The position of your Diamond on the Grid is an indicator of your Usual Behaviour. This is how you see yourself, and how you are able to behave when not experiencing the pressure or discomfort of an environment ill-suited to your Needs.

Usual Behaviour is the behaviour other people tend to see and it’s therefore how they are likely to describe you.

The exception to this is people who may only have seen you in stressful environments, where you are acting out of your Stress rather than Usual Behaviour!


My own example of this occurred a few years ago… Generally speaking, people tend to describe me as being quite quiet and gentle in the way I communicate (I have a very Blue Usual score), but in this particular environment I discovered I had a reputation for being a bit direct and domineering…

Why? Well, it was an environment that I was finding extremely difficult to work in, and so what people were seeing was my extreme Green Stress - but having no prior knowledge of me, or the way I behaved the rest of the time, they just thought that was who I was!

We have a tendency to think we know who people are, based on the way we’ve seen them behave. But this visible behaviour is only a fraction of the whole story.


Have a look at your own Usual score on the hoozyu platform, and then scroll down and read the descriptions for the other colours.

  • Do you recognise the descriptions of your own Usual score? Can you think of an example of something you do, or a habit you have that illustrates this Usual Behaviour?

  • How about each of the other colours? Can you think of friends or family members who might have Usual scores in each of the other colours? What behaviours do they display that might indicate what their Usual score would be? Remember that we describe Usual Behaviour as positive and productive, so bear in mind that the behaviours you see may be ‘Usual’ for each person, or you may be seeing a reaction to a difficult situation.

  • Which of the people in your life do you think are most different to you in the way they usually behave? How does this impact the way you interact with them?

You may want to re-read the descriptions for the different colours from time to time, to help you understand where people who seem very “different” are coming from. Funnily enough, learning to work with the people who are most different to you is often the way to be most effective – your strengths will complement theirs and vice versa!


As a final exercise, use what you’ve learnt about your own Usual score to write yourself a few sentences answering the question Who am I, usually?

This can be helpful for several reasons, but here’s 2 that I find particularly key:

  1. If you can familiarise yourself with your positive, productive Usual Behaviour, it makes it much easier to recognise when that behaviour changes and you start acting out of Stress. In the example I gave earlier, it was only when I heard that I had developed a reputation for being overly direct and domineering that I realised just how stressful I was finding that environment. Once I cottoned on, I was able to take a step back and work out what I needed to do, in order to minimise the negative impact it was having on me, thereby minimising the negative impact I was having on other people!

  2. The second reason to do this exercise is that understanding your own Usual Behaviour provides you with the opportunity to ‘own it’ and turn the way you naturally behave into a strength that you can use - not only to progress yourself, but also to create a positive impact on those around you. As previously mentioned, learning to work with the people who seem most different to you enables each person to complement the others. People need your strengths and your approach just as much as you need theirs. If you can embrace the way you naturally behave, and seek opportunities to apply your unique approach, you’ll find your niche: where you fit and what you can bring to any group, team, project or role.


So that’s Usual! Check out the next post in this series ‘Who am I, really?’ where we’ll look at the underlying Need scores, and what they tell you about the person you are beneath the surface…