By Eli Chan
On November 17th, the 180th Pacific Coast Scout Group were privileged once again to invite back Russell and Christine from The Centre of Excellence for Young Adults (CEYA) to present an Insights Discovery Workshop to 20 of our crew members, including myself! The workshop has been recommended and used by many local companies, such as ICBC, Fortis BC, CRA, and more, as it is designed to allow participants to better understand their individual personality profiles, and how they can identify distinct characteristics in themselves and others to increase working efficiency in group projects and teams. I always felt like I had a lack of understanding about myself and the other members in my Scout group, and with that in mind, I was very excited to be part of this unique opportunity and attend this workshop after hearing many excellent reviews about it.
Prior to the day of the workshop, we were each instructed to answer 25 behavioural questions on their website. The questionnaire is designed to identify the working styles and personalities of each participant based on his or her responses. You could imagine that there would be many different combinations of responses that could arise, and you would be correct! There are actually more than 150 diverse identities that could exist, and derived from the work by psychologist Carl Jung, Insights Discovery is capable of accurately pinpointing which type of individual you are. Each participant then received a beautifully prepared personal profile based on this questionnaire, which highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the individual in regards to teamwork, communication, as well as going into great depth into the blind spots that we should work on for self-improvement. Everyone in the room was surprised by the accuracy of the profile by just answering a mere set of questions. Furthermore, our individual characteristics categorized us into 4 fundamental colors that helped with describing our most preferred personality style.
Let’s see if you can identify yourself! Which dominant color are you most naturally like?
Throughout the workshop, I must confess that my favourite part was when we stepped outside of the meeting room to find 5 cards laid down on the ground in a line: 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, and 0%. Russell would call out a color and he instructed us to organize ourselves in the percentile that the color in our profile depicted us to be. It was an eye-opener, yet amusing at the same time, to recognize the individuals that ended up on the polar ends of the line, who waved to each other at the opposite sides of the room. For instance, for Sunshine yellow, it was a clear imbalance among us between those who are always enthusiastic and outgoing, in contrast to those who are comparatively more withdrawn and introverted. Russell recommended those who lack the sunshine energy to find those who do have yellow as their preferred colour while working on our projects, and he was able to explain the meanings behind each of the other colors, which became a great learning experience for all of us.
As we found out more about CEYA’s mission, which is to develop a culture of excellence in young adults and organizations, I realized that it is quite synonymous with Pacific Coast Crew Rover Scout’s mission as well. We both strive for the quality of excellence in our journey towards realizing individual potential, and a large part of that realization process is knowing who we are and how people interact with others. Personally I felt this workshop was extremely helpful for not only myself, but among the members of our Scout group. Workshops such as Insights Discovery provide unique opportunities that helps us in all facets of life, and personal development within our team gives us a significant advantage, working within Scouting or outside of it. As we are now capable of speaking the same “color” language, we are also able to continue on with our learning by practicing various working styles and “colors” that both encourages better teamwork and enhances the quality of our group to reach new levels as a whole.
Overall, the Insights Discovery workshop provided us with an excellent learning experience in our personal development to acquire new skills and communication strategies to work with others, all the while giving us the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be increasingly more self-reflective on how we tend to present ourselves everyday. Although we have all identified ourselves with our most natural color, we were all encouraged to practice attributes of all four colors and demonstrate abilities to adapt and mirror unfamiliar working styles when communicating with others. The presenters encouraged us to occasionally grab our color blocks (shown above) and rearrange them to challenge ourselves to shift the way that we carry out our tasks or the way we communicate within a team setting. .
On behalf of the 180th Pacific Coast Scout Group, we would like to sincerely thank Russell, Christine and CEYA for taking the time and patience to share their knowledge with us and show their encouragement towards effectively working and connecting with others. All that we learned that day was indeed valuable to our individual lives and career paths, but the entire learning experience of understanding more about ourselves and appreciating the different attributes in others were invaluable in our journeys towards personal development.
Please check out their webpage below for more detailed information about their workshop and mission!