Good Day and Bad Day Behaviours

What does a good day look like for you? What behaviours do we see you demonstrate on a good day? Do you glide seamlessly into the office, looking beautifully calm and relaxed, smiling and greeting your colleagues? Or do you grump in, slump down and get on with it? A delight to behold for all your colleagues, or not? We can all have a bad day but if you think more consciously about the behaviours you’re demonstrating, particularly if you’re looking to lead by example, to colleagues for instance or family and friends, you can make more conscious decisions about whether you’re having a good or bad day.

We’re All Different
Annoying stuff happens, fact. Other people do things that we find frustrating because their personal values are different to ours, fact. But you can decide whether you’re going to allow that to affect your mood and have a good day or not. It does take practice but it can be done I promise. My use of expressions such as ‘less than helpful’, ‘dopey’ and ‘banana’ are all things that I’ve developed over the years to help me acknowledge my frustrations, manage my behaviours and influence my decisions as to whether it was a good day or not. If I direct those expressions towards myself, they are my safe ways of telling myself that I did something that wasn’t so great but that it’s not the end of the world. More introverted personality types can be very self critical and it’s important to find a way, possibly a language that helps us to diffuse some of that criticism and be a bit easier on ourselves.

Energy Preferences
Understanding your own good and bad day behaviours is really useful, it can also be helpful to monitor the behaviours of others, as an indication of their stress levels. If we’re seeing bad day behaviours from someone it’s likely they’re experiencing a level of stress and anxiety and you might be able help with that before a situation escalates. The learning and development organisation, Insights defines good and bad day behaviours as part of their Discovery workshop, which focuses on personal and team effectiveness. If you know your dominant colour energy you might be familiar with those behaviours already, but they can also help you identify your dominant energy if the behaviours, both good and bad resonate with you.

With a preference for introverted thinking (cool blue energy for Insights), on a good day you can be cautious, precise, deliberate, questioning and formal. On a bad day you can be stuffy, indecisive, suspicious, cold and reserved. Do those behaviours resonate with you?

With a preference for extroverted thinking (fiery red energy for Insights), on a good day you can be competitive, demanding, determined, strong-willed and purposeful. On a bad day you can be aggressive, controlling, driving, overbearing and intolerant. Does that sound familiar?

With a preference for extroverted feeling (sunshine yellow energy for Insights), on a good day you can be sociable, dynamic, demonstrative, enthusiastic and persuasive. On a bad day you can be excitable, frantic, indiscreet, flamboyant and hasty. Know anyone like that?

With a preference for introverted feeling (earth green energy for Insights), on a good day you can be caring, encouraging, sharing, patient and relaxed. On a bad day you can be docile, bland, plodding, reliant and stubborn. Ring any bells?

One of the key strengths of the Insights training, for me, is the ability it gives us to think about our own behaviours, as well as other people’s. A weakness is the over use of a strength so if an extroverted thinking person is very determined and driven on a good day, with over use that can be perceived as being overbearing and intolerant; their bad day behaviours. We can all demonstrate good and bad day behaviours but an awareness of what your bad day behaviours are can help you to monitor where you’re at, in terms of your stress level.

The Impact of Stress
The key to managing your stress in terms of your personality type and energy preferences is that when you’re stressed your dominant energy moves clockwise around the grid.

Introverted Thinking	Extroverted Thinking
Introverted Feeling	Extroverted Feeling

 

If your dominant energy is usually in introverted feeling, for instance and your stress level increases, you will start to demonstrate behaviours more associated with an introverted thinker. You will be less concerned about the welfare of others and more questioning of ‘why we’re doing this’. Your usual preference for sharing with others and being patient and relaxed may start to look like a more rigid and formal response, more associated with the behaviours of an introverted thinker. If your stress level increases further, you will start to demonstrate behaviours more associated with an extroverted thinker. Your usual calm and relaxed approach, which seeks the opinions of others becomes a more dogmatic statement of what you think. You become much more strong-willed and deliberate about what you want to happen. If your stress level rises even further you will start to demonstrate behaviours more associated with an extroverted feeling person. You will feel less strongly about what you want to happen and spend more time consulting with others to see if they share your concerns and anxieties. The same clockwise movement applies to each of the personality types so see if the good and bad behaviours for each type resonates with a more stressed version of yourself.

Talk About This Stuff
If you get to know the good and bad day behaviours of each personality type well, you can monitor your own behaviours and assess the stress levels of others too. You can access an image of the Insights good and bad day behaviours here and might find it useful to use the image when you are having one to one conversations with your teams, or your family and friends, to talk about what their dominant energy might be and what behaviours they’re demonstrating, to indicate their stress level. It’s amazing how much the information can resonate with people, to make them feel more comfortable about who they are and to give them an understanding of how stress and anxiety is influencing their behaviours.

Behaving Well to Make a Good Impression
As we’re all of us making an impression all of the time, the behaviours you demonstrate are important, particularly as a parent (children will hold you to account beautifully and let you get away with very little if you’re challenging their behaviours!), or as a team leader. It can be hard to challenge a behavioural issue with a member of staff if they see you demonstrate less than role model behaviours yourself. It is a lot to think about but an awareness of the good and bad day behaviours for each of the personality types might help you anticipate a problem and offer support before something escalates and that can only be a good thing.

Just one last thing, if you glide seamlessly into your workplace, with a smile and a kind greeting to your colleagues, it can help everyone have a good day. They might also wonder what your secret is and there’s absolutely no need to tell anyone that you’re faking it til you make it! Smiling is contagious, we should all do more of it. No, that’s a grimace, that’s not quite the same! ?

Take good care please and have a wonderfully smiley, good day.

 

Best wishes, Karen

Email: kw.innerstrength@outlook.com