Location: Horta, Azores
To all the readers of this blog post, make sure to ask upon our students’ return home whether they be yellow. Or green? Blue perhaps? Of course, you’re most likely to see red (statistically on Argo, that is). Now you might be thinking. Surely THEY are not COWARDLY. They’ve almost conquered the North Atlantic! Nor can they still be hurling overboard after you’d thought they’d found their sea legs. And I mean really, what’s there to be sad about when this clean ocean breeze greets us each day with a cool kiss on the cheek? As for being mad at their arrival, try, I dare you. But do ask about their color! Or rather, see how well you really know them and try to guess. See, yesterday; we became awash with color. Now, I’m referring to leadership color profiling, although ironically, a most unfortunate accident occurred when Will’s red dock mural paint was kicked over by a passerby, and the clean-up effort using a freshwater hose went awry, coating our Ivory White hull paint with red polka dots! That was easy enough to clean up, but our crew, however, may never be cleansed of their shade. So what is this all about? A list of statements was read out, and each of us was asked to rate how true each statement was from 1 to 10. They were scenarios taken with various angles, and the score you assigned would be later added to the scores of all the statements, which were angled towards each other and given an arbitrary color. In the end, we each had a cumulative score for each color and were thus categorized. As previously hinted, red was a clear winner, with maybe 80% of our students seeing all of it. Again, that doesn’t mean they were flushed with blood in anger. No, no, reds are strategic, numbers people, leading with solid, well-thought-out plans based on data. Suddenly, once positioned in our respective groups in the salon, the smug grins came across faces as everyone took stock of their fellow color mates, grins which, in most cases, said, “That makes so much sense.” Yellow chased up the numbers with a total of 5 goal and results-focused team players. Yellows are known for being hands-on, tackling challenges, and being task oriented. The greens came up next with 2 of the best (subjectively). Greens are your people, people. Leadership focused on relationship and team value. Blue? Well, the entire blue group of 1 was admittedly distracted, creating a masterpiece in the galley as they were simultaneously head cheffing a meal about which we’d heard literally weeks before. And this is the perfect example of a blue, an ideas person, a big dreamer, seeker of alternative solutions. So what we were beginning to understand is that there are different styles of leadership based on our inherent qualities and perspectives. Now we could see, categorized before us, the differences and likenesses between our prevailing leadership styles and a little deeper into the ways we interact with each other on Argo. We prompted a discussion about how the various colors present themselves in the world and how to identify and work through conflicts between the traits of each color’s style. Of course, it’s a gross oversimplification to suggest that all could be put into one of 4 leadership boxes. Try to think more of a ven-diagram-sort-of-thing, where one could overlap with multiple styles or find an even spread between them all!
So be prepared to be told, “Mom, you’re such a green!” the next time you offer to take the neighbors a fruit cake and be prepared to be told, “It’s because I’m a blue” the next time the house is upgraded to be more like a seagoing vessel with every spare space being converted to storage space for food. There’s a bucket of seawater on the floor for washing dishes. And feel free to say, “You should be more yellow,” next time the laundry is found in a heap three weeks and many bad smells past expiry, but understand they’re not all as red as you’d like to wish and probably won’t prompt a family job wheel with shared responsibility!