Imagine a world where you could understand and maneuver among people who seem like they’re from Mars. Well, that world is here! With Emmy and Mae from S.E.E.D Planning Group as our special guests, we embark on an enlightening exploration of the color personality spectrum, as detailed in the book “Surrounded by Idiots”. Emmy, a red, and Mae, a yellow, provide insightful anecdotes about their experiences in understanding and adapting their personalities in both professional and personal interactions.
With an honest discussion about inherent talents, traits, and how they shape our personalities, we spotlight the importance of recognizing and articulating these traits for personal growth. Brace yourself for a lively discussion that will leave you enlightened on navigating the sea of color personalities and unleashing the leader within you!
Imagine a world where you could understand and maneuver among people who seem like they’re from Mars. Well, that world is here! With Emmy and Mae from S.E.E.D Planning Group as our special guests, we embark on an enlightening exploration of the color personality spectrum, as detailed in the book “Surrounded by Idiots”. Emmy, a red, and Mae, a yellow, provide insightful anecdotes about their experiences in understanding and adapting their personalities in both professional and personal interactions.
With an honest discussion about inherent talents, traits, and how they shape our personalities, we spotlight the importance of recognizing and articulating these traits for personal growth. Brace yourself for a lively discussion that will leave you enlightened on navigating the sea of color personalities and unleashing the leader within you!
📖 To access Travis' complete book list, visit his storehere
Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, and we have a special 13 episodes for you from our team interview with our friends Emmy and May from seed planning group. We're going to be wrapping up surrounded by idiots. We did about two hours of discussion on how we take lessons from this book and live by them, so what you're going to hear is raw, genuine discussion with two amazing women. The only thing that I did was I put starts and stops so that each individual highlight or thought that you're going to hear has space and time so you can properly consider them. If you prefer to hear start to finish, there's very little editing that's been done, so you could also wait for all 13 episodes to post, then binge on them. However you prefer to listen, this is for you, so please enjoy.
Speaker 2:
Well, honestly, we got to get started. Yeah, we can't. We can't sit here and screw around all day. We have two hours. We need to get three hours worth of content out of it so that I don't have to do any more recordings for at least a week. So, basically, I'm just using you to get a gas card Awesome.
Speaker 4:
I guess I'm walking next week to work.
Speaker 3:
I'm sure we have access to the cards.
Speaker 2:
You could say whatever you want. So the ground rules are you could say whatever you want, but you have to own what you say. Okay, right. So you have to get up, no pretending. It's got to be like this, is it right? And you have to give them receive graciously. So in case you two start, like you know, swearing at each other, you got to say please and thank you while you're doing it, all right.
Speaker 2:
And so I have some, you know, provocative questions just to kind of get us going, if we need to get going. But after that is basically just an open-ended conversation about surrounded by idiots and you know what's so great about it and how we're using it, and as we use it, kind of what we observe from it, and like you might be like, well, I didn't know you were using it at all, like talking about it in the office and saying that person's a little red or a little green or something that's actually using it. So we're going to we're going to kind of focus on that, but what I thought we could do is just get an introduction for you too, and I'm looking at my paper because I'm trying to remember who's who here.
Speaker 4:
Strong start.
Speaker 2:
So so do you want to do your own introductions? You want to introduce who you are and why you're here.
Speaker 3:
I made.
Speaker 2:
Jess, no, I'm not doing that Like so. So, Emmy, we found you on the street just wandering around and we were having a potluck. So we invented, invited you in, and you know you've been how many years of hard time has it been?
Speaker 3:
Oh, over three.
Speaker 2:
That's how many years in seed life, is that?
Speaker 3:
That's like 83.
Speaker 2:
And what do you? What do you do with your serving time for us?
Speaker 3:
Oh, the many hats I wear. Technically, I am the manager of the administrative and operations team. And what's that mean, that means we run the place.
Speaker 2:
That's pretty accurate. Okay, so we got Emmy who runs the place, just to make it spicy. What kind of monster do you think you are?
Speaker 3:
Oh, I am definitely mostly red.
Speaker 2:
Oh, so we got a room full of reds because we got me in years. That makes two, and that's most of us. Okay. So, may, who are you and what are you doing here? Emmy's running the place, so what are you doing?
Speaker 4:
Well, apparently I'm May, as Travis said, so no, so I've been at seed for a little over two years and I am on the admin and operations team and I am a administrative coordinator. I like to refer to it as the air traffic control center type position, where, if it's, if it's happening and on the radar, I'm monitoring it and watching it. So there's a lot to it, but that's what it is up front.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so a couple of fun facts for you before you get into the monster thing. So this is your serious side. So I know that you were going to bring your serious side right now. It's a, it's very serious. And so you can let loose whenever you want.
Speaker 4:
Okay, great.
Speaker 2:
And the second thing is did you get your 10 to 12 hours sleep last night?
Speaker 4:
I got a 10 and a half.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so. So for our listeners, make sure that she gets 10 to 12 hours. I can't even like close my eyes that long if I wanted to, um, but that's amazing. Okay, so just fun facts about me. Yeah, while I'm asleep, cause you're pretty much going to be serious the whole time. Right, that's, that's what you were saying.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, this is it. Um, you guys can't see my face, but it's it's pretty serious All right.
Speaker 2:
So what kind of little monster are you?
Speaker 4:
I'm a big yellow monster.
Speaker 2:
We're that would pride.
Speaker 3:
Oh, yes, I do I own it.
Speaker 4:
Uh, in full force.
Speaker 2:
Yellow monster over here one of the interesting things that came up in conversation. So like we're not in the same office, you guys are in Binghamton. I had to leave Binghamton because we were hiring a man. There wasn't going to be enough room for everybody, so I moved to.
Speaker 2:
Tennessee, and so you two are up there, I'm down here and in our office we were talking yesterday about you know what color people were and uh, what, what the crew goes I'm all the colors, I'm all four. And we're like you can't be all four and he's like says in the book, you can be whatever you want to be. I'm like it's not quite what it says. He said well, I'm at least more than one color. I'm like you could be more than one color. He's like well, down on the least three colors. And so I want to like unpack this a little bit. Like you know, we, everybody I talked to he reads the book. If they they're a little bit unsure, they're just like I'm all the colors. I'm like I'm like the client of scope. It's like, yeah, you know, we're probably, if we're being honest, can find a dominating color in there.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
But so let's get your opinions. Let's just talk before before I ruin it all. Hey, what, what? Because you both have done the book. Did either of you do do a book report with the new hire training on this book? I did not.
Speaker 4:
No, but read it, gotcha.
Speaker 2:
So so we started punishing people after Emmy started, by making them do the book report first round of my audience. And they and may, may. You must have got to do a different book report then, right.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, we did. Um, I actually I forget the name of it now. It was a group that I was in with Hector.
Speaker 2:
It must have been a good book.
Speaker 4:
It was. It was the uh oceans one.
Speaker 2:
Blue oceans.
Speaker 4:
Blue ocean. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:
I think I took notes.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, it was deep, but it was really good.
Speaker 2:
It was deep because it's a blue ocean.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, and I hope to never do a book report again, but I like to read now.
Speaker 2:
Well, that's awesome, because you know a big part of what we talked to everybody about this at. You can you can. You can read books about like your subject. You know the area of the world where you're an expert of that you work in every day, but that doesn't actually make you that much better. What you do, it's reading books about the things that you're not good at or you don't understand or you don't know, so you can get better perspective. So I wanted to get from each of you kind of um, what parts of the book do you find are interesting that you'd like to talk about? So we can start with Emmy, because she hasn't talked in a while or we've been talking over her. I don't know which one, because we were talking fast. So, emmy, fire away.
Speaker 3:
Um, I think my favorite part of the book was the insight of how to address or avoid problems with the different color personalities and you know kind of back to what you were talking about Everybody, you know certain people say in there all the colors. I appreciated that he said it's not all or nothing, meaning not every characteristic will be true of every red per se, and that you need to take time to get to know those you deal with, to really determine which characteristic applies to them, so that you know kind of how to approach the conversations or interact during those conversations to make them most productive.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and you and I are both red, so we got problems. What do you think from your perspective as being a red and reading about yourself and going, oh, yeah, you know, cause, like one thing about reds when, when reds read this book, they go, yeah, I'm a red, like some people read the book. I don't know what color I am, but when a red reads the book, they go, yeah, I'm a red. So what was your first kind of reaction, I guess, or perspective, when you're like, oh, I'm a red.
Speaker 3:
So my first reaction, I think, was I know that I am mostly red, but I didn't believe every red characteristic applied to me. And upon reading the other colors and the certain characteristics or traits that applied to them, it showed me the ways that I've grown and the parts of me that I've really fostered and tried to improve that are part of other characteristics to bring into, kind of mellowing out, my red. It was interesting because I think I just read this book what? Maybe a year ago for the first time and it was very interesting to see how much within the first two years of me being here I changed. Because if I had read it three years ago I would have been like, oh yep, that is fully 110% correct of how I act and who I am. But the amount of growth that I had done within the first two years of being here at SEED, I can see it after reading that book of. Wow, I really was able to kind of tailor this or work through this to make you know my communication better.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think that we come in you know I've talked about this week we come in the door and we have talents, right. So we come in and like our talents is that we're a red and all the good and all the bad that that brings with it, right and like that's who we are. And when we don't have a dialogue like this to talk about, we don't necessarily always understand how to articulate it, but then once we learn how to talk about it, it's like okay, so I'm a red, and then you start to like, observe other behaviors and things, and then you start to work on yourself and I think the improvements are not necessarily becoming a different color, because I think that this is where I wanted to go with the fact that you know, somebody says I'm every color. You improving doesn't make you less red.
Speaker 2:
It makes you actually have more powerful red because you're learning skills and sometimes skills are like inherent right, like like you're, just because you've been through the motions enough, like you. Just it's almost like your, your body and your mind memorized, memorized, and it becomes a part of like. This is just what I do, but it's really something that you weren't born with, like you had to acknowledge it and maybe work at it. So do you want to maybe talk about that at all? Because you're, you know you're. I love the idea that you can say like in the last three years I see my growth and because I've grown, I can actually look at it now and this information maybe means something a little bit more important to me. So you want to?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, with reading about like the different colors and the traits and characteristics I you know, it was funny to kind of see some of Red's be like strong willed, aggressive, controlling, goal and performance oriented and opinionated. Those are things that can be very overpowering and perceived in a negative way If you don't know how to approach them or control them. Kind of we talk about controlling your little monster.
Speaker 3:
Some of the kind of cool things that I was able, especially rereading it and preparing for this podcast, is I was looking at things that I've grown in working on my green stubbornness, patients, being a good listener or, you know, some of like my blue criticalness, meticulous, meticulousness or perfectionism. Certain things like that, when you combine them with a red personality, can be very damaging to relationships and noticing how much I really care about the relationships like you know, it talks about yellow is being very relation oriented. It has allowed me to really change not change, grow and improve on how I handle the red parts of me and the really strong, you know, aggressive when I get passionate about something or that fight to the death type of attitude we have when we think we're right.
Speaker 2:
And we're being challenged, right. Like somebody challenges you and it's like, yeah, adrenaline gets going. It's you'll fight to have a fight, basically, if you're red.
Speaker 3:
Absolutely.
Speaker 2:
We're going to argue because we're arguing, and that's what reds do.
Speaker 3:
Yep, and we can outlast any of the other colors. So being able to really tame that to make sure that I'm focusing on communication that are going to enhance my relationships has been probably the biggest way I have been able to grow and becoming a better listener and less of a talker when appropriate has just absolutely improved not just professional relationships but personal as well.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we come off, I think, any red, because everybody's opinionated, right? It's just when reds have an, when a red shares with you their opinion they don't share it quietly, right, it is with conviction, and it is like, you know, it's like going. It's like going to church, right, it's like being preached to. That's when a red has an opinion that they decided to share. That's what it's like and that can come off to a lot of people.
Speaker 2:
If you're not aware of the red personality, you're just like that person is too much.
Speaker 2:
Or or that person I've seen it a lot of times where people will think you're mad or you're upset about something, just because you're, you know, projecting that energy out there and it's like, no, I'm not upset at all, I'm just passionate about what I'm doing and I'm making sure everybody knows I'm passionate and it's just kind of like that natural thing.
Speaker 2:
And I think the biggest thing for reds is learning how to use that edge, because that that red, those red qualities that you do have the willingness to fight, right. I mean, all the time we talk about standing up for what you believe and standing up for what you're about, right, what you need to have that willingness to fight. That's an edge. You know that. Willingness to take something that you're passionate about and go after it, that's your edge. You don't want to blunt that. What you want to do is figure out how to use it in the right situation so you get the most out of it right and don't like you don't want to be chopping everything up, you just you want to. You know, use it for emphasis like speak softly and carry a big stick type of idea.
Speaker 3:
I think reds too. You know, we have to be way more self aware of our tone, the words that we use, the way we start conversations, the way we react to conversations, because, you know, one of the things that we are often accused of is being rude or coming across as attacking, when very rarely is that, I think, our intention, when we, you know, are importantly aware of who we're talking to and what we're talking about.