Rainbow Thinking and Acting!

Contribution Respect Teamwork

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Key Point: Learn to think of yourself as a complete system and then behave with that in mind. When you and I begin to operate from this framework, we can and will learn how to more effectively lead others and subsequently ourselves. The following is an excerpt from an exceptional article in McKinsey&Company:  

“To help managers and employees understand each other, many corporate-education tools use simplified typing systems to describe each party’s makeup. These tests often classify people relatively quickly, and in easily remembered ways: Team members might be red or blue, green or yellow, for example. There are benefits in this approach, but in our experience it does not go far enough and those using it should understand its limitations. We all possess the full range of qualities these assessments identify. We are not one thing or the other: We are all at once, to varying degrees.” 

As the superb brain researcher Dr. Dan Siegel explains, “We must accept our multiplicity, the fact that we can show up quite differently in our athletic, intellectual, sexual, spiritual—or many other—states. A heterogeneous collection of states is completely normal in us humans.”

Thinking that we are “one color” and ignoring the reality of our personal multiplicity is in my view, intellectually lazy.  As Erica Ariel Fox points out her exceptional book Winning from Within, “We can achieve self-understanding, without drowning in unwieldy complexity, by concentrating on the Big Four of our ‘inner team.’”

See the “Big Four” here. 

Character Moves: 

  1. Learn to lead change, which is a required capability in this world. In order to do this, we need to understand how to change ourselves first. That means having the ability to concentrate and apply our multiplicity; as an example, by applying the Big Four of our INNER TEAM. Do you do that? 
  2. Determine a circumstance you’re currently in where you can or have applied your full inner team! Write it out on a page using the above Big Four framework. What did you learn about yourself? 
  3. To complete yourself as a leader consult others who can help you complete your own inner team thinking. People who are at various levels on the inspirational, analytical, emotional, and/or practical continuum, surround us. Connect with them. 

Deploy your INNER TEAM in The Triangle, 

Lorne  

Edited and published by Garrett Rubis

One Millennial View: These days, a common view regarding almost any situation, whether at work or in life, seems to be our generation’s necessity to explore all options. Respectfully acknowledge all viewpoints, and throw stubbornness aside. Even when we disagree, it’s simply “not chill” to be too closed minded, and it’s no surprise that a successful leadership system encourages exploring all corners of the “inner team” to generate the best results. 

– Garrett Rubis