I’m about to break one of my blog rules: talking about work. Normally I don’t divulge more than the odd vague comment however earlier this week I was sent with my team to a workshop session titled “The Colour Works”. I was very apprehensive to start with being initially asked to answer 25 airy-fairy questions structured as statements for which you had to rate as ‘most like you’ to ‘least like you’. Groaning at each one with a can’t-be-arsed with this sort of thing attitude and dreading two days of a hyperactive socialite trying to pry emotions out of me with forced games of ‘Simon says’. Group hug. Hippies.
So it was a surprise when I found myself having a good time. The course was based around the idea of four colours, each of those colours represent a similar grouping of personality traits. An individual’s personality is made up of many different traits in different proportions, and can therefore be represented visually by a certain order of these colours. Take a look at this colour wheel and see if you can work out what your predominant colour would be:

To help you decide a bit more, you can see that the right hand side of the wheel (red and yellow) are qualities of an extrovert, on the left hand side (blue and green) an introvert. The top of the wheel (blue and red) contain thinking qualities, but people in the bottom half of the wheel show more feeling characteristics. I was very proud to say I am very biased to the blue (97%) – the highest blue in the team. In other words, psychology officially shows that I am a geek. My colour order (blue, green, yellow, red) was then displayed for the two days on an authentic home-made Lego badge (genius idea I thought) and I was also provided with a 23 page document titled “Oliver Shingler: Personal Profile”. Now this is where it got quite scary. My entire personality was guessed by a computer after only 25 questions, and it was pretty accurate. Here are some direct quotes:

Logical, analytical and objective, Oliver is unlikely to be impressed or convinced by anything
other than reasoning based on solid, concrete facts. He is unlikely to be comfortable expressing
his inner feelings to strangers. He is seen as an unpretentious colleague who has a good
understanding of the way things work.

OK, so far pretty good, but it continues:

He displays little emotional response to situations which others may perceive as crises, and is usually seen to deal with them in a calm and cool way. He tries to use logical principles to make sense of the ideas that constantly arise in his mind.

Riiight, I think that describes me too….

Ever concerned with efficiency, (a place for everything and everything in its place),
he may neglect the human element, unwittingly causing stress in the process.

Yeah I get on people’s nerves.

He tends to mistrust people who he thinks are ignoring reality. He may feel under strain if he is
unclear about what is expected of him or if duties at work are subject to change at short notice.
He is reluctant to display his emotions to others. He will often do without something rather
than reach out to others to get it. He may seek to reduce his personal needs rather than be
dependent on other people. He conveys an image of stability and reliability – an image which
can be trusted.

Stupid people ignoring reality. Hang on, I’m sure I do that myself… so I mistrust myself? Could be true.

He is logical, objective and analytical with great reasoning power. He is not usually prepared to commit to high risk decisions…. He is reticent about expressing his feelings and may be rather slow to make decisions as he wants to gather all essential information before acting. He will support those he considers as friends but can feel rather pressured if made to act against what he considers as his better judgement.

I’ll let you make your own judgements on that! All the above information was taken from a 2 and a bit page overview. The report also contained several other pages detailing my strengths, weaknesses and ways to / not to communicate with me. Essentially the book in the wrong hands is a very specific guide on how to get on my nerves. I’ll now allow you to finalise a choice of predominant colour for yourselves (go on, leave a comment and let me know) and leave you with my personal favourite quote from the report:

Because of his well developed tolerance of himself and other people, Oliver may appear detached and disinterested.