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Summary
Summary
Do you ever think you're the only one making any sense? Or tried to reason with your partner with disastrous results? Do long, rambling answers drive you crazy? Or does your colleague's abrasive manner rub you the wrong way?
You are not alone. After a disastrous meeting with a highly successful entrepreneur, who was genuinely convinced he was 'surrounded by idiots', communication expert and bestselling author, Thomas Erikson dedicated himself to understanding how people function and why we often struggle to connect with certain types of people.
Surrounded by Idiots is an international phenomenon, selling over 1.5 million copies worldwide. It offers a simple, yet ground-breaking method for assessing the personalities of people we communicate with - in and out of the office - based on four personality types (Red, Blue, Green and Yellow), and provides insights into how we can adjust the way we speak and share information.
Erikson will help you understand yourself better, hone communication and social skills, handle conflict with confidence, improve dynamics with your boss and team, and get the best out of the people you deal with and manage. He also shares simple tricks on body language, improving written communication, advice on when to back away or when to push on, and when to speak up or shut up. Packed with 'aha!' and 'oh no!' moments, Surrounded by Idiots will help you understand and communicate with those around you, even people you currently think are beyond all comprehension.
And with a bit of luck you can also be confident that the idiot out there isn't you!
Author Notes
Erikson explains how to identify and interact with each type of person, and the simple four-color system allows you to speedily identify a friend or coworker and adjust how you speak and share with them. Surrounded by idiots is full of practical information to set you up for success in every area of your life.
Reviews (1)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A basic but useful guide to communicating with the uncommunicable arrives from executive trainer Erikson. He begins with a story of interviewing a self-made entrepreneur who declared himself "surrounded by idiots" at his company. 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. Marred only by an ill-judged decision to use only masculine pronouns when referring to hypothetical situations, this book-already a bestseller in Sweden-is clearly, dynamically presented and easy to grasp. Agent: Maria Enberg, Enberg Literary. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
| Foreword | p. vii |
| Introduction: The Man Who Was Surrounded by Idiots | p. xi |
| 1 Communication Happens on the Listener's Terms | p. 1 |
| 2 Why Are We the Way We Are? | p. 7 |
| 3 An Introduction to the System | p. 12 |
| 4 Red Behavior: How to Recognize a Real Alpha and Avoid Getting in His Way | p. 16 |
| 5 Yellow Behavior: How to Recognize Someone Whose Head Is in the Clouds and Get Him Back to Reality Again | p. 28 |
| 6 Green Behavior: Why Change Is So Difficult and How to Get Around It | p. 37 |
| 7 Blue Behavior: In Pursuit of Perfection | p. 48 |
| 8 No One Is Completely Perfect: Strengths and Weaknesses | p. 62 |
| 9 Learning New Things: How to Use What You've Learned | p. 102 |
| 10 Body Language: Why How You Move Matters: How Do You Really Look? | p. 106 |
| 11 A Real-Life Example: The Company Party-How to Understand Everyone You Meet | p. 119 |
| 12 Adaptation: How to Handle Idiots (i.e., Everyone Who Isn't like You) | p. 125 |
| 13 How to Deliver Really Bad News: The Challenge of Speaking Your Mind | p. 169 |
| 14 Who Gets Along and Why It Works: Group Dynamics at Their Finest | p. 190 |
| 15 Written Communication: How to Evaluate Someone When You Can't Meet in Person | p. 198 |
| 16 What Makes Us as Mad as Hell?: Temperament Can Reveal Everything About a Person | p. 202 |
| 17 Stress Factors and Energy Thieves: What Is Stress? | p. 210 |
| 18 A Short Reflection Through History: People Have Always Been like This | p. 224 |
| 19 Voices from Real Life | p. 231 |
| 20 A Quick Little Quiz to See What You've Learned | p. 256 |
| 21 A Final Example from Everyday Life: Perhaps the Most Enlightening Team Project in the History of the World | p. 262 |
| The Answers to the Questions in Chapter 20 | p. 269 |
| Further Reading | p. 271 |
| Index | p. 273 |
| About the Author | p. 283 |