What Color Is Your Leadership?

This time of year is filled with color.

Strands of lights, garland & glitter, ribbons & bows; color can be found everywhere.  Holiday colors add to the festivity of the season, but the colors also carry important meanings to our celebrations and religious observances.

Chanukah

Blue and white, traditionally associated with Chanukah, come from the colors of the four tassels on the tallit, or prayer shawl.  Each tassel has a single strand of blue, representing the Old Testament command to have some blue threads in their shawl to remind them of the sky and God.

More recently, it also reflects the colors of the Israeli flag.

Kwanza

The colors of Kwanzaa are red, green and black.  The red represents struggles of the past and present. Green is the hopeful color of the future. Black represents the rich skin color of people of African descent.

Christmas

Christmas is most often colored with green, red, and white, all relating back to the birth of Christ.  Green symbolizes eternal life through faith in Him, red represents the blood later shed by Christ, white is the color of the sinless purity He lived in.

Reflecting on the meaning of holiday colors led me to thinking about the general meaning of colors and how that can also define different leadership styles.  Color Wheel Pro offers clear definitions and great detail about the meaning of color.  It also describes various shading of color, but for this discussion, I’ll stick to the most common variations and just provide the summary meaning.

I invite you to reflect upon what color your leadership is as you read this.

Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is associated with energey, war, danger, strength, power, determination, as well as passion, desire and love.

Orange combines the energy of red with the happiness of yellow.  It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics.  Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation.

Yellow is the color of sunshine. It’s associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy.

Green is the color of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. Green has strong emotional correspondence with safety. Dark green is also commonly associated with money.

Blue is the color of the sky and sea. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven.

Purple combines the stability of blue and the energy of red. Purple is associated with royalty. It symbolizes power, nobility, luxury, and ambition. It conveys wealth and extravagance. Purple is associated with wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, mystery, and magic.

White is associated with light, goodness, innocence, purity, and virginity. It is considered to be the color of perfection.  White means safety, purity, and cleanliness.

Black is a mysterious color associated with fear and the unknown (black holes). It usually has a negative connotation, [but can also] denote strength and authority; it is considered to be a very formal, elegant, and prestigious color.

I think I’m an orange, yellow, and blue leader. What color paints your leadership style, and what does that tell others about you?

**********

Never miss an issue of Linked 2 Leadership, subscribe today.
Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™

———————–

Eleanor Biddulph is the EVP of Client Services at Progressive Medical, Inc.
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Blog

Image Source: evolutionnews.org, homedepot.com,  freewebs.com, farm4.static.flickr.com