The Green Leadership Style

The Green Leader

Tips for Managers True Colors Workshops in Kansas City by Teri C.

The Green Leader is a visionary with an aptitude for understanding systems and concepts to lead to meeting workplace goals.

Green leaders utilize the True Colors personality typology. This temperament manages with rationality, objectivity, and logic. People with the Green temperament have a flair for innovation and analyzing systems and processes for improvement and change.

Here is my take on a Blue Temperament Manager.

Also, if you are not sure what in the world I’m talking about with True Colors, click here.

What makes the Green leader special?

Your Innate Strengths

You love the challenges associated with managing others. Admit it: the complexities of leading the team thrill you. Determining what motivates them and helping them manage their weakness might be particularly rewarding to you. It’s no wonder; after all, you are a “people-studier” by nature. In my opinion, your “people watching” skills probably help you understand your staff in ways most managers would not see or discern.

How the Green personality approaches challenges.

What a natural problem solver you are!

You have a gift to see past emotion irrelevance and get to the real heart of a situation. With this, I’ll bet you mentally deconstruct problems to identify core issues.

This is why you could be bugged by narrow-minded, shallow thinkers.

Conversations you find most intriguing are those that lean toward the cognitive and intellectual.  As a result, you could be perceived as a bit of a loner.  Not necessarily, but maybe. Lots of Greens prefer solitude to a conversation devoid of depth and intellectual stimulation. Translation:  You avoid dumb people.

Some would consider the following a weakness, but I think your ability to analyze is a distinct strength you bring to leadership. No, it’s a strength you bring to the entire world! Where would we be without the thinkers of history? Count yourself among them.

Research says some of your core values are innovation, ingenuity, reasoning, and diagnosing.

Things must make sense to the Green temperament.

Have you heard this before: “That is so stupid!”

Very often, when I hear this phrase, it’s from a person with the Green temperament.

Greens think on a conceptual level; they often expect others to as well. Remember, it’s your gift, and not everyone has it.

Yes, your intellect is a gift to the team, but be careful not to over-analyze everything about it.  Doing so will drive you insane. Theory and data are great, but life doesn’t always make sense. Some mysteries will never be solved.  Some questions will never be answered; no analytical pondering can change that. Know when to let it go.

“Feelings…Woah…Woah…Woah… Feelings”

It’s true some Greens value data and logic over the “touchy-feely” elements of life. But the sad reality is that you cannot avoid them altogether. Don’t let your knack for problem-solving be misunderstood as incessant fault-finding. You’ll hurt feelings. People may disengage.  You can’t afford to lead a team of disengaged staffers.

There will likely be times that you intend your actions to be “helpful” or coaching. But, to someone else, it may seem like criticism. It’s all in the way you structure it.  Start with the strengths (or positives), then “pave the way” for your advice.

“I’m bored!” Greens may grow bored easily.

The need you enjoy for the “fresh” and “new” can contribute to some team tension.  Research cites new horizons and fresh challenges give you absolutely life (as the young people say).  Yet, once you’ve drafted the strategy, figured it out, and solved the problems of it, you are done.

Others could still be working on a problem you solved a week prior.

It’s like what happens when you finish a crossword puzzle someone else is still working on. You’re ready to move on, but they are not. I can relate to this. 

When I was about sixteen, my friend and I would start crossword puzzles. You know, the ones featured in the newspaper back in the day.  She’d work on it from her house, and I’d work on it from mine.

We didn’t have texting back then, so it was fun for us. Anyway, I’d be done, and she’d still be working on it. Boring!

Back to the Green folks (as if I hadn’t already alluded to my own Green traits in that story).

If possible, allow your team to move incrementally through systems and projects at their own pace. They may be able to discover and learn the elements you’ve already mastered.

That’s called development, which is as much about the learning as the end result!  Trust and allow the progression – when possible.

This post is not designed to shove you into a “stupid” box of research. Instead, I hope I’ve given you the tools to be more effective as a leader. You have innate, natural skills to diagnose, critique, invent, and solve problems.

You just want to play up your soft skills and the Blue parts of your temperament to ensure you maintain cohesive teams and relationships.

Meyers-Briggs (MBTI) and True Colors are kissing cousins. The research derives from the same source and is very similar.   If you’ve attended one of my trainings, you know why.

MBTI configurations would be:

ENTJ
ENTP,
INTJ
INTP

True Colors provides perspective and insights all work teams can utilize… especially their leaders.

Read about the other management styles: 

Green Leader

Gold Leadership

Blue Leader Details

Orange Leadership Style

In addition to talking about the Green leader, here is what is important to me as a personality and temperament blogger:

Leveraging the four personality styles to help you when working with different personalities in the workplace.  I also often discuss how business personalities play a role in how you approach work and manage work personalities in general. I also answer the question” “how does personality influence communication at work?” Your temperament plays a role in everything. I love talking about it and exploring exactly how!