May 27, 2015

Insights - Sunshine Yellow

Insights - Sunshine Yellow

Today we will take a look at our last colour profile, the sunshine yellow. As with the previous posts we will learn how to better relate and collaborate with them, so lets see what some of their characteristics are:

  • Social
  • Talkative
  • Easy going
  • People & feeling orientated
  • Outgoing

When you look at a sunshine yellow, the first thing you will see if that they are very talkative. They are also full of ideas of the future, which often stems from their infectious enthusiasm. They tend to be very open & honest by expressing their thoughts through both their body language and words. Sunshine yellows tend to be jazzed up just by being around other people and are often very social and the life of a party. They also don't tend to like to many rules and regulations, but rather seem them as general guidelines.

However, sometimes they may tend to finish off other peoples sentences which may make them come across as being very impatient. Like the fiery reds, they tend not to be good listeners and can be easily distracted if they are not kept stimulated.

Environmental clues

Sunshine yellows can often be identified from the following indicators at the workplace:

  • They tend to have a very disorganized and cluttered desk.
  • The walls tend to have motivational slogans & awards.
  • They like contact, so when talking to you they may make an alternate seating arrangement.

Interactions

What to do

As I mentioned above, sunshine yellows are very sociable, so when you interact with them try be friendly and amicable to them. Talk to them about their hobbies, sports or what their plans are for the weekend. In addition, whenever you talk to them try to be entertaining, stimulating and enthusiastic.

Try to include them early on in any plans, as they like to be involved. If you don't, they may try to 'hijack' the project as they believe that they have a better idea.

What not to do

Being the opposite of cool blues, they dislike being bombarded with too many facts and don't like it when you aren't optimistic. This can often cause issues as cool blues often focus on the fine details and issues in a plan and tend to come across as pessimistic. A tip for cool blues is when you have a lot of sunshine yellows, try not seem negative by directly pointing out all the possible flaws in a plan, but rather try phrase it as "That is a really great idea everyone, but have we considered...".

Sunshine yellows also tend to be very free spirited, so tying them down to a routine where they are unable to express their creativity will cause them to become very demotivated. The same goes if they are forced to work in solitude, instead of doing things together.

Scenario time

In one of my projects, we had a new developer join our team to assist us with our Android application. He joined at a time when I didn't know about the different colour profiles and now with hindsight I realize that he was a classical sunshine yellow. The reason I say this is that he was very outgoing and talkative, to the extent where he would ramble on and on everyday at our stand-up. His desk was always in a mess with papers, documents, manuals etc. scattered all over it.

Myself, being a blue/green colour, was always amazed at how someone could actually work in that chaos that was his desk. We never really spoke that much, possibly because I am more introverted and it was outside of my comfort zone to be social.

However, knowing what I know now, the right approach would have been to break through the "introversion barrier" and started to talk with him when getting a drink, or over lunch. Some good things could have come out of this, as sunshine yellows often have some good ideas, so to listen and interact with them could have been very beneficial. Even if nothing came of it, in the least it would have been some good skills to practice for future instances like that.

So that wraps up the topics on Insights. I hope you all enjoyed it and I would love to hear some of your comments below. In the next post we will be looking a feedback and the various ways in which you can go about providing it.

Until next time...keep learning!