The idea for this piece came about when I (Jetaun Bailey) was pursuing my master’s degree in counseling. I recall my professor stating clearly that burnout occurs often among helping professionals and that the average stay for a counselor employed at a mental health facility is two years.

As one of my assignments, I completed and presented a paper on ways for helping professionals to avoid burnout. However, not once in my presentation did I illustrate ways that the workplace could employ preventive services to combat burnout. At the time, my focus was on using self-care and, ultimately, I received a grade of 100 on that project. However, in reflecting on my counseling career, I realized that workplace training programs overlook helping professionals by not addressing topics related to the complex workplace dynamics that may contribute to burnout, which is likely to increase, because the demands in the counseling profession can be overwhelming.

According to Amanda Stemen’s 2014 article, “Burnout: Who’s taking care of the care takers?” management in the helping professions focuses more on clients than on employees. Many factors are related to burnout. Low salaries are one contributing factor but not the most significant. Many of us who enter the helping professions, counseling in particular, understand that we are not pursuing a lucrative career. However, lack of managerial support is believed to be a significant factor in burnout. This lack of support isn’t necessarily intentional; it is thought that many in management believe that helping professionals have innate abilities to solve their work-related problems. However, in many cases, counselors work in isolation, without support from management and peers, and know its effects.

Thus, management’s support is critical in reducing burnout among helping professionals. In speaking with Terra Griffin, a manager at an acute behavioral hospital unit for children and adolescents, she revealed that the turnover in the unit was among the highest in the hospital. Such high employee turnover costs organizations time and productivity. One of the staff’s chief complaints was management’s failure to provide them with relevant training to meet the demands of the job and promote workplace cohesion, which had led to many problems within the teams.

Stemen’s article suggested the need for professional development in addressing burnout. She reports that providing professional development opportunities customized to employees’ interests encourages growth that benefits both the individual employee and the organization.

 

Mind-mapping

One professional development approach is to employ mind-mapping concepts. This is accomplished by creating a specific topic or question so that each person in the training session can see other points of view rather than just his or her own. This nonintrusive approach facilitates group cohesion. Researcher Tony Buzan, the author of Use Your Head, developed the mind-mapping concept in the 1970s. It is designed to facilitate the sharing of ideas and concepts to solve problems.

Through observation, Griffin employed this concept in a series of training sessions simply by asking employees in a unit where turnover had been problematic a simple question: “What is your favorite color?” Initially, the employees did not seem eager to participate in the training session. Remarkably, however, when Griffin focused the initial session on that single question, changes in body language occurred among the staff immediately, as if thinking about their favorite colors had some sort of healing effect. Afterward, they were eager to share their favorite colors and the ways they identified with those colors personally.

Interestingly, although employees weren’t given information about the psychological meaning of each color ahead of time, they ended up describing them similarly to how they were presented on Griffin’s color chart. Furthermore, they could identify their similarities and differences in relation to their multiple colors. This helped shed light on some of the difficulties the employees faced in creating a more cohesive work environment.

Three therapeutic teams were present at each training session, each of which was composed of two therapists, one psychiatrist, several nurses and several behavioral specialists. During their self-exploration of the colors, Team 2 realized that many of its members shared the same favorite color, red, while the two therapists identified with blue. Incidentally, of the three groups, Team 2 was confronting the most difficulties. Many of the team members who identified with red were having difficulties sharing leadership responsibilities and were disregarding the leadership authority of the two therapists who identified, unconsciously, with blue. Once members of Team 2 were able to understand their difficulties, they began to discuss ways that their team could work more cohesively. As a result, Team 2 set team goals, with respecting one another identified as the top priority.

Instead of asking employees direct questions about their workplace problems, this exercise of looking at their favorite colors appeared to be a nonintrusive method that encouraged employees to share their differences. Griffin’s simple question elicited many answers with respect to therapeutic problems occurring in this workplace of helping professionals, and thus promoted resolutions to some stressful issues.

 

The psychology of color

Intrigued with the feedback from the staff during these sessions as they compared their favorite colors to their personalities with respect to their workplace relationships, we set forth to emulate this training. Ultimately, we implemented a similar version in a group of training sessions for graduate students who would be entering the helping profession as practicum and internship students. Their feedback and interactions were outstanding. We learned much about our students that we had not known, and this helped us revamp our practicum and internship training program for students and site supervisors.

As a result, we set out to explore how many nonintrusive, evidence-based training programs of this nature were available. We conducted a content analysis of evidence-based studies on the psychology of color. We also sought to determine the extent to which such training materials are designed to facilitate workplace cohesion among helping professionals.

Using the American Psychological Association (APA) database and electronic resources, we searched APA PsycNET, PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES from their inception through 2018. Furthermore, we used the Google Scholar search engine. The search phrases we used were “evidence-based practices on color psychology” and “training curriculum on color psychology.” The criterion for inclusion for review was that the title contained the search phrase; studies that did not meet the criterion were excluded.

After completing the content analysis, we could not find a single evidence-based study on color psychology or training curriculum related to the topic. We also were unable to determine the extent to which such training curricula facilitated workplace cohesion among helping professionals. There appears to be a significant gap in the literature pertaining to the actual use of color psychology in the facilitation of workplace cohesion in human services or among helping professionals. We did not find any specific evidence-based studies that provided empirical information on training materials on the subject that lead to workplace cohesion. The absence of this information reflects the extent to which the topic is largely unexplored and illustrates what little recognition it is accorded.

In “Colors and trust: The influence of user interface design on trust and reciprocity,” Florian Hawlitschek and colleagues indicate that the literature available on the psychology of color suggests that color preferences associated with personality influence interaction patterns in the employment setting. This illustrates that understanding the role that color preferences play in group behaviors and settings is critical to interprofessional collaborations, especially among helping professionals. Furthermore, other literature has suggested that colors have individual meanings based on a person’s cultural background or racial and ethnic group. Therefore, the influences of color should be interpreted with caution.

However, what made this training so unique is that Griffin did not use any assessment tools to determine anyone’s colors. Instead, she asked each person his or her favorite color and thus gave life to their individuality based on their cultural or racial and ethnic backgrounds without probing for any specific details (colors hold a universal meaning of harmony in many cultures). This mind-mapping technique seemed beneficial. Griffin’s leadership played an important role in helping the employees navigate through their favorite colors by connecting to their personalities and the way they fit within the scheme of their work productivity to create or disrupt cohesion.

 

Conclusion

As the dynamism within health and human service delivery creates more interdependencies, there is a growing need for professionals to collaborate to achieve better client outcomes. However, there is little information on the role that the characteristics of interdisciplinary teams play in promoting synergy that influences such outcomes.

Shared values, mutual respect for colleagues’ expertise, and patient-oriented goals and outcomes are reflections not only of the diverse interests and asymmetry of power of the various partners in care, but also differences in their personalities and preferences. Therefore, fostering workplace cooperation and cohesion is essential for effective, competent, cost-effective, culturally responsive and comprehensive service delivery.

Creating mind-mapping trainings designed to honor individual uniqueness, such as the identification of favorite colors, can help us achieve such cohesion. These trainings draw us into companionship where we can evaluate our similarities and differences through our individual uniqueness, thus creating a meaningful and purposeful work environment for helping professionals and the clients they serve.

 

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Jetaun Bailey is an assistant professor at Alabama A&M University, where she serves as director of clinical training. Contact Jetaun at jetaun.bailey@aamu.edu or baileyjetaun@hotmail.com.

 

Bryan Gere is an assistant professor at Alabama A&M University, where he serves as coordinator of clinical training in rehabilitation counseling. Contact Bryan at bryan.gere@aamu.edu.

 

Terra Griffin, a licensed professional counselor supervisor with more than 15 years of experience in counseling management, supervision and training, contributed to this article.

 

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.