common language

There are a lot of leadership and personality assessments out there, in addition to management/customer service philosophies. From strengths quest to the fish philosophy there are a lot of choices. My office has tried a few, but I think the best options out there create a common language. True Colors is one of my favorites, primarily because of the simplicity of it and how it can create a common language among an organization.

True colors is a personality assessment, and the result of one's assessment outlines four colors each representing a personality type respectively and ranks them based on your personality.... I am not doing it justice. Here is a direct quote from the website...

True Colors™ is a model for understanding yourself and others based on your personality temperament. The colors of Orange, Green, Blue and Gold are used to differentiate the four central personality styles of True Colors™.

Each of us has a combination of these True Colors that make up our personality spectrum, usually with one of the styles being the most dominant.

So for instance my true colors are green (very high) then orange, gold and blue (very little). This might seem complicated but with a half day training and everyone in your organization having done the assessment it is a great way to foster conversation about conflict resolution, motivation and group dynamics. Using the colors is less threatening. It's easier to say, "well he is gold and you are orange so your approach to getting the work done is very different". I find these conversations to be very helpful and much easier to have with staff and colleagues. While I like the MBTI and strengths quest, I find 4 letters or 5 strengths to be much more difficult to remember and even more difficult to use as a common language among members of an organization. 

Another simple approach I like using to create a common language...

Admittedly, this is a little on the cheesy side but hear me out. Two years ago we read this book (just click on the bucket to connect to the amazon page for the book) in the orientation office, and the phrase "how full is your bucket?" became a part of my daily conversations with the senior level student staff. The bucket represents someone's level of happiness, and encourages the reader to do things that fill the buckets of those around you. I warned you this was cheesy, but if you can see past it, it does provide an organization with a common language and can enhance the experience of its members.  When I would ask a fellow staff member, "how full is your bucket?" they knew what I meant and could easily reply. If they said "low!” I knew I needed to do something to help them out and boost their mood. I like this because it is a question with only five words; it gets better results than the generic "how are you?", and helped the staff help each other.