Sometimes what is most useful isn’t another answer.
It’s another way of looking.

Insights Discovery is a psychometric assessment based on the psychology of Carl Jung. Following completion of an online evaluator, participants receive an individual profile that describes their preferences through four color energies: Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow, Earth Green, and Cool Blue.

Everyone has all four energies, but in a different and individual combination. The model provides an accessible language for exploring how those preferences may influence communication, decision-making, relationships, and the way we approach our work. Preferences are not good or bad, and how they show up can vary with context and over time.

Insights Discovery can help increase self-awareness and make differences between people easier to talk about. It provides a common language for exploring questions such as: How do I prefer to communicate and interact? How might others experience me? What do I bring naturally – and what might require more conscious effort? Where might differences within a team create energy and complementarity, and where might they contribute to misunderstanding or conflict?

For teams, looking at individual preferences together can reveal patterns that are harder to recognize when everyone is focused on their own role. The aim is not to eliminate differences, but to understand them and work with them more consciously.

We rarely use Insights Discovery simply to explain a profile. The real value begins when we bring the insights into the work people actually do together.

With individuals, we use the profile as a starting point for reflection and conversation – not as a description to be accepted at face value. With teams, we may look at the team’s mix of preferences, explore how different color energies show up in communication and decision-making, or work with situations where differences become particularly visible.

We also like to make the work experiential. That might mean asking people to work with others who have very different preferences, approaching a situation from their least-preferred color energy, or connecting Insights with questions around conflict, culture, roles, and team dynamics. The objective is not to learn the model. It is to use the model to learn something about ourselves and how we work with others.

Insights Discovery describes preferences – not capabilities, competence, or fixed personality types. We all have access to all four color energies, and context matters. We therefore use the model to open conversations and generate hypotheses, never to put people into boxes.

Hogan is a suite of personality assessments designed specifically for the workplace. Its three core inventories provide different but complementary perspectives on personality: the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) looks at everyday behavioral tendencies and how we typically relate to others; the Hogan Development Survey (HDS) explores potential derailers – behaviors that may become more visible under pressure or when we are not actively managing ourselves; and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) looks at the values, motives, and interests that influence what we want and the environments we are likely to create or prefer.

Together, the three provide a rich picture of personality from what Hogan describes as the bright side, dark side, and inside.

Hogan can deepen our understanding of how others are likely to experience us at work – not only when things are going well, but also when pressure increases. It can help us explore questions such as: What strengths do I naturally bring? How might those strengths become less helpful when overused? What behaviors could get in my way? What drives and motivates me? And what kind of environment or culture might I create around me?

For leaders in particular, this combination can provide valuable insight into leadership style, relationships, potential derailment risks, and the impact that personal values and preferences can have on others.

We use Hogan as a developmental tool with individual leaders and in coaching. The assessment gives us a rich set of data, but the value lies in making sense of that data together – connecting patterns in the profile with the leader’s experience, current role, relationships, and the challenges they are facing.

With teams, Hogan can provide another powerful lens. We may use the MVPI to explore the values and motives team members share – and where they differ – and the HDS to identify patterns that could become challenging in the team’s dynamics, particularly under pressure. This gives the team a basis for discussing not just individual preferences, but what they may collectively reinforce or need to watch out for.

We are particularly interested in the connections across the three inventories. A strength in one part of the profile may interact with a potential derailer or a strongly held value in another. Exploring these patterns can generate hypotheses, surface questions, and help identify areas where greater self-awareness or a different behavioral choice could increase effectiveness.

The profile provides the data. The conversation gives it meaning.

Hogan provides insight into behavioral tendencies, potential risks, and values – it does not define the person. Scores need to be understood in context and interpreted as patterns and probabilities rather than certainties. We use the results to deepen self-awareness and generate meaningful questions, not to prescribe who someone is or what they should become.

FIRO is a psychometric assessment developed by psychologist William Schutz to explore interpersonal needs and how they influence our behavior with others. It looks at three dimensions: Inclusion – our need for involvement, recognition, and belonging; Control – our need for influence, responsibility, and structure; and Affection – our need for closeness, warmth, and personal connection.

Each dimension is considered from two perspectives: Expressed, or how much of a behavior we initiate toward others, and Wanted, or how much we want others to initiate that behavior toward us. The resulting six scores provide a simple but nuanced picture of the interpersonal needs that can shape how we relate to others and participate in groups.

FIRO can help make sense of dynamics that we often experience without necessarily understanding what sits behind them. Why does one person actively seek involvement while another prefers more distance? Why does someone naturally take charge while another wants clearer direction? Why do some working relationships become personal quite quickly while others remain more task-focused?

Looking at these needs together can help us understand our own interpersonal behavior, recognize what we may be seeking from others, and appreciate that their needs may be quite different from ours. In teams, this can provide a particularly useful lens for exploring participation, leadership and influence, relationships, and potential sources of tension. The instrument is commonly applied to team building, leadership development, and relationship building.

We use FIRO particularly when the quality of relationships and interpersonal dynamics is central to the work. With individual leaders, it can help explore how they engage others, exercise influence, build relationships, and what they themselves may need from the people around them.

With teams, it becomes especially interesting when we move from individual scores to the patterns between people. Differences between Expressed and Wanted needs can help illuminate dynamics that otherwise remain difficult to name – for example, who seeks involvement, who takes or wants control, where people expect more or less personal connection, and where needs may complement or collide.

We use these insights as a basis for conversation about what is actually happening in the team. The objective is not for everyone’s needs to become the same, but for people to understand those differences and work with them more consciously.

FIRO describes interpersonal needs and behavioral tendencies, not ability or performance. A score is neither good nor bad, and different situations and relationships may bring different behaviors to the foreground. We use the results as a lens for exploring relationships and team dynamics – not as an explanation for everything that happens between people.

CliftonStrengths is an assessment developed by Gallup to identify an individual’s natural talents – the recurring patterns in how we think, feel, and behave. The assessment identifies 34 talent themes and shows their relative prominence within an individual’s profile. These themes are grouped into four broader domains: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking.

The underlying idea is deliberately strengths-based: rather than beginning with what needs fixing, it helps us recognize where natural talent already exists and consider how that talent can be developed and applied more intentionally. Gallup itself distinguishes talent from a developed strength; identifying a talent is therefore a starting point rather than the end of the development process.

CliftonStrengths can help us recognize patterns that feel so natural to us that we may barely notice them. What do I instinctively bring to a situation? Where do I gain energy? How do I tend to get things done, influence others, build relationships, or make sense of information? And where might I benefit from drawing more consciously on the strengths of others?

With teams, looking at individual strengths together can reveal the diversity of talent available to the group. It can help people appreciate different contributions, identify areas of complementarity, and move the conversation from „Why don’t you do this like I do?“ toward „What do you bring that I don’t?“ Gallup similarly positions the four domains as a way of understanding different contributions within teams.

We use CliftonStrengths when taking a deliberately strengths-based perspective can help an individual or team move forward. With leaders, the profile can provide a positive starting point for exploring what comes naturally, how those talents are currently being used, and how they could be developed or applied more intentionally to the challenges ahead.

With teams, we bring individual profiles together to explore the collective picture: Where do we have considerable natural energy? What different strengths do people contribute? What might we be missing or overlooking? And how can we combine our talents rather than expecting everyone to contribute in the same way?

The conversation is therefore not simply about identifying someone’s „Top 5“. The interesting question is what we do with the strengths we have – and how we combine them with the strengths of others.

A talent is potential, not a guarantee of effectiveness. Strengths can be underused, overused, or applied in ways that are less helpful in a particular situation. We therefore use CliftonStrengths to expand choices and appreciate contribution – not to suggest that people should only do what already comes naturally to them.

Immunity to Change is a developmental approach created by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey. It starts with a deceptively simple question: Why can change remain so difficult even when we genuinely want it?

The process uses a four-column map. We begin with an important improvement goal, identify the things we are doing or not doing that work against that goal, uncover the competing commitments those behaviors may be protecting, and finally explore the big assumptions that make those commitments feel necessary.

The idea is powerful because it reframes resistance. Instead of assuming that we simply lack motivation or discipline, it asks whether another part of us may be working very effectively to protect something we value or fear losing.

Immunity to Change can help us understand the gap between what we genuinely intend to do and what we repeatedly find ourselves doing. Why do I keep holding onto work when I want to delegate more? Why do I avoid difficult conversations despite knowing they need to happen? Why do I want to become more strategic but repeatedly get pulled back into operational detail? Why does a team agree that something needs to change and then continue behaving much as it did before?

The map helps us look beneath the visible behavior. What might I – or we – also be committed to protecting? And what assumption about ourselves, other people, or the world makes that protection seem necessary? Once those assumptions become visible, they can be examined rather than simply taken as reality.

We use Immunity to Change when the issue is not simply knowing what to do differently. Often people already know. The more interesting question is why change remains difficult despite that knowledge and genuine intention.

With individuals, we may build an Immunity to Change map around a meaningful developmental goal and use it to uncover the competing commitments and assumptions underneath current behavior. But creating the map is only the beginning. We can then design small, deliberate experiments that test whether a „big assumption“ actually holds true – creating new information and, potentially, new choices.

We can also use the approach with teams. A team may collectively want to become more candid, make decisions faster, collaborate differently, or take greater ownership – and nevertheless reproduce patterns that prevent exactly that. Exploring a team’s collective immunity can surface shared assumptions and competing commitments that are difficult to see from within the system.

Sometimes the behavior that gets in the way of change is also protecting something important. Understanding what that is can open a different conversation – and different choices.

Immunity to Change is not about searching for a hidden flaw or explaining every difficulty through psychology. A strong map starts with a change that genuinely matters and treats competing commitments and big assumptions as hypotheses to explore – not conclusions about a person or team.

And importantly, insight alone is not the objective. The value comes from carefully testing assumptions and learning from what happens.

Teams & Stakeholder Insights brings together perspectives from within a team and from the people around it. Depending on the engagement, we may use a short team survey, stakeholder feedback, individual interviews, or a combination of these.

The questions are a mix of proven standard questions grounded in our psychodynamic and systemic approach to the work, and questions tailored to the team’s situation and the work ahead. They explore areas that are key to team effectiveness, such as purpose and priorities, roles and decision-making, trust and relationships, ways of working, team learning, and how effectively the team engages with its wider organization.

Teams inevitably develop their own view of how they are functioning. Looking at that view alongside the perspectives of colleagues, stakeholders, or customers can reveal something different.

Where do perceptions align? Where are there meaningful gaps? What does the team believe it is doing well that others experience differently? And what might stakeholders see that is difficult to recognize from inside the team?

The intention is not to produce a scorecard. It is to make patterns, differences, and questions visible that are worth exploring together – and to uncover some of the collective blind spots that may otherwise remain unseen.

We usually use structured interviews with all team members as an input to the first workshop. Depending on the team and its situation, a stakeholder perspective may also be included right from the start or introduced at a later stage in the process. Together, these perspectives create a richer picture of where the team is today and what may matter most.

Rather than presenting the results as a diagnosis, we bring them back to the team as material for reflection and conversation. We look for patterns, contrasts, surprises, and questions – and help the team make sense of its own data and decide where it wants to focus its attention. As with most of the tools we use, there is no inherently good or bad result. What matters is what the data might be telling the team and where attention may be needed.

We may return to selected questions later in the work to see what has shifted and where further attention might be useful.

Survey results and stakeholder perspectives are data points, not truths. They reflect people’s experiences at a particular moment and are influenced by context, relationships, and expectations. Their value lies less in the numbers themselves than in the conversations they make possible.