We recently had the good fortune of being Keynote Speakers at the Virginia State SHRM Leadership Conference just north of Richmond, Virginia. It fit perfectly with our plans to attend the inauguration of our new governor, Terry McAuliffe. Unfortunately the weather turned to rain and permitted the clear focus on the SHRM Conference. It was fantastic. The group was attentive and interested in our presentation, they were fun to be around, and as professional a group as we've ever encountered.
So, what made our time with this group over the top fascinating? They asked plenty of questions - that alone signals a deep interest in what we were there to talk about. The fact that the group size was well over 100, made the questions even more important. Some of the questions are summarized below along with the answer we provided.
First, a bit of background. Our topic was, "Developing Your Leadership Role: The RGB Leadership Legacy." All participants were afforded the opportunity to complete our RGB Individual Profile in advance. The illustration to the left is mine (Joe). It has been pretty stable for over 25 years even though our Inventory has shifted slightly to improve reliability and validity. The Red, Green, and Blue pieces of the pie represent the thought patterns that manifest themselves in observable behaviors. My dominant Blue of 50% suggests that those characteristics of me that provide Blue thinking and behavior manifest about 50% of the time, or in 50% of my thoughts and behavior. The Green part manifests about 30% and the Red about 20%. Obviously the percentages vary widely and create patterns that help one recognize predictable behavior. The objective in knowing these for oneself and others with whom one works or otherwise interacts creates predictability and patterns that can be used to advantage (or conversely may need to be avoided).
So, one of the important questions was, "What number of points distinguishes the priority among the color patterns?" Good question!! Here's our answer and some amplification that might prove beneficial.
Our experience suggests that about a 5 percentage point spread would make the difference between a natural dominance and a slide to the secondary or tertiary. Even with a 20 difference between my Blue and Green, does that mean that the shift to Green from Blue would have to be a difficult slide? No, not at all. But the true Green may not be fully manifest in my thoughts or behavior - it might be a half-hearted slide, and it might not last long or I might not be too deeply immersed. I would probably slide back to my Blue without much of a transition. The slide to Red would likely be even more tentative and lack conviction.
Let's take another RGB Profile - on the right. The Red is clearly dominant with 37. Yet, in this case the Blue in secondary position is just 5 points away from dominance. This places both Red and Blue as potentially strong enough to claim that first position.
To complicate matters further, the Blue secondary and Green tertiary are within a point of each other. This could be a highly flexible Individual Profile. The clear Red dominance is followed by a virtual tossup with the remaining two colors!
In this second illustration there is a strong likelihood that conditions will play a key role. With the presence of anxiety or stress, the dominance will play a stable first position. If this Red is in the presence of another strong Blue or strong Green, depending on a position of authority, a shift is highly likely to occur.
Summary
A dominance is indicated by a single point, but the strength of that dominance is variable depending upon the points of the remaining two colors. The third factor is the presence, strength, and positional authority of additional people. The fourth factor is the task at hand. If the task is Red and the person responsible for the task is also Red, this will likely create an advantage, all things being equal.
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