Understanding Your Personality Using the Lumina Spark Model by Chesca Gardaya
Early on a hump day Wednesday, I had the privilege of attending a breakfast forum on “Understanding Your Personality and the Personality of Others Using the Lumina Spark Model”, sponsored by the British Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines. Honestly, I chose to attend this session because the title caught my attention. As a psychology major, it really piqued my interest. The session was led by Ms. Anna Kotskaya, a transformational coach and trainer, and a member of the International Coach Federation. Anna was very passionate in practicing the Lumina Spark model. She was previously connected to P&G and JLL.
While waiting for the other attendees to arrive, Anna went around asking us how we would rate ourselves in three life categories: Emotional, Intellectual, and Physical. She explained that she does this to know more about the participants. Once everyone was there, she began educating us on the Lumina Spark Model. Anna explained that the Lumina Spark Model was a clear, easily understandable insight into one’s personality including the underlying and everyday personalities, and how one behaved under pressure.
To start off, Anna asked all the participants to choose 5 cards from each of the 4 color groups laid out on the table at the back of the room. Once we gathered a total of 20 cards, she instructed us to read each card. The cards had personality statements. We kept those that we felt were things we could relate to and discarded the cards that we didn’t identify with. I was left with 4/5 blue cards, 4/5 green cards, 3/5 red cards, and 2/5 yellow cards. I identified most with the blue and green color group.
Anna then instructed us to stand on a color mat, on the dominant color group of our cards. The colors stood for the following personalities:
- Red — Purposeful, direct, bold, competitive, takes charge
- Yellow — Sociable, spontaneous, imaginative, cheerful, demonstrative
- Green – Intimate, collaborative, evolving, empowering, calming
- Blue — Organized, observing, reliable, objective, evidence-based
I stood in between the colors green and blue, but mostly leaning on green. I was agreeing to what the assessment was saying as I was really a mix of green and blue. Mostly keeping to myself, observing everyone, but I was very people-focused and accommodating. During the sharing, I realized that one thing I could say about everyone in attendance was that they were not confined to just one color group. Yes, there would be dominant colors, which pertained to the dominant personality traits they had, but they also had little splashes of different color groups in their personality.
Another thing that Anna mentioned was that we tended to go to our opposite color group (Red to Green, Blue to Yellow, vice-versa) when we were in high-stress situations. It just highlighted that a person had different personality traits and when they reacted to certain situations, the splashes of colors shone through. These splashes of colors commonly appeared when the need was present.
Oftentimes, managers tended to hire their clones as they related to people who shared the same personalities as their own. It was actually a hindrance for innovation at times, as you tended to agree with each other’s ideas. For team dynamics, having a diverse team from different color groups would greatly benefit the organization, as this would serve as a balance in the culture. In relation to this point, it would help if you could identify each employee’s dominant color lens to know how to communicate with the team members better, therefore possibly producing better results.
While the event only had a few attendees, I still saw it as a great event as it was rich in learnings, and it really opened my eyes to what my personality was and how I could deal with other people with opposite personalities from mine.
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About the author:
Self-confessed ambivert Chesca is a bibliophile and a music lover. This mother of two loves trying out something new, especially when it comes to food and beauty.
