Throughout my career, I have taken many personality tests. This includes Myers-Briggs , Clifton Strengths Test and even the Dungeons & Dragons Alignment test . Recently, I took a personality test as part of a job interview which was a first. While talking with a friend in sales about personality types, I realized that he didn't realize his customers were, what I am going to call, Personality Signaling. Personality Signaling is when someone tells you their personality type in order to help you interact with them better. He is a really good dude, so I decided to write this up to help him understand what his clients are trying to do. The goal being to help him improve his customer obsession and now you, like many others, get to benefit from him being a good dude.
Like many employers, Chevron uses e-colors to help employees better understand themselves and be more productive. When I first encountered it was as a contractor and was asked my 'e-colors' in a meeting. I didn't understand and it was suggested that I take the test. After taking it, I realized many of my coworkers put their e-color personality style in their email signature as a kind of Personality Signaling. The idea being that if I tell you my type and you know your type, you understand how to interact with me better… and … Voila we are more productive as a team.
While there are many personality tests that will improve your interaction with a person, e-Colors deliberately enables you to signal to others. The problem is that in this day and age we all suffer struggle to separate the signal from the noise. Here is a quick primer is you are trying to figure out what an e-Color is
While there is no replacement for taking the test or attending a class, unless you recognize the Personality Signaling you won't even know you need to take either. This is to help you identify these Personality Signals if you see them in a client or vendor's email.
There are four 'types' as represented by colors. Like all personality tests, they tell you no trait is better than any other trait and that everyone has every trait more or less. You are given a combination of these colors, with one being the primary and the other being the secondary.
This combination is shown as the 12 types that are above and you can see them in their email signatures in multiple ways. I am a Doing Socializer, for instance, and will use that in my examples. When spoken, you don't say 'I am a Doing Socializer'. Instead, you say, 'My e-colors are yellow over red'. There are multiple ways you might see it written, and here are some examples of email signatures.
The first is the little human above.
713-555-1212 spam@churchcs.com The second is as two-colored dots. While the dot choice varies, this is a subtle way to let others know.
Another way is as text or the abbreviations. The benefit of this is that it allows for it to be readable in colorless and image free viewing.
Hopefully this helps you understand what you are seeing. If you see such things, you might consider taking the test to determine what is your type and the get the report on your e-color best interacts with others. Knowing this should help you better understand your customer, and might just help you become customer obsessed.