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

by Thomas Erikson

Funny, entertaining, and almost divinely positive. Absolutely. Again—this is their own interpretation. If you ask other people about Yellows, you may well get a somewhat different picture. Many people will agree with what you have read up to now, but you will also hear other comments. It’s especially fun to ask the Blues. They will say that Yellows are selfish, superficial, and overly self-confident. Someone else will say that they talk too much and are bad listeners. Combine that with the observation that they can be distracted and careless. Suddenly the picture is not as flattering. When a Yellow hears these comments, one of two things can happen. Either he gets deeply distressed and genuinely hurt, or he sets off a ferocious argument. It depends. What’s striking is that, over time, none of this criticism will really torment a Yellow very much. On the one hand, he’s a bad listener, and on the other hand, he has what some psychologists might call a selective memory. He simply forgets the difficult bits, and with his positive ethos he finds it easy to say to himself that he doesn’t have any faults or shortcomings.