Please welcome to the Floricane blog; Rick Jarvis of One South Realty! He blogs constantly about Richmond here, here, and here. He's been a big Insights® fan from the beginning, so we thought we'd ask him what he learned at our first Insights® Explorations workshop. Turns out there are still things left to learn even after three public workshops!
I don't know what I don't know.
And I would like to thank Floricane and Insights® Discovery for reminding of me of that, AGAIN.
Background — I am kind of an Insights junkie. Last year, I was told (jokingly, I hope) by one of the Floricane team that I might not be allowed back to another Insights workshop since I had been to so many of them. Since I became a part of the cult … errr … program, back in early days, I figure that I had been to at least 4 or 5 workshops and had, on multiple occasions, brought several of the Floricane folks to our office to help train our agents. I was also lucky enough to be involved in all three of the Tilted small business un-conferences, where Insights was an integral part.
Needless to say, I had been exposed to the material quite a few times.
Now, while I was in no danger of being able to teach a class on Insights, I did feel that I knew the subject matter pretty well (at least well enough to write this) and would argue that I consciously used the Insights framework in my day-to-day dealings with colleagues, friends and family. So when Kathy Greenier, one of the newer folks to call Floricane home, called me to personally invite me to the next iteration of Insights, I was more than happy to accept as, in full candor, I love this stuff.
But what would make this version – Floricane’s new Insights Explorations program – different than the last 8 times I went through the material, you ask? I wondered, too. I knew my colors and I knew my (many) blinds spots. I even knew how to recognize stress-based behaviors and what to do (or not to do) when things were going off the rail. Again, I thought I was pretty well versed.
Well, you don't know what you don't know.
The concepts of intuition and sensation – how we process and take in information – was introduced to the group. I think, to a person, we were all immediately crinkling our brow and trying to sort through another one of the subtleties of Insights. You know that moment in Insights where you have the ‘a ha’ moment? Yeah, that happened again … except times about 50.
In a nutshell, besides the tendencies we all have towards introversion or extroversion as well as the data or gut feel that drives our decisions, people also tend to fall into two basic camps when it comes to taking in and dealing with information. Are you more of a ‘what if?’ person or a ‘what now?’ type? Do you focus on what is coming or on what just happened? Is it known or is it possible?
The introduction of two new thought constructs that live on the wheel we are so familiar with just seems so obvious now. I get it. It makes so much sense. I can see it everywhere and in everyone. But again, it took Insights to make me realize how little I really know.
I can’t wait for the next one.
Rick Jarvis is the founder of One South Realty, and an official Insights aficionado. Check out Floricane’s new Insights Explorations series here!