Perfect Day at Work (EXERCISE)

Purpose

This activity helps participants to understand their personalities by describing a perfect day at work and getting feedback from a peer or group about what they heard.  It also helps the peer or group to improve their skills at recognizing different personality types.  This activity is for use with the Insights Discovery ® personality assessment tool.  You can find more information at www.insights.com.

 

Setup

• Give each participant something in the four Insights Discovery ® colors (Blue, Red, Yellow, Green) that they can stack.  Colored paper clips, Legos, blocks, or colored paper squares work well.
• Teach about the Insights Discovery ® personality types.

 

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 5 minutes.

Activity: 10 minutes for pairs; 20-30 minutes for groups

Debrief: 15 minutes.

 

Procedure

• Tell participants that you would like for them to pair up (or work in groups).
• Each person should take turns describing his or her perfect day at work.
• The partner (or group) should listen carefully for indications of color preferences in the description and arrange their colored items in the order they think represents the preference for the person describing their perfect day.  The most important preference should go on top, followed by the second-most important preference and so on.
• When the person describing their perfect day is finished, their partner (or group) should reveal their stack of colored items and explain why they put them in that order.
• The person who described their perfect day can challenge the color arrangement, in which case, they should discuss their different opinions and come to an agreement.
• When feedback is finished for one person, the other person (or next person in a group) should share their perfect day, and the process should be repeated.
• If you have time, have them then do the same exercise with a perfect vacation.

 

Debrief

• How easy or difficult was this activity?
• What did you learn about yourself through this activity?
• What did you learn about the different personality types through this activity?