I’ll be honest with you, until late 2023, I hadn’t even heard of Insights Discovery and just 6 months after that, we’d decided to become the first Insights partner (polite for ‘distributor’) in Thailand. That’s how far it influenced me and my partner.
I’m going to try to be as objective as possible in this post, but please know I am a believer and will inevitably praise the Insights Discovery Tool. This post will give you all the necessary details about the Insights Discovery model. But, before we get into what it is, let’s understand what it is NOT!
It’s not a test rather a preference evaluator. It measures your preference not your ability. For instance, you might show higher preference for processes and structures in your planning over intuitive or play-it-by-ear decision making. In summary, it doesn’t tell you what you can or cannot do rather what and how you prefer to do.
With that out of the way…
What is Insights Discovery?
Insights Discovery is a practical psychometric tool that translates complex human dynamics into four colours. In other words, it’s a globally respected personality profiling system that helps people understand themselves and others using a simple yet powerful four-color model.
Based on the psychological types theory of Carl Jung and one of his leading students, Dr Jolande Jacobi, it provides a common language that teams across the globe and Thailand are using to enhance communication, improve collaboration, and build stronger workplace relationships.
Who uses Insights Discovery?
It’s used by several major companies across more than 60 countries for various purposes.
How accurate is the Insights Discovery profile?
When I read my profile, I was trying very hard to believe how can a simple, short multiple choice questionnaire produce such detailed description of me? It couldn’t possibly know me that well. How does it?
Well, thankfully, I’m not the only one who has had such strong reaction. The Insights Personal Profile is just that accurate. Here are some science-based facts about Insights Discovery model:
- Received a 4-star rating on reliability by the British Psychological Society
- Independently assessed and found to comply with the EFPA Test Review guidelines.
- Winner of National Business Awards, UK – 2017, 2018, 2020.
- Very High Cronbach Alpha Coefficient score (Avg. 0.9215) (1.0 is ideal & 0.7 is commonly accepted lower limit)
- 90% & above is the average score it receives from users (ours were 100%)
How is the Insights Discovery profile generated?
What is included in an Insights Discovery personal profile?
A lot.
Your profile is divided into different chapters, which can be purchased as add-ons along with the foundation chapter.
Foundation Chapter includes
- Personal style (an overview of your general disposition toward life, your key personality features, your commonly held beliefs, your approach to different activities)
- Interacting with others (what personal beliefs guide your interaction with your family, colleagues and others)
- Decision making preference (a critical guide to what influences your decision making process)
- Key strengths & possible weaknesses (bullet point statements about some of your innate talents and possible shortcomings)
- Value to the team (the valuable contribution you make in a team environment)
- Communication style (how others should and shouldn’t communicate with you)
- Possible blind spots (this is what you need to read to turn your past failures into future successes)
- Opposite type (how you should approach people who are very different from you)
- Suggestions for development (your pathway to personal & professional growth)
Management chapter includes
- Creating the ideal (work) environment (these workplace features can bring out the best in you)
- Managing you (your manager or/and team lead should read this)
- Motivating you (this one as well; especially during performance review)
- Management style (things you should be extremely careful of when managing others)
Effective Selling chapter
This chapter is divided into an overview section and the six stages of sale. The profile tells you your strengths in each of these stages and also actionable suggestions that could help you become really good at influencing others. Here are the six stages:
- Before the sale begins
- Identifying needs
- Proposing a solution
- Dealing with buying resistance
- Gaining commitment
- Follow up & follow through
The chapter ends with a visual infographic of how well you do in the skills required to excel at these six stages. For example, at the ‘Before the sale begins’ stage, you get to see how well you do at researching, building trust, clear objectives and getting appointments. Personally, it was transformative, as I got to notice how poor I was at listening and meeting concerns of our clients.
I remember my partner sharing feedback she had received after a client meeting about how animated I was in communicating the benefits of the product and how little time I spent listening to what the client was trying to express. It hurt bad.
Personal life chapter includes
- Living on purpose (things you should be aware of in setting goals and defining your life purpose)
- Time & life management (how you manage your time and what could make you even better)
- Personal creativity (talks about your creative characteristics and how you can build on them)
I was laughing hard when I read a statement in my profile that says, “In his creativity, Girish jumps where angels may fear to tread” and right next to it the suggestion read, “Use the sequence, ‘Ready, Aim, Fire’ in that order!” That’s creative use of language. 😅
- Lifelong learning (your preferred environment for learning and what you can do to optimise it)
All of the above is mapped to a spider graph and a line graph that visually shows your preference for the eight “styles” of learning, if I may call it that.
- Interview questions (your responses to these questions will give you a deeper understanding of who you are)
The last two pages are part of every profile. You need facilitator support to understand what they mean.
The Insights Discovery Wheel
The Insights Discovery Colour Dynamics
(breaks down your preferred colour energy combination)
What I realised after re-reading my profile a few times was that the statements are written in third person form ‘He is/Girish prefers…’. It offers you an opportunity to read about yourself by removing the I (the ego). You get to objectively analyse who this person in the profile really is.
Also what distinguishes the Insights Discovery profile from the other psychometric tools like MBTI, DISC, The Big 5, etc is that statements are written in positive language. You don’t feel attacked or judged harshly.
How does Insights Discovery benefit your organisation?
Here are three big ways I’ve seen Insights transform organisations,
- Building high-performing teams It helps team members understand each other’s colour energies, communication styles, and decision-making preferences. I’ve watched teams have those “aha!” moments when they finally get why their colleagues approach work differently, and then use that understanding to collaborate more effectively.
- Building leadership succession pipeline In our increasingly AI-dominated world, Insights equips your high-potential managers with those crucial people skills such as mentoring, coaching, adapting to different personalities, and genuinely connecting with team members. These are exactly the skills your future leaders need.
- Building emotionally intelligent leaders Insights helps leaders understand their natural style and shows them how to flex when needed. I’ve seen managers transform after realising how their approach impacts others. They develop real empathy and influence, not just authority.
We’ve also used it for cross-cultural team building and organisational culture workshops with fantastic results. The colour language works brilliantly across different backgrounds!
If you would like to understand how this tool can transform your team or organisation’s growth, I’d recommend booking a no-commitment informal conversation. It would give you a firsthand experience of the Insights approach (and yes, you can judge if I’ve actually improved my listening skills since receiving my profile! 🤓)
