Going Red: The Birkman

In 2025, the Amplify Consulting crew spent a team-building day completing the Birkman Assessment. According to their website, "The Birkman Method measures various personality traits to provide insights into how they might interact in a team setting."

Based on 70 years of research, it intends to answer why people act differently under the same circumstances.

The assessments pinpoint individual strengths and identify work styles, interests, stress triggers, and hidden psychological needs of team members, which translate into overall engagement and job satisfaction.

The Birkman Method uses four primary colours—Yellow, Green, Blue, and Red—to classify personality types, behavioural styles, and motivations. Green represents "The Communicator," a people-oriented extrovert. Blue represents "The Thinker," an introvert who is people- or idea-oriented. Yellow represents "The Analyzer," a task-oriented introvert.

Two of the most valuable lessons we learned were how individual communication styles affected the reception of ideas and the significance of asking questions. The experience also helped identify a closet introvert, leading to the creation of a meeting buffer zone that gives them time to recharge.

Viewed through the lens of the quadrated Birkman map, our team was a patchwork of yellow, green and blue but not a hint of red.

Red represents "The Doer," a task-oriented and action-focused individual who is decisive.

In all fairness, our team is certainly task-oriented and energetic. Guided by clear creative briefs that define our goals, we structure our workday into individual tasks. This organization enables six individuals to take independent steps toward the unified goal of completing each project.

However, we were missing one single red element: decisiveness. This lack led to workflow bottlenecks as everyone waited for the necessary authorizations.

When a team hums along collaboratively, as ours does, once we became aware, we quickly turned the principle into action. We permitted ourselves to "Go Red."

While "Going Red" has not turned Amplify into the Wild West, it has enabled us to operate more efficiently. This process begins with a debriefing with the project manager, where we outline the issue and present our proposed solution.

The Birkman Assessment gave our team insights into our individual strengths and needs and identified a critical gap in our workflow. "Going Red" has not only enhanced our efficiency but also fostered a culture of proactive problem-solving. By empowering each team member to take the initiative, we are driving our collective success while giving them the confidence to be the solution.