TEAM BUILDING AND COLORED BRAIN
Teams are everywhere in our lives. When two or more people come together to accomplish a task they are working in a team. From the time where students worked in a group on a University assignment or while playing football we experience team work. It has been observed that individual’s exhibit different behaviors in team as compared to working alone.
Teams are at the heart of success of any company small or large. In any business or organization better team work will lead to enhanced performance. Are you experiencing frustration or feel stuck while communicating or interacting with your team, then you are not alone. Greater synergy in your team will lead to more productivity and more profit while reducing time spent on resolving conflict.
There are many positive aspects in working in a team but a few of the pit falls include giving up independence, sometime free rider have to be tolerated in a team and many times teams become dysfunctional. Few of the reasons for dysfunctional teams include, lack of trust, poor communication, conflicts on resources and accountability.
Organizing teams for peak performance can be challenging to say the least. It has been experience that many individuals who are top performers end up doing poorly when they are put in a particular team. On the other hand a mediocre individual when made part of a team becomes outstanding. Why does this happen? Can we predict this? What are ways we can use to optimize our teams for high performance?
Have you ever had a brilliant idea, wow this is something amazing, let’s do this and I can make it happen. This can be the next big idea. Then you discuss it with your team and then they say what are you talking about? And you say what is wrong with this people, and you feel kind of stuck. Well let me tell you that your team is looking at things in a different way and they each have a different perception.
As a leader of a team, how can you install better leadership in your team and motivate them to accomplish tasks.
Would you like to communicate clearly with your team, wouldn’t it be useful if you knew how the brain processes information or gets ambiguity relief. You can literally transform and increase trust of your team and then build confidence in your team by using the Colored Brain. Using the colored brain we can distinguish individuals and group them according to how they will behave in certain circumstances.
On the basis of research carried out by Mr. Arthur Carmazzi, we can predict the success of a particular individual working in a team and also the overall success of that team.
Did you know that the brain processes information for different people in a different ways and research has divided them into four types?The colored brain divides individuals in to four groups i.e. Red, Green, blue and Purple:
- Green Brain ( Chaotic processing)
- Nothing is connected
- Achieves clarity through action
- Needs feedback
- Sees big fuzzy picture
- Needs to see or experience progress
- Gets over things quickly
- Makes more mistakes than other colors
- Recovers faster from mistakes than other colors
- Red Brain – (Linear Processing)
- Needs Clarity
- Structured
- Objective
- Gets clarity through analysis
- Long term perspective
- May appear insensitive
- Makes less mistakes than other colors
- Takes longer to recover from mistakes than other colors
- Purple Brain – (Relational processing)
- Everything is connected through data
- Needs lots of information to get clarity
- Detailed
- Must know options
- Difficult to delegate
- Orderly nature
- Misunderstood as insensitive
- Usually take long to make decisions
- Blue Brain – (Intuitive processing)
- Everything is connected through sensitivity
- Sensitive to surrounding and Environment
- Insightful and intuitive
- Multi-tasking
- Natural ability to organize
- May take on others problems
- Make decisions based on intuition
- Intuitive with people and groups
SCENARIO:
Boss: Purple Brain (Relational processing)
Secretary: Green Brain (Chaotic processing
In this scenario a purple brain boss gives an assignment to a Green brained secretary. The purple brained boss is very detail oriented and likes to do things himself. He spends a long time getting the details. On the other hand the green brained secretary works in a chaotic fashion and needs positive feedback. The boss told the secretary to prepare a report covering many details about the company. The boss expected a report of about 100 pages covering all aspects. However, the secretary submitted a brief report of only 15 pages just covering the essentials.
The purple brained boss was not satisfied with the result and started to blame the secretary for not submitting a detailed report. This upset the secretary, who made the best effort but since she was green brained she was working on many other important things.
In this scenario, this conflict could have been easily avoided if the two individuals were aware of each other’s colored brain. The boss would not have judged the secretary based on his colored brain.
The colored brain is a great tool in helping teams to achieve peak performance and promote greater synergy in the team.
