Profiling and Psychometric Tools: Insights Discovery
Understanding ourselves – and how we work with other people – is an important part of effective leadership, teamwork and personal development.
At Acorn, we use a range of profiling and psychometric tools when working with individuals, teams and organisations. Each has its own approach, strengths and applications, but all are designed to provide greater insight, encourage better conversations and help people turn that understanding into positive action.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a closer look at some of the tools we use with our clients, exploring what they are, how they work and where they can add value.
We start with Insights Discovery, a highly accessible and engaging approach to understanding personality preferences and working relationships.
What is it?
Insights Discovery is a psychometric tool and, like many psychometric tools, it is often used alongside coaching or team development to enhance our self-awareness and understanding and value of other people. It provides a common language to enable conversations that result in improved working relationships.
Used well it can make a big difference in how we show up at work, our relationships and how much we enjoy what we do.
Developed from the work of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, Insights Discovery is designed to help people understand themselves, understand others, and develop their working relationships.
The Insights Discovery methodology uses an accessible and memorable four colour model to help people understand their style, their strengths and the value they bring to the team.
This psychometric uses the shared language and model to increase our understanding of ourselves in relation to others and improve communication within organisations.
Who’s it for?
Insights Discovery is an effective profiling tool for individuals and teams at all levels within an organisation, whether they’re looking to develop themselves, their team effectiveness or wanting to lead others with authenticity.
Five benefits of Insights Discovery
1. Greater self-awareness
We never get tired of seeing Insights Discovery in action and we’ve lost count of the “penny drop” moments for people. Something clicks into place about themselves or how a relationship is working – or not, as the case may be – and the path forward becomes clear.
Insights Discovery helps people recognise their own preferences, strengths and behaviours, and understand how these can affect the way they work with others.
2. Better conversations and communication
It’s all about the conversation. The four-colour model is incredibly accessible, creating a common language that helps people talk openly about how they work and communicate. This can facilitate conversations that transform relationships across teams and organisations.
3. A better understanding of relationships
From start to finish, an Insights Discovery process focuses on self-awareness and also “me in relation to others”. The four colours laid out on a wheel provide a physical representation of relationship dynamics, helping people see where there may be similarities, differences or potential tensions. As a result, the insights and actions stick in the memory long after your workshop.
4. Greater flexibility in how we work with others
Insights Discovery celebrates who you are whilst giving you the tools to tune up or down your preferences and style to get the best out of others. It’s not about changing who you are; it’s about developing the flexibility to adapt your approach when it will help you communicate and work more effectively with different people.
5. Insight that feels personal and relevant
With 25 rounds of questions, it takes around 20 minutes to complete the questionnaire. The result is a profile so uncanny that people often ask us if we’ve been following them or speaking to people they know! We haven’t, honest, it’s just that clever. The result is a highly personal starting point for exploring behaviour, relationships and development.
Putting insight into action
The real value of any profiling or psychometric tool is not simply the profile or report it produces. It is what happens as a result – the conversations it starts, the understanding it creates and the changes people make in how they work with themselves and others.
Insights Discovery provides a memorable and accessible framework for exploring these things. Used alongside coaching, team development or leadership development, it can help individuals and teams develop a greater understanding of themselves and each other, and turn that understanding into more effective working relationships.
But Insights Discovery is just one of the tools in Acorn’s toolkit.
Next up in this series is Lumina Spark – another powerful approach to understanding personality, preferences and behaviour, with a different perspective on how we show up at work and in our relationships with others.
We’ll explore what makes Lumina Spark distinctive, how it can be used with individuals and teams, and the ways it can support personal and organisational development.
Further information about Insights Discovery can be found at:
https://www.insights.com/products/insights-discovery/
Insights Discovery is © The Insights Group Limited.
