True Colors gives leaders a simple way to read what each person needs. Gold wants the plan and the process. Orange needs room to change it, so open with a question. Blue is connected to people, so ask how they feel. Green wants the problem and the facts. Adjust per person, never per team.
If I asked a room of leaders whether they are good communicators, almost everyone would say yes. My honest view is that most of us do not know.
We think our team knows what our expectations are. We think they know how we hold them accountable, and that they understand the practices and procedures. But have you communicated in a way they can understand, or in the way you prefer to communicate?
We communicate the way that suits us
As leaders we tend to assume that the way we communicate is the best way, because it is the style we know. We feel comfortable in it. We feel confident that the message went out.
So ask yourself how many people on your team are exactly like you. If your answer is all of them, the team structure is worth another look. Most leaders will say the opposite. Fred is completely different personality-wise. Maggie is impossible to read.
They are different because they are people, and they have their own style. Two people can say the same sentence and have it mean nothing to each other.
That is our job as leaders to solve. If you can communicate with people in a way they understand, they can buy in, produce, and get genuinely excited about the work, because for the first time they actually understand what you are asking of them.
I use True Colors for this. There are many other frameworks and you should use whichever your team will absorb. I like True Colors because it is a simple way to evaluate what each person needs from me.
Know your own colour first
The first step is knowing your own style, then learning how to work with the other three.
I know I am gold. I am the person who wants the list so I can check it off. What time am I supposed to be there? I am rule, regulation, policy, process, and clear full guidance. I need to know what we are trying to accomplish, how we are getting there, and what the end result is. Then I can help put it together.
Knowing that about myself matters, because my instinct is to hand everyone a list. For roughly three quarters of my team, a list is the wrong opening move.
Gold: give me the plan
Gold people want structure, process, and a defined outcome. To lead someone gold, explain what needs to get done, give them a clear process, define what success looks like, and then let them execute.
The mistake with gold people is vagueness. Asking a gold person to go away and think creatively about a problem with no parameters does not feel liberating to them. It feels like being set up to fail.
Orange: give me room to move
My husband is orange. We can be dressed for date night, halfway to the movies, and he will suddenly suggest driving to Mount Baker to go skiing.
He cannot ski. He is afraid of heights. It was never about skiing. What he is saying is that he wants options, he wants new ideas, and he wants room to change the plan.
You probably have a Joe or a Charlie or a Megan in your office who has wonderful ideas and no idea what to do with them. Those are your orange people, and you cannot communicate with them the way you do with gold. You cannot expect them to get on the bus and travel in the same direction without some flexibility and creativity in the role.
So start with a question. Get their mind engaged. Once you do, the creative thinking starts flowing and they begin putting practical ideas into the project. They arrive at genuinely inventive problem-solving because you opened with a question rather than a structure or a direction.
Blue: show me the people
One of my favourite people on my team is deeply blue. I always say she is the nice side of HR and I am the not-so-nice side.
Her focus is people. Can they collaborate? Do they feel heard? Is the direction one that makes everyone feel comfortable and safe? Those words make my skin crawl, and they are important anyway.
Blue people are emotionally connected to the work they produce. That changes how you communicate with them. You cannot hand them a do-this-then-this structure, and asking them for their solution or their idea is not what they need either.
Ask them how they feel. How they feel about the project, about the people they are working with, about how the team is doing. Those are the areas they will move into immediately, and from there you get buy-in, feedback, understanding, and solutions.
If you give a blue person a list of requirements and never ask what they think, how they feel, or how they want to be involved, you shut them down.
Green: give me the problem
Green people were the hardest group for me to learn to lead, and they are the group I absolutely must have on my team every single time.
Your green people are logical. They work through solutions rather than emotion. Ask a green person how they are feeling and they will wonder why their feelings are relevant. They are not against emotion. They simply do not connect it to the work.
To lead a green person, bring the problem, bring the facts, explain the goal and the deadline, and give them room to find the solution.
The same sentence in a different language
A leader came to me once, frustrated, saying his boss was impossible to work with. Every conversation had a disconnect. Sometimes his boss would do something completely different from what they had discussed. Other times he simply glazed over mid-conversation.
I asked him to talk to me the way he had talked to his boss. He said: we are working through some labour issues, and I feel like we are not getting to the bottom line, I feel like we will not reach the ROI we are trying to hit this year, I feel like the team is not engaged enough.
I asked what his boss did. Nothing. He returned to his own agenda and the conversation ended.
His boss was green and he was not. He had opened with feelings, three times.
So I told him to stop using the word feeling with his boss. Same sentence, same idea, different language. The outcome could be this. One thing we need to be concerned about is this. One of the bottom lines we may not hit is this.
It is the same content. When you change the language to something the other person can absorb, you get the buy-in and the collaboration, whether that person is your boss or one of your employees.
Where this shows up in a manufacturing operation
This is not a personality exercise for an offsite. It surfaces in the places where operational decisions get made.
Think about a shift handover. A gold supervisor writes a complete checklist and assumes the next shift will work through it in order. An orange supervisor gives the headline and expects the detail to be worked out live. Neither is wrong on its own, and the handover between them drops information every time.
Or think about how a change gets announced. The same email about a new process lands four different ways. Gold wants to know the steps and the effective date. Orange wants to know whether there is room to adapt it. Blue wants to know who was consulted and how it affects people. Green wants to know what problem it solves.
When leaders only send the version that satisfies their own colour, three quarters of the room leaves with questions they will not ask. Those unasked questions become the inconsistency you discover two months later on the floor.
The same is true in performance conversations. Telling a blue person what needs to change without acknowledging the effect on their team means they will hear only the criticism. Telling a green person how you feel about their performance means they may hear nothing useful at all.
Adjust per person, not per team
None of this requires a new programme, new software, or a budget. It requires you to stop assuming everyone needs to hear things the way you need to hear them.
I would also warn against applying this at team level. If you find yourself saying your team is a particular way, you have missed the mark. Joe may be one thing. Amanda may be another. Sam may be different again.
Learn the person in front of you. When you change how you communicate, you make it easier for different people to do their best work, and that reaches everything from teamwork and performance through to whether good people want to stay. Our guide to communication working agreements covers how to make those expectations explicit across a leadership team.
Which colour is hardest for you to lead?
Frequently Asked Questions
What is True Colors and why use it for leadership?
It is a simple communication style framework using four colours. Heather uses it because it makes it straightforward to evaluate what each team member needs from a leader. Other frameworks work too; the important thing is that your team absorbs it.
How do you communicate with an orange team member?
Start with a question rather than a structure or a direction. Once their thinking is engaged, they contribute practical and inventive problem-solving. They need flexibility and room to change the plan.
Why does asking a green person how they feel backfire?
Green people work through solutions rather than emotion, and do not connect feelings to the work. Opening with feelings can even read to them as instability. Bring the problem, the facts, the goal and the deadline instead.
Can I apply a communication style to my whole team?
No. If you find yourself describing your team as one style, you have missed the mark. Each person has their own, and the adjustment has to be made individually.
Does this require new software or budget?
No. It requires you to stop assuming everyone needs to hear things the way you need to hear them, starting with knowing your own style first.