#7: Which Colour Are You?
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No, not your favourite colour. Nor the colour of your T-shirt. We're talking about which of the HBDI colours you are. Red, Yellow, Blue, or Green?
No idea what we're talking about? Allow us to explain.
HBDI stands for Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument and it was created by Ned Herrmann in the 1970s. At its core, the HBDI model recognises that each person possesses four distinct thinking quadrants. These quadrants represent different cognitive preferences and thinking styles, ranging from analytical and logical thinking to creative and intuitive approaches. Over 2 million people have undergone the HBDI test and completed their profile, across 45 countries. So it's safe to say that it's popular.
How the Colours Work
As we mentioned earlier, there are four quadrants of the brain that Herrmann splits into Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green.
The four colours can also be splits into 'sides' and 'halves' of the brain:
Now, whilst most people have a dominant colour, we all use all the colours sometimes. For example, whilst you may be a Red, there are times when you need to channel your Green, perhaps for planning a trip or creating a spreadsheet. Furthermore, there are a handful of people who don't have a dominant colour and flit between all four. These people are often indecisive.
Benefits of Understanding Your Colour
By understanding yourself better you could ‘play to your strengths’, thus using your time to do more of the activities that are in your quadrant. Additionally, ‘use’ the people around you for the quadrants where you are not as dominant to build ‘cognitively diverse’ teams. As a result of better understanding others, you can communicate?in ‘their language’, give feedback in the way that they need to hear it and understand the weaknesses in your team.
Additionally, using the?Whole Brain Thinking theory of decision-making, we can help leverage our own preferences, and our not-so-preferred preferences, to make faster and better choices.
The final main benefit is that 'whole-brained teams' are 66% more efficient than homogenous teams because they utilise all four quadrants. The colours were never meant to work alone. They work best together, using each quadrant's skills. Herrmann International has written an excellent whitepaper called ‘Inclusive Leadership Playbook‘: This explains how leaders should embrace diversity and found that ‘whole-brained teams’ are substantially more effective.
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Complete Your Profile
Our HBDI training helps each person to understand themselves, their colleagues, and everyone else better. Furthermore, you will be able to sell to the ‘whole buyer’ and influence better. This is because you will learn how to ‘talk in the other person’s language’, and appreciate their unique strengths. Complete your HBDI profile today.
So contact us to find out how we can help you to achieve more. Our qualified HBDI Training practitioners are from your industry and can provide training on any one of our products.
Further HBDI Resources
If you're intrigued by how else HBDI can help you and want to find out more, then we have plenty of HBDI resources for you!
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