One of our strongest tools in working with young people is C-Me colour profiling. C-Me makes a huge amount of sense to us: its power lies in the simplicity that comes from its basis in colour.
After all, what is pretty much the first thing we teach our children? Their colours. Colour is one of the most basic aspects of being human.
C-Me draws on colour to help us understand more about ourselves and our behaviour in a fun, warm, direct way. It gives us a set of tools that we won’t forget a week later and which can be applied to school, home or work life.
C-Me allows individuals to articulate their strengths, areas of development and value to a team. This language and knowledge then stays with them as they navigate higher education, their first job and their journey up the career ladder.
We use C-Me with both those in and out of work. We work with young people looking for ways to excel in high-pressure situations: sixth formers working on personal statements, graduates facing assessment centres or interviews, and early-career professionals who need to deal confidently with clients and colleagues.
From what we see, C-Me gives students and early-career professionals a level of self-awareness and therefore self-confidence that is uncommon for their age. They understand how to get the best out of those around them. They communicate in a way that can be understood by different personality types. They respond to others in a mature and professional way.
We also work with senior leadership teams and mid-career managers, who may be looking for a stronger tool to achieve their business goals. C-Me often allows these individuals to clear longstanding blocks, by helping them to understand the roots of persistently frustrating issues.
WHAT IS C-ME ALL ABOUT?
C-Me has a very simple set of goals:
1. Understand yourself
2. Understand others
3. Improve relationships by adapting
The system draws on the theory of Carl Jung, dating back to 1923 (as do tests such as Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTi), DISC and Insights). C-Me is seen as the next generation of colour profiling. It creates a colour wheel to show preferences in thinking vs feeling and levels of extroversion vs introversion/reflection.
Following the completion of a 10-minute online questionnaire, individuals are located on the wheel and given an in-depth behavioural profile.
They are also able to look at themselves on the C-Me colour wheel in relation to others they deal with in everyday life: teachers, colleagues, managers. This is the source of many lightbulb moments. It is really powerful watching people realise why it is they’ve never got anywhere with particular people, or have conflicts that seem intractable.
HOW MIGHT IT WORK?
To take a simple example: Ella sits firmly in the green section of the C-Me wheel: considerate, warm, loyal, supportive, conflict-avoidant, concerned for others’ feelings. She’s paired up with Lucy for a really important piece of coursework/presentation. Lucy is over in the red section of the wheel: determined, confident, direct, keen to set a winning mentality.
Things haven’t been going well. Ella feels pressured and that she isn’t listened to. She is stressed out because she feels like Lucy doesn’t like her. Lucy, meanwhile, is completely focused on achieving a high grade for the project and hasn’t even noticed that Ella is suffering. She is confused, though, as to why Ella doesn’t seem enthused by her ideas or the prospect of getting a succeeding to their best possible potential for the task. (may need to reword but just need to remove the 2nd ‘high grade’
Too often we think that just by putting people in team situations, they will learn to work as a team. Frequently, this just doesn’t happen. Lucy and Ella will probably produce a reasonable assignment/presentation, but Ella may emerge less confident from the experience, and Lucy may continue to see group tasks as entirely dependent on her setting the agenda and taking on the majority of the tasks to ensure the result is exactly what she wants.
Were Lucy and Ella to be equipped with C-Me, we would see something different. Ella would be more proactive, as she would be aware of her own tendency to avoid conflict. We would hopefully see Lucy taking a more democratic, softer approach to counteract her natural tendency to storm onwards to victory.
The two girls would enter a challenging situation armed with some tools to handle it. In using those tools on this task, they would be building on their confidence, resilience and communication abilities. Each time they put their C-Me kit to use, they become more self-aware. Clearly, they’re also becoming far more employable.
C-ME IN SCHOOLS
Students
With year 12 and 13 students, we focus intensively on using C-Me to understand behaviour. Students find it exciting to see how, once you grasp why someone else is behaving in a certain way, you can then adapt your own behaviour to ensure things get done.
Students also realise that it’s OK to be themselves. They may often react very differently to their classmates, but no one style of behaviour is right or wrong. This helps build the self-awareness essential to making good educational and career choices.
Often, we bring to light why some students don’t get on with some teachers. Understanding and explaining these relationship conflicts takes the heat off and means students can cope far better working with teachers they don’t have a good rapport with. This can be profound in terms of whether they achieve their target grades.
Teachers and Leadership
C-Me also helps build more effective senior leadership teams within a school. With everyone understanding both their own colour preference and those of their colleagues, challenging conversations and crucial decision-making become easier.
Teachers are also able to draw on C-Me to gain insights into student behaviour and learning.
C-ME FOR BUSINESS
Many of our friends who are leaders and managers tell us they would like their teams to get things done more efficiently, that they’d like to drive change more effectively, and to see more tangible results.
C-Me can be an excellent solution if you’re in this boat. It gives employees a simple but radical tool that allows them to remodel relationships across the board. This might be within teams, with management or with clients and external partners.
C-Me profiles are put together easily and quickly, using an online questionnaire. The power of the tool lies partly in the way it then gives your company a universal language. This simplifies the positive communication that is so essential for achieving business objectives.
HOW WE DELIVER C-ME
Mostly, we talk with our schools and our business clients to see what their needs are. C-Me can be delivered as part of broader skills programmes, or as a standalone offering. To give a flavour:
Students
Teams (staff and business)
Recruitment
If recruiting new employees to complement a team or to manage a specific project, the C-Me tool can be used to identify the gaps that this next hire will need to fill, or ascertain whether a planned hire will fit in with the behaviours of an already successful team.
One of our recent clients wrote:
‘We used C-Me Profiling when recruiting for our Head of Sales and Marketing to ensure we got the right person to join and complement our team. It was quick, easy and extremely effective. Thanks to Alex for the profiling – a job well done’ (Claire Derrick. Managing Director. The Event Academy).
If you’d like to explore how C-Me could help your company’s senior leadership teams, 1st and middle managers, or early career professionals or if your school would like to know more about how we develop your students’ soft skills, do get in touch as we’d love to chat.
Alex Webb is Co-Director of Flying Start XP, a start-up running key skills and business behaviour courses. Students and attendees acquire the confidence needed to get the best jobs, and to add value to their employers from day one. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for all the latest news, updates and special offers.
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EngageBay
