Surrounded by Idiots: The Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Effectively Communicate with Each in Business (and in Life)

by Thomas Erikson

the most important lesson that you can walk away with is that the idiots who surround you are, in fact, not idiots at all. Instead, they are individuals worthy of respect, understanding, and being valued.

Everything you say to a person is filtered through his frames of reference, biases, and preconceived ideas. What remains is ultimately the message that he understands.

it is very rare that the entire message gets through exactly as you conceived it in your mind.

No matter how much sense you would like to knock into the other person’s head, there’s not that much you can do about it. This is one of the many challenges of communication. You simply can’t change how the listener functions.

By adjusting yourself to how other people want to be treated, you become more effective in your communication.

You help other people understand you by creating a secure arena for communication—on their terms. Then the listener can use his energy to understand rather than to consciously or unconsciously react to your manner of communicating.

No matter what method you choose to communicate with, as an individual, you will always be in the minority. No matter what kind of behavior you have, the majority of people around you will function differently from you.

You can’t just base your method of communication on your own preferences. Flexibility and the ability to interpret other people’s needs is what characterizes a good communicator.

People are not Excel spreadsheets. We can’t calculate everything. We’re way too intricate to be described in full. Even the youngest child is far more intricate than anything that could be conveyed in a book. However, we can avoid the most blatant blunders by understanding the basics of human communication.

There are two situations in which you can just be you: The first situation is when you’re alone in a room. Then it doesn’t matter how you speak or what you do.

In your solitude, you can behave exactly the way you feel. Simple, isn’t it?

The second situation where you can completely be yourself is when all the other people in the room are exactly like you.