Personality Power

Discover Your Unique Profile--and Unlock Your Potential for Breakthrough Success

Shoya Zichy, Ann Bidou

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780814421239
• eBook ISBN: 9780814431184
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Personal Success
• Index: Psychology

This helpful book reveals a better way to find professional satisfaction and experience breakthrough success rather than searching for a new position or quitting and landing in the growing pool of unemployment.

Through helpful charts, relevant exercises, and inspiring success stories, you’ll learn how to leverage your natural talents and attain the professional fulfillment and recognition you deserve. Shoya Zichy’s Color Q model is a highly accurate professional assessment used by thousands of professionals worldwide that partners an extensive understanding of and involvement with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator with David Keirsey’s Four Temperaments model.

After completing the simple ten-minute assessment, you’ll gain helpful insights on how to:

• identify career blind spots,
• find ideal and least-preferred work environments,
• communicate with and coach others,
• and create a career road map toward achieving your professional goals.

You’ll also have the opportunity to read an in-depth chapter on your personality type, which will help you better understand your unique professional strengths and how to make the most of them. 

1

introduction

I SAT, STRANDED, in a muggy Asian airport. It had been a long, over-scheduled trip seeking new private banking clients. In the midst of a pile of debris left behind by the late-night floor sweepers, I noticed a dog-eared book. I picked it up and, from that moment, my view of the world was changed forever.

“If a man does not keep pace with others, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer,” it began with the frequently quoted Henry David Thoreau. The book, a since-discontinued presentation of the theories of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, outlined new insights into the way people take in information and make decisions. The contents confirmed what I had long sensed intuitively, having observed people with fascination since I was a child. The information hinted of a new framework to use with clients and associates.

Settling back in my Hong Kong office the next morning, I decided to categorize each of my customers according to their Jungian behavioral profiles. I used four colors to create a simple system that could be used by the support staff during my frequent absences. Each file included brief instructions for handling personal interactions. “When a Gold comes in, make sure all statements are up-to-date and organized in date-sequential order. If a Blue makes an appointment, call our investment guys in New York and get three new ideas.” There were four color groups of clients; each had its own service strategy.

Over the next few months our new business increased by 60 percent, primarily on word-of-mouth. My company benefited, but I did as well. I began to enjoy my clients more, my stress level went down, and, in time, my relationships outside of the office would improve as well.

For some ten years, I applied the same techniques to a growing and diverse client base: high-net-worth individuals in South America, white-robed sheiks in Abu Dhabi, shipping magnates in Athens, aristocratic landowners in Spain. No matter who or what, the color coding dotted their files and it worked—for men, women, young, old, and worldwide ethnicities, the results were universal.

Institutions reorganize and solid careers dematerialize overnight. With my firm in the throes of a major transition, I took some time off to go up to Maine and rethink my life direction. On the porch of my small seaside inn sat a man reading a book written by Isabel Myers, who had been deeply influenced by none other than Carl Jung. She had developed a new application for Jung’s work called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It was the life direction I was looking for.

As I discovered a worldwide network of MBTI books, seminars, tapes, and people, a new and strong sense of internal direction unfolded. Suddenly, the right people and events began to materialize. Jung would have dubbed it “synchronicity.”

Drawing on my corporate experience, I began pioneering unique ways of applying these ideas to workplace applications, such as team building, leadership development, and sales. And 35,000 attendees to my seminars later, my life is now completely focused on my coding system, which has evolved into a model called Color Q (www.ColorQPersonalities.com).

Evaluating people was key to survival during my unusual childhood; I was born a countess in Hungary. When my family fled the communists, we landed in the court of King Farouk of Egypt, where I played with his daughters in his 550-room palace. Later, we fled the horrifying bloodshed of Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser’s revolution.

I’ve turned what I learned then into a system that helps all of us define our unique strengths, pursue the best career, and reduce conflicts in key areas of our lives.

What Color Q Is Not

Color Q is not a labeling system denying the individuality of every person. It does not measure the impact of education, intelligence, mental health, special talents, economic status, motivation, drive, and environmental influences on the core personality type. There are billions of unique people on our planet and only four color groups. If you wonder what that leaves, I say the deepest and most important part of you—the part that always knows what it really wants and won’t be happy until it gets respect!

The framework is not gender specific. It works equally well for males and females. Both men and women are found in each personality style, though in some groups the percentages differ.

What Color Q Is

Color Q is about categorizing people—ourselves and others. It is based on the extensive research of “personality type” experts who, for the past seven decades, have laid the intellectual groundwork that serves as the basis of this book. There are many systems for understanding others. This is the one that I have found probes most deeply into the core of human behavior. It confirms that each personality style is natural, equal, observable, and predictable, and that each can be equally effective at work. Once mastered, the system provides practical ways to maximize our natural talents, as well as those of others.

Truly exceptional people always do so much more than is required. The only way to do that without severe burnout is from passion born of confidence. You are the right person doing the right thing in the right place, and enjoying it! Sound impossible? Not at all, for those who are true to themselves in spite of naysayers, parental expectations, and societal pressures. Use this book to reveal your road to being exceptional.

Color Q is also a tool for understanding the sometimes-incomprehensible behaviors of colleagues, bosses, clients (and even friends, dates, mates, and children!). Since so much of success depends on “emotional intelligence,” you’ll find your increased ability to “read people” perhaps the most valuable outcome of reading this book. Enjoy your new journey!

2

the self-assessment test

THE DUAL EPIDEMICS of workplace conflict and employee disengagement have reached alarming levels and need to be addressed immediately. Modern Survey, a human capital measurement firm, reported a record-breaking 70 percent level of U.S. employee disengagement in 2011. CPP, a provider of products and services for individual and organizational development (including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), compiled a 2008 “Human Capital Report” of 5,000 workers in nine countries. The results revealed U.S. employees spend 2.8 hours a week dealing with conflict, which equals a staggering $359 billion in paid hours per year.

This book is a tool to reverse these numbers.

The theory behind the Color Q system has been tested for decades on millions of people worldwide. For many individuals, including both authors of this book, the system has been career and life changing. The following self-assessment test is your key to this very powerful (and actually rather fun) professional and personal tool.

There are four parts to the Color Q assessment and one supplemental section. Together, they will take you about ten minutes to complete. Part I will test you for your Color Q primary personality color. This is who you are at your core, when no one’s looking.

Note: In the self-assessment you will be asked to select your preferences. A preference is not “I generally work with piles, but I’d prefer if I kept my desk clean.” What you generally choose to do is what you prefer. Slight or strong, there is always a preference.

Part I: Instructions

Part I has three sections. To begin, select one of the two choices in each line according to your first impulse, which is usually correct. There are no “right” or “wrong” answers, just like being right-handed or left-handed is neither right nor wrong. While you can use both, you use the preferred hand with less effort and better results. If you are truly torn between the two choices, it typically means you feel pressured to function in a certain way. Right now, set the guilt and pressure aside.

Choose your answer from either Column A or Column B. Each choice must be filled in, choosing the statement that describes you at least 51 percent of the time. You should wind up with a total of nine checkmarks in each of the sections (I, II, and III).

For example, the first set of choices reads: At least 51 percent of the time I tend to:

Which do you prefer most of the time? Accuracy or insights? Put a checkmark in the box next to “accuracy” or “insights” and move on to the second set of choices below it. You may not check off both boxes; check only the box where you have a slight or strong preference.

Part II: Instructions

Now read the short overview of your primary color. Does it ring true? If yes, continue to Part III to determine your backup style. If not, skip down to the section on “What to Do If This Doesn’t Ring True for You.”

GOLDS (46% of population)

Grounded, realistic, and accountable, Golds are the backbone of institutions of all kinds—corporate and public. They are society’s protectors and administrators who value procedures, respect the chain of command, and have finely tuned systems for everything. From raising children to running large divisions, Golds get involved in details and are known for following through and mobilizing others to achieve concrete goals. They are most interested in making lists, planning in advance, and dealing with what has worked in the past.

BLUES (10% of the population)

Theoretical, competitive, and always driven to acquire more knowledge and competence, Blues are unequaled when it comes to dealing with complex, theoretical issues and designing new systems. As natural skeptics, their first reaction is to criticize and set their benchmarks against which they measure everyone and everything. They are highly precise in thought and language, trusting only logic, not the rules or procedures of the past. Blues are future-oriented visionaries who do best in positions requiring strategic thinking. Then they move on with little interest in maintenance.

REDS (27% of the population)

Action-oriented, spontaneous, and focused on “now,” Reds need freedom to follow their impulses, which they trust over the judgment of others. Cool-headed and ever courageous, they get things done and handle a crisis better than most. Found in careers that provide freedom, action, variety, and the unexpected, they bring excitement and a sense of expediency. Work must be fun and the environment collegial. Reds resist schedules and hierarchies. Long-term pl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• People Profiled
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Self-Assessment Test
• 3 How to Use This Book for Fast Results
• 4 The Color Q Personality System: Its Foundation and History
• 5 Greens Overall
• 6 Green/Backup Gold Extroverts
• 7 Green/Backup Gold Introverts
• 8 Green/Backup Red Extroverts
• 9 Green/Backup Red Introverts
• 10 Reds Overall
• 11 Red/Backup Blue Extroverts
• 12 Red/Backup Blue Introverts
• 13 Red/Backup Green Extroverts
• 14 Red/Backup Green Introverts
• 15 Blues Overall
• 16 Blue/Backup Gold Extroverts
• 17 Blue/Backup Gold Introverts
• 18 Blue/Backup Red Extroverts
• 19 Blue/Backup Red Introverts
• 20 Golds Overall
• 21 Gold/Backup Blue Extroverts
• 22 Gold/Backup Blue Introverts
• 23 Gold/Backup Green Extroverts
• 24 Gold/Backup Green Introverts
• 25 Adjusting to the Workplace Styles of Others
• 26 Approach to Innovation: The Primary Styles
• 27 Negotiating Compensation
• 28 Generation Conflict or Personality Conflict?
• 29 Self-Coach Your Way to Success
• Notes
• Recommended Resources for Professional Development
• Index