iMA (Identify, Modify, Adapt) is an exciting colour based universal language, designed to maximise connectivity i.e. mutual liking, trust, understanding and respect.
Everyone in the world speaks one of four iMA dialects, putting her/him on the same wavelength as 25% of the world’s population. The majority of people, many of whom are important to your success, are on a different wavelength than you. The universal language of iMA is a simple way of observing and understanding the differences in people, then connecting with them on their wavelength. When this happens communication, trust, understanding, and co-operation go up, while stress and tension go down.
iMA is not a psychometric and therefore does not set you on a voyage of self-discovery. In fact, it is the exact opposite, in that it helps you understand other people and how to effectively understand and work with them. This is what makes IMA colours so powerful for businesses.
How Does iMA Work?
iMA identifies four styles of communication and behaviour styles, based on two of four elements. Some 50% of people are either Assertive or Non-Assertive; 50% are either Left Brain Thinking (logical, thoughts based and task lead) or Right Brain Thinking (non-linear, feelings based and relationship lead). Whichever two of those four elements any individual is, makes up their iMA colour: High Red, High Yellow, High Green, and High Blue.
While iMA appreciates that everyone is in some way a blend of all four colours, and every person is as unique as their own thumb print, it focuses on the most dominant and easily identifiable attributes which are represented by your “highest colour”.
The Uses of iMA Colours in Business
There are many different ways in which iMA colours can be utilised in businesses. The reason for this is simple; in the same way that every person has an iMA colour, jobs have iMA colours too. It’s therefore essential for companies to ensure they have the right people in the right roles, so both the enterprise itself and its employees can flourish.
Here are the main ways in which iMA colours can support businesses:
Recruitment
By using iMA, any organisation can develop a winning strategy by analysing every job and task and matching it to a specific style. That job style can be matched to a person of the same style, meaning this perfect match has landed you an employee who loves the job you need them to do.
People thrive in jobs that they love and they love those jobs because they are good at them, and the reason they are good at the job is simply because they are a perfect match. To achieve this, the method is to focus all the job correspondence whether it is an advert, a blog post or just a job description, towards the iMA colour in question.
For example; If the role requires a self-starter to perform a significant task lead activity then you would focus all of your efforts towards a High Red, by using words and phrases which appeal to High Reds and only to High Reds. You will find that it is High Reds who then apply for the job, while naturally filtering out the other three iMA colours who are not suitable for the job.
The recruitment process itself also has to be focused towards the target iMA colour, and those involved in the recruiting and the decision making need to be the right iMA colours too. Making a wrong hire is very expensive in many ways ,not just financial, matching the iMA colours of people with the iMA colours of jobs is a very effective and efficient way of avoiding that problem.
Retaining Employees
Once you have a fully functioning and productive team in place, the next step is to ensure that you retain your best people and allow them to grow with the business. By keeping a close eye on what is required to allow your business to grow and to flourish it must be ensured that you don’t just focus on the tasks which need to be completed, but also the people who are best suited to tackle them.
iMA is a superb guide to making sure that this happens and that mission creep doesn’t corrupt the flow of any employee’s favourite job. Keeping everyone in their preferred role in turn leads to the business functioning at its highest level, as you have your most talented people in jobs which they love doing and want to continually improve while doing it.
Opportunities for Promotion
Retaining your most valued team members and keeping them in the jobs they thrive in is a massive consideration when an opportunity of promotion arises. If, for instance, you expand your business into a new market, you should examine which of the iMA colours best fits the job role, and identify the senior team member with the corresponding colour personality and management style.
When an opportunity for a promotion arises, the most common practice is to promote a colleague who is a high performer in their current role. However, the reason that person is so good at their current position will be because it is a direct iMA colour match-up; person with job.
If the job they would be taking on doesn’t match their iMA colour it will not work. Instead, it will end up creating a domino effect of avoidable problems not only for that person, but for you, for other members of your team and for your customers. Everyone needs to be recognised and rewarded for their individual skills set, which can come in many forms, but not in promoting them into a job that they cannot do.
Internal Communication
To continually maintain your highly productive fully functioning team with all the right iMA colour people in all the right iMA colour jobs, it is vital that all of them communicate perfectly with each other. By knowing each other’s iMA colours and learning how to communicate successfully with all (being understanding, tolerant while modifying and adapting their own behaviours and communication styles to fit appropriately with their fellow team members), a dynamic environment will have been created.
External Stakeholders
Finally, the same applies to working with people from outside of your business. Knowing the best way of communicating with them and allowing for their foibles will build faster and more profitable business relationships both now and into the future. If you find that you or one of your team finds a specific client, customer or supplier difficult to work with, it is likely that you are experiencing an iMA colour clash. Once you adapt to them or find someone of their iMA colour to work with them, all those issues quickly dissipate.
Unlock the Power of iMA Colours for Your Business
As you can see, iMA colours can have an important impact on businesses on many levels. You’ll be able to recruit, retain and promote your staff more accurately, while acquiring and retaining your customer base more successfully.
So why wait any longer? Contact me today for an in-depth look into how you can utilise iMA colours to enhance your business. Curious about your own colour personality? Take this short questionnaire and discover what makes you tick.
