Insights Discovery: Team Building & Leadership Development Exercises at The Nature Place

At The Nature Place, we use nature-based team building program models to explore our world, our teams, and ourselves. One external tool our programs rely heavily on Insights Discovery exercises. ‘What is Insights?’ you might ask. It is a self discovery tool utilized by businesses and educational institutions to enable people to better understand themselves. 

Our founding program director Rob Jolly describes Insights as “a Jungian (Carl Jung) based cognitive inventory system that uses a simple, but powerful, four-color model to understand an individual’s unique personal style. It measures your preferences based on responses to the short online evaluator. One of the outputs is a unique personality profile, which identifies an individual’s strengths, weaknesses and communication style. This helps you understand your own style and how you interact with others. An additional management section is included which will help you understand how you prefer to be managed, with specifics on how to best help you succeed in the work environment. It is forward looking.” 

The power of Insights’ leadership development exercises focuses on displaying individuals as a host of the aforementioned color wheel model comprising four major quadrants: blue, red, yellow, and green. Each color represents a major preference of thought along the “x and y” axes of introversion and extroversion split between feeling and thinking. Blue, representing the analytically minded. Red highlights strong inclinations of directing. Yellow showcases a knack for creativity and ideation. And Green encompasses the welcoming side of a community developer. However, as not to be siloed, Insights Discovery states it best we all have “these the color energies, and it’s the unique mix of Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow, Earth Green and Cool Blue energies, which determines how and why people [often] behave the way they do.”

More than just a color wheel plotting points, Insights offers a deep perspective of individuals with a detailed, multi-page assessment of personal thinking preferences and behaviors. The data provided explains to learners of the model where strengths exist, how and why they are specifically plotted on the wheel, and expresses the most critical to growth points as existing blindspots and unknown weaknesses. Each individual assessment is unique, no one profile is similar to someone else’s. The odds of near exact matching profiles range to a figure of the one in a millionth variety. We find that when individuals among teams come together with their diverse profiles, the amount of knowledge shared, and to be gained, is vastly expansive. 

Combining Insights Discovery exercises with customized leadership development programs in a natural setting levels the learning environment. A comfortable, open space is created, where the participant can fully express and sense feedback in dialogue among group members. The Nature Place offers leadership training activities for employees to apply the Insights findings into a number of collective experiences from team initiatives, orienteering through 6,000 acres, classroom sessions, or a high ropes course challenge.

Outcomes and objectives from our team building programs are invaluable. We merely plant a small seed for growth with our guides and facilitators at The Nature Place. Measurable growth may come years later for many of our participants, yet it all starts with a look in, then a look out. It is what we pride ourselves on and integral to our mission statement. We strive to provide “educational leadership development programs that enhance your sense of self, sense of community, sense of Earth, sense of wonder, to help your sense of the future.” 

We hope you and your group stay for a team building program, or simply reflect with us at one of the best conference centers in Colorado.