Surrounded by idiots

Though Erikson’s follow-up question—“Who hired all these idiots?”—saw him thrown out of the office, he credits the experience with sparking his interest in why people do or don’t work well together, and in the tendency to view those one consistently disagrees with or misunderstands as “idiots.

To help readers put the kibosh on judgment and strive more to understand others, he lays out a color-coded personality trait matrix —Red (dominant), Blue (analytical) Yellow (inspiring), and Green (stable)—then explains how to adapt and tailor one’s written communications and in-person behavior for the best collaborative results with other personality types. Though a simplified model, it provides a helpful way of framing intent vs. impact.

Key Takeaways
• It is important for a modern leader to have the competence to deal with many different people.
• If you follow advice on how to interact with people of different colors- red, yellow, green and blue- you won’t suffer so many conflicts.
• There are common communication issues between people with different color styles.
• no one is purely one “color” or other,