Why Personality Matters: Building Intentional Leadership and Safer Teams
Episode 074
Sep 25, 2024
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In today's fast-paced world, businesses and organisations constantly seek ways to improve communication, reduce errors, and boost team performance.
While leadership skills, procedures, and safety management systems have played their part in this pursuit, one critical aspect is often overlooked: personality diversity.
By understanding personality traits and how they influence behaviours, leaders can tailor their approach to manage teams better and create safer, more efficient workplaces.
Through tools like E-Colours, we explore how personality diversity can transform leadership and team performance.
Today, we welcome our Guest, Lewis Senior, co-founder and CEO of Equilibria, a global leader in personality diversity and intentional leadership. Lewis co-created E-Colours, a tool used worldwide and our personality diversity tool of choice, to help individuals and teams improve communication, reduce errors, and enhance performance by understanding personality diversity.
His passion is helping people live and lead with conscious intent, leveraging their strengths and managing potential limiters.
The Importance in Leadership and Team Dynamics
Personality influences how we interact with others, process information, and respond to different situations.
In high-risk industries, where quick decisions and safety protocols are paramount, understanding personality traits can help prevent accidents and improve communication between team members.
Historically, safety has been approached from a technical and procedural angle. Still, as Lewis Senior points out, it's often personality that plays a more significant role in how people react on the job.
When Lewis worked as an HSE manager on oil rigs in the early 2000s, he witnessed accidents and near-misses that couldn't be explained simply by procedural failures.
One night, during a fatality investigation, a crew member named Kevin Bartow raised a profound question: "Why don't you ask us how we can get hurt relative to our personality?"
This moment marked a turning point for Lewis and the birth of E-Colours.
It became clear that understanding each person's personality – their strengths, motivators, and potential limiters – was key to preventing accidents and improving safety culture.
What are E-Colours and How Do They Work?
E-Colours is a personality diversity tool created by Equilibria to help individuals and teams improve communication, reduce errors, and enhance performance. The tool assigns individuals a combination of four colours – red, yellow, blue, and green – that represent different personality traits and behavioural tendencies:
Red: The Doer
The part of your personality that helps you take action and get things done.
Yellow: The Socialiser
The part of your personality that helps you interact and engage with others
Blue: The Relator
The part of your personality that helps you empathise with and support others
Green: The Thinker The part of your personality that helps you to plan and analyse information
Each person receives a unique combination of these colours, known as their E-Colours, which reflects their dominant personality traits.
For instance, someone with predominantly yellow and blue E-Colours may be empathetic and people-oriented but may need to manage the tendency to jump into action impulsively or overthink decisions.
E-Colours enable individuals and teams to communicate more effectively by helping them recognise and appreciate their own personality traits as well as those of others.
For example:
Understanding that a team member with dominant red E-Colours might prioritise swift results over relationship-building can help diffuse potential conflicts.
Similarly, a person with strong green E-Colours may need more time to analyse and process information before deciding, which can be vital for teamwork and safety-critical environments.
Improving Communication and Reducing Errors
Effective communication is at the heart of successful teamwork, but it's often derailed by misunderstandings stemming from personality differences.
Lewis recalls working with teams in high-risk environments, where critical safety decisions were sometimes delayed because individuals hesitated to speak up. By understanding personality diversity, teams can address these barriers.
One of the ways E-Colours helps is through a concept called "Pause and Play."
This simple tool encourages individuals to "pause" before reacting to a situation and then "play" when they're ready to respond intentionally.
For example, someone who is impulsive might need to "pause" and think before jumping into action, while someone who tends to overthink might need to push themselves to "play" and speak up. The result is a more conscious, intentional approach to communication.
By introducing E-Colours to high-risk industries, Lewis has seen a significant reduction in errors and accidents. Teams become more aware of their own behaviours and those of others, leading to better collaboration and decision-making.
One notable example is the introduction of E-Colours to a drilling rig in Nigeria, where crew safety and team performance improved dramatically after adopting the tool.
The Broader Impact in Education and Beyond
The power of E-Colours isn't limited to workplaces. Lewis has expanded its reach into education with remarkable results.
Introducing E-Colours to schoolchildren has shown improvements in everything from graduation rates to reduced bullying. Students as young as seven learn how to use the tool to understand their own personality traits and manage their behaviours through the "Pause and Play" method.
One key outcome of E-Colours in schools is that students who typically shy away from speaking up in class – often those with blue and green E-Colours – feel empowered to contribute.
E-Colours has helped schools increase student engagement and overall academic performance by giving them the tools to manage their personalities.
Lewis believes that if more educational institutions adopted E-Colours, it could have a profound effect on young people's development, equipping them with the emotional literacy and conversational skills they need to thrive in the workplace and life.
He hopes that these students, equipped with self-awareness and better communication skills, will become more effective and compassionate leaders.
Living with Intention: The Power of Conscious Leadership
Living and leading with intention is a key message Lewis shares with the world. It's about being mindful of how you interact with others and making deliberate choices about how to respond in any given situation.
This approach has personal benefits, too.
Lewis shared a pivotal moment in his life when, after years of overcommitting to helping others (many of whom didn't want help), he found himself facing a health crisis.
During his recovery, he made four key promises to change how he lived and worked, including committing to more intentional relationships and a balanced life.
Conscious leadership is about recognising that your actions – or inactions – influence those around you. Tools like E-Colours help leaders be more intentional in communicating, delegating, and engaging with their teams.
By understanding the personalities within their teams, leaders can create a more inclusive, supportive environment that values each person's strengths and addresses their potential limiters.
Final Thoughts
Personality diversity can transform leadership and team dynamics when understood and leveraged correctly. Tools like E-Colours enhance communication, reduce errors, and cultivate a deeper understanding of ourselves and others.
Whether in high-risk industries, educational settings, or family dynamics, recognising personality's role in our interactions is key to living and leading with conscious intent.
Using E-Colours, leaders can build stronger, more effective teams that perform better and work safer. As Lewis Senior's journey shows, embracing personality diversity isn't just a tool for better performance – it's a pathway to more intentional, meaningful interactions in all aspects of life.
"Focus on the dash," and make every moment count by understanding and embracing your own personality and that of those around you.
Tell your friends about the power of personality – it's time we all started living with intention.
Discover Your E-Colours
Ready to unlock your full potential and lead with conscious intent?
Take the E-Colours assessment today and transform your leadership, team dynamics, and personal interactions by embracing personality diversity.
"Focus on the Dash" - start living and leading with more intention!
Resources
LinkedIn: Lewis Senior
Learn
E-Colours Personality Diversity
Listen
E063 - Boosting Supervisors: 8 Tips to Better Understand Yourself, Others and Create Inclusion
E029 - How Important are Personality Diversity Tools in Learning about Yourself?
Read
E Colours and You: A Pathway to Improved Communication and Relationships
Why Emotions, Mindfulness, and Personality Diversity Matter Together
5 Considerations to Encourage Speaking Up for Safety and Reducing Conversational Barriers
AGCC Article: E Colours tool enhances communication and safety in high-risk industries
About the Show
Welcome to "In Conversation with the Safety Collaborators," the go-to podcast for anyone passionate about safety culture and leadership. Immerse yourself in insightful discussions where we explore the real-world challenges and triumphs of high-risk, high-hazard industries such as Oil & Gas, Renewables, Marine, Transport, Rail, and EPCM.
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