When we start a coaching programme with a new group of people, my coaching partner and podcast co-host Rachel Birchmore and I often deploy a behavioural analysis tool called C-me.

Unlike some other psychological profiling tools used in the workplace (Myers Briggs comes to mind), C-me focuses on our behaviour rather than on our personality. That’s why Rachel and I like it. We can all change our behaviours, whereas our personality tends to be more fixed.

C-me provides a common language across teams and offers insight to help increase self-awareness. It also promotes more effective communication. But perhaps its biggest value is that it really hammers home the message that we are all different.

Take how we think. In his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman explains how our behaviour is determined by two different systems that reside in all our minds – one of which is automatic (fast) and the other more considered (slow). He describes this as a compelling internal drama, with constant tensions and twists between two main characters, System 1 and System 2. System 1 is impulsive, automatic and intuitive. System 2 favours a more considered and deliberate approach.

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