those of colleagues is incredibly powerful in helping people to understand more about how to work alongside others with different profiles to their own. One of the mantras of Insights is ‘treat others as they want to be treated’ and you can see the vast differences of how people want to be treated by looking at the tag lines for the four colours:

· Green Energy: Show Me You Care

· Blue Energy: Give Me Details

· Yellow Energy: Involve Me

· Red Energy: Be Bright, Be Brief, Be Gone

Clearly, to take one very obvious example, working with somebody with a very high preference for Red Energy is going to be very different to working with someone with a huge preference for Green Energy. By completing Insights Discovery® profiles you will be able to uncover and cater to these individual preferences within your Team and, crucially, your Team will realise that you are investing in them as people and supporting and empowering them to be the individuals that they truly are. 

The benefits of completing an Insights Discovery® Profile

Insights Discovery® offers a powerful way for people to understand themselves and each other more deeply. As more individuals across your team or organisation complete a profile, there is a positive behavioural ripple effect which helps people learn how to treat others in the way they like to be treated. When this happens, you will see huge gains in terms of the engagement and wellbeing of your people, along with a reduction in unproductive conflict. This isn’t ‘tick box’ compliance style wellbeing, this is actual wellbeing based on your staff feeling empowered to live and work by their own values whilst honouring and respecting different values and preferences of their colleagues. This brings huge benefits to your people and the inevitable by-product of this sort of highly engaged workforce is vastly improved productivity levels within your organisation which has been created in a subtle, sustainable and people centred way. 

Next steps

If you would like to find out more about Insights Discovery®, please drop Jonny an email at jonny@coachingandmotivation.co.uk

Costings:

· Insights Discovery® Profiles: £250 per person when debriefed as a Team (see below)

· Team debriefs: £1000 for a half day session or £1750 for a full day session

· Personalised individual 2 hour debrief: £400 (inclusive of the report)