I now understand my Dad!

How did you find out about our course in Building Self-Belief?

I found out about it from Sam from Spear – the way he described it made it sound really interesting and I thought it could benefit me in the future.

What for you was the most memorable bit?

Right at the end we were doing a team exercise and we had to work in a team to get across a minefield grid one step at a time. We all were allocated different roles in the team and at some points blindfolded (to make it more difficult) so it was interesting to see how different people approached the task.  Together we had to work out how to overcome the obstacle as a team.

Did it cause any arguments?

No arguments. We actually did pretty well and got over quickly.  It was fun sharing different ideas about how to get to the other side and feeling frustrated every time we failed and had to go back to square one.

Were there quite a lot of different personalities in the group?

There were a lot of introverts that made the group quite a bit quiet!! There were a couple of extroverts.

What differences did you see?

The extroverts would be ‘yep, lets go we can do this!’ The introverts would be quiet and to the side until someone told them to ‘go on, we’ve got to get this done’.

Had you thought about this before, how you process information differently to other people?

I had thought about it a bit before as I can tell that I was someone who liked to think things through quite a bit. Through the course I got to see the perspectives of others which was quite eye opening and helpful.

What colour order did you come out as?

Green Blue Yellow Red (Introverted feeling) so quite introverted as green and blue are the introverted colours.

And how has knowing that helped you in your life now since completing the course?

Yeah!  It’s helped quite a bit.  My dad is ‘RED’ so the complete opposite to me. Red is my lowest colour. It’s helped me understand him and him understand me better.  We get on a lot better now.  I shared the info with him the colour cards and he was able to identify that he was RED.

So, you feel its helped your relationship with him?

Yeah – definitely.  He understands me better and I understand him better.

Did you do anything on communication styles?

I found out that my body language is quite closed and I talk quietly.  It made me realise that there may be situations where I need to speak up to ensure my voice is heard.

 

Anything else that you think this course might help you with in the future?

It can definitely help when I get into work and manage different people. It will help me see how people will see things from different perspectives.  I now am able to recognise what ‘colour’ people are when I first meet them.  It helps me understand why someone behaves in a very different way to me – why they make decisions in a different way or communicate differently.

Would you recommend the course to other people?

Definitely!  It’s nice to work out what personality you have and perhaps what your weaknesses are so you can work on them to be the best version of yourself.

The Colour Model – The Colour Works Foundation (tcwfoundation.org.uk)

22 Emotional Intelligence Statistics To Make Your Day (2024) – Soocial

 

Proud to receive funding from the National Lottery

https://www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk/

We are excited to announce that we have received funding from the National Lottery Community Fund to support our Building Self-Belief programme with young people this year.

We will continue to partner with local youth organisations to deliver our Building self-belief programme.  This consists of a series of group workshops and one-to-one coaching developed around our simple colour model of behaviours. We explore the fundamentals of emotional intelligence and cover topics that build confidence and resilience in young people aged 15-25 who are at a vulnerable point in their lives, the transition from adolescent to adulthood. Our workshops are highly interactive and a combination of presentation, discussion and activities. The participants are given the opportunity to complete a questionnaire that produces their own personality profile booklet which is then used throughout the workshops to cover :

  • Self-Awareness
  • Self-Management
  • Understanding Others
  • Relationship Skills
  • Decision-Making
  • Communication

This focus on learning skills associated with emotional intelligence enables the young people to recognise their strengths, build stronger relationships as well as learning to ‘respond’ rather than ‘react’. This means they leave our workshops with increased confidence and resilience as well as skills that help them to move on to the next stage in their lives, whether that be accessing further support opportunities, education or employment.

If you have young people that you think would benefit from our programme – please get in touch www.tcwfoundation.org.uk

 

Not overthinking, just processing

Sarah
TCWF Course Deliverer – Sarah Rayment

Sarah Rayment is our new Building Self-Belief Course Deliverer. She’s also a coach, writer and proud introvert. When it comes to The Colour model, she has a dominant Green personality. In her blog post, she shares the strengths and challenges of being a deep thinker.

Hands up if you’re an overthinker. Or you’ve been told you are by exasperated friends and family who can’t see what the problem is and why you can’t just make a decision!

What if I told you that you’re NOT overthinking, just processing?

Some of us are deep thinkers. We sift through layers of knowledge and experience, facts and figures, our instinct and other people’s potential thoughts, feelings and reactions before we make our next move.

Some of us focus on outcome and action first, move forward and then do the thinking we need to, if we need to.

Neither way is better. Just different. And, of course, there are plenty of in-between thinking systems too.

I sit firmly in the first category. Recently, I’ve discovered a way of describing my experience of thinking as having the whole world in my head at once. Before I can respond to a question or decision, I take into account everything that’s ever happened to me, to everyone I know, everything I know about the world (fortunately, that’s not much).

From the outside, this looks like overthinking. I mean, why do I need to consider all of this before I decide if I want tea or coffee???

I just do. It’s how my brain is wired… and I like it (most of the time).

On the inside, I’m going through a mental filing system until I find the answer. It’s methodical. I call it processing and it takes me longer than most people I know. But that’s OK!

If you’re like me on any level, you’ll know that this can be exhausting, and sometimes frustrating for you, and others.

With any thinking style, problems can arise. For the deep processors, this includes:

  1. When we’re trying to communicate with people who think differently. For example, the people who focus on outcome and action first and do the thinking later who might see us slow and indecisive – even when we’re not.
  2. When we’re having a bad day and there’s just so much to think about and process that we get stuck and we ARE indecisive Argh, the agony of indecision!

The antidote to both of these problems, as I see it, is awareness.

Once we understand and embrace the way our brains work (and dare I say, love the way our brains work), the magic happens!

  • We start to recognise our own thought patterns and processes.
  • We start to trust that we’ll get there.
  • We recognise that when frustration creeps in, we are probably stuck.
  • We recognise that when we keep looking at the same ‘mental file’ over and over again we are definitely stuck.
  • We learn to be patient with ourselves and those around us.
  • We start to see our superpowers and we see the superpowers of others.
  • And it’s our superpowers that help us to understand and embrace the way our brains work.

You see, as deep thinkers, we have a longing to understand everything. We unpick, we research, we learn from our experiences. We can step away from other people’s opinions and judgements to dig deep and discover. We are thoughtful and empathetic. We have incredible self-awareness and spot things in other people too.

The trick is to combine our self-awareness with taking action. Here are a few ideas:

  1. Our listening superpowers help us to build intimate relationships with others which makes us great team players. When we’re stuck, we can collaborate with others to speed things up, and get a little bit of reassurance, too.
  2. Our natural preference for reflection means we can spend some time noting down the things we’re likely to get stuck on so we can prepare ourselves to take action when they arise.
  3. Another of our superpowers is being adaptable. And because we consider everything, we’ve got the facts alongside the more nuanced thoughts, so we’re set up to change our communication style when we need to. We are perfectly capable of offering fast, no messing about, concrete solutions and focusing on action. We might just feel a little shaky afterwards.
  4. However, because we are adaptable. We’re so busy considering everyone else’s needs that we forget to advocate for ourselves. So, when we’re feeling pressured, it’s perfectly OK to say ‘I need a few minutes to process this,’ or to take ourselves off to a quiet space and work through things without interruptions.
  5. We do our thinking for a reason. By the time we’ve thought something through we’ve considered many different perspectives, and often ones that no one has thought of. We can have every confidence that what we have to say is valuable and worth speaking up about.
  6. Because we care about others, we can see that the person we’re communicating with might just need a quick answer and not be so bothered about the details. So, every once in a while, we can gently persuade ourselves to make a decision and think it through later. How liberating! Throw an idea out there, impress others with our quick thinking and creativity, then scurry off to enjoy a bit of processing time, with a cup of tea… or coffee… or tea… or something else.

Our brains are marvellous, aren’t they? Are you a processor too? We’d love to know, and happy thinking!

 

Links

Find out more about our Colour Model.

Read about Charley’s experience of being a dominant Red personality.

 

 

Making a difference to young lives with funding from ESFA and Community Training Grants

ESFA Funding

 

ESFA FundingWe are delighted to share the difference that funding from ESFA and the European Social Fund is achieving in our partnership with The Prince’s Trust. Our ‘Building Self-Belief’ courses allow us to work with young people to help them realise their worth and potential.  Through personality profiling we enable these young people to recognise their strengths and therefore raise their aspirations to achieve what they might previously have thought was impossible. This funding enables us to bring to life the personality of the participants enabling them to understand themselves and improve their relationships and emotional management.

The funding has also allowed us to expand our team and hire an administrative assistant. This allows the programme managers to focus more on course delivery, ensuring that each session is personalised for the groups we are working with. We are loving working in partnership with the Prince’s Trust TEAM programme and look forward to seeing what comes next!