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

by Thomas Erikson

Conclusion: It’s difficult to criticize a perfectionist. He already knows the best method, and he won’t change his opinion just because you happen to have a fancier title on your business card.

Red and Yellow work smoothly together, since they both want to shoot from the hip and always move forward.

Here we also have the same kind of energy, only a different type. Both are powerful and outgoing, and because both are verbal, they can easily find the right words.

Red is the accelerator, while a Blue is the brake. Both are needed in order to drive successfully. The trick is not to push both pedals at the same time.

So they are: Blue/Red, Red/Yellow, Yellow/Green, or Green/Blue.

even tougher and more aggressive towards those around him, a Yellow becomes more sulky and unstructured, a Green becomes even more passive and noncommittal than usual, and a Blue can become completely closed and split hairs so thin that they’re not even visible to the naked eye.

Dominance produces activity in an antagonistic environment. • Influence produces activity in a favorable environment. • Stability produces passivity in a favorable environment. • Compliance produces passivity in an antagonistic environment.

dominance is about acting, and influence is about interacting.

Marston

You can learn just as much from how they respond as you can from the responses themselves.

not how much you know or how clever you are, but what you actually do. And I have always been good at that. Doing things.

People should keep in mind that you can work without talking all the time. Put your energy into the task at hand instead of a bunch of other things. You can socialize on the weekend.

That we Yellows are very creative and resourceful.

no group should be composed solely of individuals of the same type. Diversity is the only possible route. The

best way to put a group of people together is by mixing different types of people. This is the only way to achieve decent dynamics in any group. This seems intuitive, but despite this, most of the organizations I have encountered fail on this fundamental requirement when they recruit people.

Managers bring in new people who are just like themselves because they ...

how people function, what makes them similar, and what makes them different. Because we are all different. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll find out exactly how different. The rest is up to you.