Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

Yes, I found that true about the ennegram too. It helped me forgive
people.
  

    

That's a great way of putting it, Mary.

I know that both David and I credit our ability to be together despite our
different preferences to the understanding we've built through learning
about the MBTI.  I don't judge him through my filters and he doesn't judge
me through his.  We use someone else's ...  (just joshin').
  

    

> family situations

Ah ha! I think I'm going to print out the Q quiz and assessment and take it
to the family Christmas gathering. ;-)
  

    

I know I wish I had known my parents' preferences.  It probably would've
made adolescence a lot easier.
  

    
Shoya, one thing I'm interested in is the different types' reactions
to the whole idea of "leadership" and "power."  I - green - feel an
initial resistance to the whole idea. When I think of the word
"leadership" I picture Patton. I really appreciate that you talk about
different ways of defining or understanding leadership, and that that's
part of the difference in leadership styles.

Can you say a little bit about the 4 Q types different responses to
the leadership/power, and how each group can understand leadership in a
way that is compatible with their personality and values?
  

    
Yes Cynthia, definitely do that.  A number of families did it for
Thanksgiving and said it was priceless - particularly those with many
adult siblings.  Although they may appear complicated at first, the
concepts are really very simple.  You just have to get used to
shuffling them around.  

Meanwhile to Kate's question on power.  It is a tricky issue.  Many
women are VERY nervous about power and influence. and the Greens do top
that list.  

In the abstract, Power to many Greens is seen as having the clout to
manipulate people.  Even at its best, it has too much of an element of
control.  

So for a Green power should be viewed as the ability to influence. 
Influence can be soft like Eleanor Roosevelt's was and in many ways
like Oprah's is.  Diane Sawyer's power is also soft.  Yet all these
people have a very extensive outreach, understand their power and do
not misuse it.

For a Red power is about getting things done.  As this wonderful
lawyer in my book Sheila Birnbaum said, "you walk into a room and you
just know that people are going to pay attention to you and that you
can get things accomplished.  And that" she said with a huge grin " is
a lot of fun."  So here power is almost a game.  To Helen Thomas it is
about getting the President of the US to behave.  When I asked her
about some of the high points in her career, she cackled and said "when
I got Mrs Carter to say about her son the president, 'sometimes when I
look at my children, I wished I had remained a virgin." 

Now the Golds like power in the traditional sense.  Power is about
having human and financial resources at your disposal.  And the fact
that you have them, means you worked your way up the chain of command
and you are entitled to have them.  Deep down, however, a well
developed Gold, views this power as a sacred trust to keep the
machinery of human society humming as it is supposed to be.

I find the Blues are the ones who most like power and are comfortable
with it.  To them it is subtle and forceful and a huge challenge  It is
a validation of their competence. It is their ability to bring about
their vision and force the world to change.  The saving grace in this
is that they have such high standards against which they judge
themselves, that they never really rest on their laurels.  They always
feel they should be doing better.  And I say this with great affection
for the Blues who make up a large percentage of my friends.  I do like
to needle them from to time. 

The important thing to remember is that there is a best and worst in
each group.  

Each group has its own template.  Remember the cats and dogs.  There
are warm purring cats and there are cats that stay as far away from you
as possible  

Likewise there are well developed  Greens who put their emotional
intelligence to work to empathize and help others grow.  And there are
whiny green who take everything too personally, never deliver what they
are supposed to and scatter their energies by wandering from one idea
to another.  

There are well developed Reds who are islands of calm in midst of the
greatest chaos.  And there are manipulative Reds who create chaos in
order to benefit from it.

There are Golds who truly act as the protectors of the institution and
people under their care and there are dictatorial, rigid and close
minded Golds who fight every new idea.

There are far reaching and visionary Blues who understand that they
need to be patient and bring everyone on board with them, and there are
arrogant and abusive Blues who are unbelievably stressful to work for.
 (I worked for one man who pinpointed one person at each meeting and
screamed and heaped abuse on that individual for the entire meeting. 
This way he kept everyone else check. )

The key is to evaluate everyone against his or her own template.  Each
type matures in a different way.  
  

    

This is great stuff, Shoya!  As I think about the various managers I've had
in my career, your "plus and minus" descriptions are incredibly accurate.
Hell, as I look at myself (As Green as you can get, I think), your
description is almost scary in its accuracy.

Do you have any advice for working with each kind of manager/boss?

Also, you shared something with me about your research for the LeadershipQ
that I find fascinating (and not a little bit enviable) - that you've met,
and learned from, Kathy Myers.  To me, that's no unlike learning how to
cook from - say Julia Child; you've been able to fine tune your learning
with someone so close to the origination of the MBTI.  Can you share a
little about that experience, and how it helped you in your work on the
LeadershipQ?
  

    
Okay here are a few tips gleaned from years of arguments with over 22
bosses.

If your boss is a Gold
1. Find out what type of information he needs from you on a regular
basis and in WHAT format.  Usually they want regular reports, weekly,
daily, whatever.   Usually they want them in a certain format,
emphasizing certain things and usually they want them to be
consistently in the same format.  Don't get creative, get them in on
time and avoid factual errors.  This reduces their stress level and
they are a lot more pleasant to be with after that.  

2. Don't charge in and say I have a brilliant new idea.  Talk to a few
people about it, then go in and say "many people in the division,
(network, company whatever) feel that it might be worth pursuing this
idea.  This way, there is institutional support and they will consider
it.  Present the idea and get out of the way.  This gives them a chance
to bitch and moan and struggle with it and ultimately they will
incorporate it into the agenda of the next meeting.

Golds are usually fair and consistent and are great at supporting you
to the higher ups.  Loyalty is reciprocal.  But you got to play their
game.  

For the Blue boss, 
1.you need to check in periodically to see what it is that they expect
of you that week.  They forget to tell you.  They expect you to figure
it out.  Don't come to them with details, figure it out yourself.  But
do come in and brainstorm for their ideas. 

2. Leave your sensitivities at home. They will take apart everything
you do, forget to thank you and worst of all sometimes forget to give
you credit.  This is not personal.  Make you sure you slide your name
in somewhere so others know you were involved.  Get yourself included
in meetings and let others know of your contribution.  

When positive, Blues are exciting if you are future oriented.  They
encourage creativity, let you define your own job and usually do not
pay attention to the hierarchy.  They will take and encourage ideas
from all levels.  

The Red boss
1.  Come in every day with the idea that anything goes.  Be ready to
change projects, directions, traveling plans and strategies on a
moment's notice.  If this throws you, go work for somebody else.

2. Encourage them to have a very organized assistant and resist
impulse to play that role.  I had a Red boss once who never looked at
his phone messages - and he would get at least 30 a day.  Unfortunately
this affected my relationship with the field as well, so I started
going through them every day, prioritizing them and returning calls
myself.  I was never able to get out of that role and it was a huge
waste of time.  

Red bosses are fun, have a good sense of humor, great sense of
politics and are egalitarian with their staff.  But you have to live
with their somewhat chaotic style -- not to mention the constant loss
of key documents.  

For the Green
1. Be aware of their sensitives and "hot" buttons.  They don't like
confrontation so frequently will not tell when they are displeased. 
You are supposed to figure it out.  They also don't like to have their
ideas criticized.  So tread diplomatically.  Greens hold grudges.  

2. They may also not confront the next levels up.  Therefore you will
often not get the raise or resources that you need because of their
unwillingness to battle others.  

Greens are genuinely interested in the development of their staff and
the state of your psyche.  This is great for another green or for
anyone that has a preference for feeling (right hand column of section
II).  It can be irritating for other types who want the workplace to be
just about business and people treated in a more impartial way.   

As to Kathy Myers, it is indeed a pleasure to know her.  She is very
committed to the Myers-Briggs model and encouraging of people doing
research in different areas.  

Her interest areas at the moment include probing further into type
development (how people develop their non preferences as they get
older) and testing the model in different cultures.  

I talked to her about my ideas at various stages of the book
development. Some she agreed with and some she didn't.  I think she
would have preferred if I had left in the Extraverted/Introverted
dimension which I sort of buried into the 8 styles.  I was looking for
more simplicity and felt that the E/I dimension was the least important
for Leadership.  In other areas, such as spousal relations for example
it is very important.  But she was very helpful in looking over my
material as I developed it. 

 
  

    
I went back and re-read all of the categories, and I think I'm
purple! (red AND blue)  Which were my school colors!


This is really fascinating stuff... 

Naturally, people don't always fit in these boxes that we make for
them.  Are there other shades of color that fit in between?  Is there a
categorizable difference in actions you should take between a red-blue and
a blue-red ? (Or, to use somebody else's shades--  Green-gold and
gold-green?)  

And why did you pick those colors?  To me it's kind of interesting that
red and blue are primary colors and green and gold are secondary. (well
gold's not truly a secondary color, but what the heck)
 
  

    
The reds and blues can look very similar on the surface, particularly
the Blue Innovators which is the flexible subcategory of the Blues.

Reds and Blue Innovators are both fast moving, multi tasked, have a
short attention span on a single project. Both have a great sense of
humor, are restless, somewhat messy and very flexible and adaptable. 
They are both opportunistic and always ready to push the envelope to
the edge - in other words, high risk takers in life, relationships and
investments.

Inside however they are different.  The Blue Innovators are abstract
thinkers who like to roam  the world of the future and ideas -- they
don't observe details.  They don't need facts.  They concentrate on
patterns and relationships.  They like to read futuristic books, like
Future Shock and the work of futurist Faith Popcorn.  They are almost
psychic in their ability to predict new trends.  They use abstract
vocabulary and complicated sentence structures --- clause after clause
after clause, all grammatically correct but long.  They read a lot. 
They love sitting in classes and often have advanced degrees.

The Reds are the students of life.  They don't like going to school. 
School is abstract.  They have a down to earth pragmatic intelligence. 
They plunge into the world and figure it out by experience.  They are
highly observant of details.  They have a strong sense of smell and
taste.  They can tell you every spice in a meal.  They will remember
the components of  that meal for a long time afterward.  They have the
great wine cellars.   They like reading biographies and history.   They
like sports. They often like dangerous sports, like race car driving. 
They like glitzy cars.  They like action movies.  They like to impress
people.  The like to do things on the spur of the moment rather than
sitting around and talking (Blues love to talk and debate issues). 
They trust only what they have experienced.  Reds have no time for
models.  Their language is straightforward with lots of action verbs. 
Their sentences are short and to the point. 

Now you can be between the two, but usually you are more to one side
than the other.  

Does this make any sense?

As to the colors, I chose them because the groups responded well to
them. 
Red is the color of action
Green is the color of growth, new plants etc.  Greens love to develop
themselves and others
Blue is a cool reasoned color
Gold because the golds hated being called yellow . 
  

    
It makes lots of sense!  I'd say that I'm more blue than red, but I have
definitely got a dash of that stuff going on.    Dark purple,
maybe?  (Luminescent, probably, which gives me a little bit of gold in
there.)
  

    

Shoya, that's about the best description of the Blue and Red temperaments
I've ever read.
  

    
Thanks Libbi.  I have them in my family so I get to observe them at
close range.  
  

    

<heh>

Well, I always seem to choose Blue men for partners, so there's ongoing
learning for me in what you write!
  

    

One of the dilemmas that a lot of people encounter in organizations is that
they have to deal with a lot of different people in management positions in
order to do their jobs.  I remember one situation where I knew that one
senior manager was a Blue Strategist and was pretty sure that her
counterpart was a Gold Trustee.  Preparing presentations when we had to meet
with them together was a challenge, to say the least.  What we ended up
doing was go in with the Blue, conceptual, big picture stuff but have 15,
detailed slides in reserve for all the questions the Gold manager inevitably
wanted.  Lots of work, but it was the right way to go.
  

    
That sounds about the way to go.  One way I get around that is to say
up front I have included much more detail about the product and its
history in the handouts.  Usually the Blue Stragist will eyeball them
and you can see that Gold itching to get into them.  So you can assume
that he/she will do so right after the session.  

As you point out it is better to target to the 
more senior person.  
  

    

Shoya, can you tell us a little about some of your "favorite" people in the
book?  Or, better yet, start earlier than that.  How did you choose the
women you interviewed.  Had you observed their behavior prior to soliciting
the interview?  Which was the "best" interview?  The most comfortable?  The
least comfortable?  The silliest?  The most difficult?
  

    
Let me take that question in several parts.  It is a long one and I
will do some of it tonight and the rest tomorrow AM.

Well the most difficult was Helen Thomas, the crusty 79 year old White
House correspondent.  She HATED being interviewed.  We sat knee to
knee in in tiny cubicle right down from the oval office in the White
House and she could not figure out why she was doing this except that a
member of the Lebanese community had asked her to do it.

The Reds as you will remember do not believe in models.  They are
usually not terribly interested in psychology either.  They trust their
instincts and just like to get on with life.  We we were in the middle
of the war in Kosovo and spending time with me with not high on her
priority list.  You must also remember that this woman had made
mincemeat of 8 Presidents and she was not about to cut me any slack. 
So she made short shrift of every question I asked.  It was like
watching a cat play with a mouse. Ouch!.  The material however
translated into a very good writeup.  It almost wrote itself, and
captured her and her style very well.  In fact even she liked it.  

Now the easiest were all those in my color group - the Greens.  Diane
Sawyer, Jolene Sykes, President of Fortune magazine and Alexandra
Lebenthal, President of the Wall Street firm Lebenthal and Co and other
Greens were a joy for me.  It was like having lunch with a friend.  We
had the same sense of humor.  I understood their motivation and was in
perfect agreement with all of their decisions.

These were however, more difficult to writeup because I wanted to make
sure that other groups would understand them as clearly as I did.  So
I spent a lot more time and really tried to fill in as much detail as
possible. 

The most challenging were those in politics.  I knew what a risk they
were taking in talking to me and how I indebted I was to the people who
had made the introductions and asked that they consider the interview.
 This is tricky territory, given the fact that all of these women are
planning to run again and all are considered potential candidates for
the presidency of the U.S.  Also they are tightly scheduled and I was
given very little time - usually about 30 minutes with each. That is
much too little for this kind of in-depth analysis.

When I interviewed Gov Christie Whitman, I had just walked a mile and
half in 95 degree whether because there were no cabs at the train
station in Trenton.  I hopped from one foot to the other as some labor
leader ahead of me refused to end his meeting and cut into my time. 
She was the image of perfection - a Chanel suit, hair in place, perfect
pearls.  She took one look at me and started laughing (gives you a
clue as to the state I was in).  Well that cut the ice.  We actually
had a very good time.  Although I had to read three biographies on her
because her press secretary refused to let her take the quiz.  I
decided she was a Red realist based on her life and childhood antics,
then sent the writeup to her staff for validation.  So we backed into
that one.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (Gold Trustee) was the soul of measured
focus.  They were waiting for her on the Senate floor, but she stuck to
course and gave me the time I needed.  She was clear, organized and
perfectly in charge.  Perfectly dressed and mannered, she was a
wonderful example of the Trustee sense of appropriateness. 

The most moving was Countess Albina, a cousin of Princess Caroline of
Monaco.  What a life!  Here we have the fabulously wealth socialite who
danced her way through every capital.  Then tragedy struck.  Her 24
year old son died in a freak accident.  She shut herself up for a year.
 Then emerged went to Sotheby's and auctioned off $50 million of her
mother's jewelry to start a foundation in his name.  Since then she
does nothing else but work with aids orphans in AFrica.  She was open,
candid, very interested in the model (Blue Innovator) and the interview
turned into a back and forth banter that was quite amusing

Another moving one was Linda Chavez Thomson - a sharecropper's child
who started picking cotton when she was nine.  Now she is EX VP of the
AFL-CIO and the first woman to head the group (membership 13 million
and we are not talking of genteel types either).  You have to be in awe
of someone who started with so little and accomplished so much.  You
don't even understand how she had to self confidence to keep going.  As
a Gold Conservator she was down to earth, matter of fact and howlingly
funny.  A 5 1" "pushy broad" as she kept calling herself.

My challenge was to capture their unique personalities, motivation and
type all at once.  

Well I need to run out for very full evening, but I will continue
tomorrow.  



 
  

    

I love this!
  

    
okay continuing here.  The silliest was not the interview (because all
of them were deadly serious) was trying to finalize the interview with
Laura Ziskin who was then President of Fox 2000 and is now back to
running her own Hollywood production company (produced Pretty Girl, As
Good as it Gets).  

as a Green Advocate was very interested in this material and the first
person to agree to the interview in January.  She cancelled the next 7
appointments because other things came up (a note of warning to all of
you who have chosen the right column of Section III of the Quiz - this
can be irritating to people)  Finally we were in the first week of
December and I was finishing the book which was due mid January.  So I
called her assistant who is a very focused person and said, I don't
have any more time.  She said, okay here is what we do.  Here is her
private phone number, the phone is next to her bed, she gets up at 9 AM
on Saturday, by 9:15 she will have had a cup of coffee and she will be
ready to talk.  I will not tell her you will be calling.  She will
just have to do it cold.  And that is exactly how we got that interview
finished.  

love this story because it demonstrates one of the things that I found
all these people had in common.  They have loyal staff, they hire
people with different talents and personalities and they honor those. 
And that helps them in moments when they are prone to screw up.

Another interesting moment involved the interview with Ibolya David
who is the Minister of Justice of Hungary.  I included here because I
am of Hungarian background and thought it would nice to give the
country a little publicity.  I went to Hungary.   She does not speak
English.  My Hungarian is very poor so we decided to conduct the
interview in French which we both speak.  However, because I needed the
quotes in English we had a translator who translated into English. 
Actually we had two translators present, because we wanted to ensure
the total accuracy of the statements.  

Ibolya is an elegant tall blond, late 40s who is the head of the
party, the only woman in the cabinet and is rewriting the Hungarian
constitution.  Now that is a historic role.  Because of the sensitivity
of her position I sent her write-up back to the staff to proof.  She
could not read it because it was in English.  The staff did not
translate it and there were some ex communists officials lurking around
the parliament who did not like my opening paragraph that talked about
the building where the interview was conducted that is now housing the
offices of the cabinet. The building was formerly the place where they
tortured political prisoners.  So they told me the material was
incorrect and I was not allowed to print it.  I had all the material on
tape, in English, refined by two translators and I figured nuts to
this group and went ahead and included it in the book.  

Now the tricky part is that her department includes all the police in
Hungary and I had to go back in September of this year for a family
reunion.  I really did not know if I was going to be picked up at the
airport and disappear into some dungeon.  The veneer of democracy in
these countries is still very thin.  

Fortunately they decided to take another tactic perhaps because I was
scheduled for a book signing and a number of print and TV interviews
during my visit.  The staff sent me a note congratulating on the family
reunion - no mention of the book, refused to let me meet with her to
present the book.  To this day, I still don't know if she every laid
eyes on it. I know she does not know about any of this.  But it is a
story that is perhaps even more interesting than her story.   

Now to your question.  How did I choose these people?  I wanted first
of all a balance of all the 8 personality styles.  So I had to get
information about these people ahead of time and then hold my breath
that they would turn out to be what I expected.  

I had a couple of surprises, like Helen Thomas who, I had pegged as a
Blue Innovator.  Kathleen Kennedy Townsend I thought would be a Green
Mentor because on TV and interviews she speaks that script.  That
however is the script of her chief of staff (he is a green).  She is
definitely a Blue Innovator.  A couple of others were also different,
but fortunately by the time the reshuffle was complete, I had
sufficient samples of each. 

Secondly I wanted to cover different fields, business, politics,
entertainment and social activism.  I wanted people from different
backgrounds -- tenements, mansions and everything in between.  I wanted
people who had different motivations.  Peggy Rockefeller is driven by
different factors than Lorna Wendt, the very proper housewife who took
her high profile divorce public and started the Center for Marital
Equality.  Both of these are very different from Jean Hamilton, CEO of
Prudential who brings in revenues that exceed $8 billion every year. 
And yet they all speak the language and share the core motivators of
their personality type.  

That is awesome to me and a true tribute to both the Myers Briggs
family and Carl Jung himself.  Theory that resonates is one thing, but
this type of real life validation is another.  It shows how deep the
model is.
  

    

Absolutely.

I'm curious as to whether your work with these women sparked an ongoing
interest on their part in your model, or the MBTI.  Have you been in touch
with/heard from any of them since your original interviews?
  

    
I have been in touch with a number of them who were rather intrigued. 
In fact we did a panel for the Financial Women's Association in NY
last month, asked one from each color group to speak then had the
audience of some 250 people take the quiz and follow the discussion
along. The panelists played right into it and even cracked a few jokes
on the idiosyncracies of their type.  .  

As for the rest, I think they are still going through the book.  This
is not a lunchtime read so I suspect, it takes a while for people to
absorb it.  
  

    

I just want to say that I am loving this, too.  Very fascinating.

Shoya, I know that there are four colors, but I'm wondering how many types
there are:  innovators, mentors, etc.  Does each color have the same type
breakdown, or are there different types for each color?
  

    
Thanks Linda.

I zeroes in on 8 styles which are the last three preferences of your
MBTI i.e. STJ, SFJ, etc.

If you remember,in taking the quiz, you skipped one of the sections to
get to the four color groups which are the four temperament groups.  

If you go back and fill in the section you skipped, you will back into
the 8 groups.  

So that creates two Greens.  The Mentors NFJs who are focused and
structured and the Advocates NFPs. who are open ended and adaptable. 

Two Blues, the focused Strategists (NTJ) and the adaptable Innovators
NTP

The Reds, the objective and cool headed Tacticians (STP)and the more
people oriented Realists (SFP)

The Golds, the objective and more cool headed Trustees (STJ)and the
people oriented Conservators (SFJ).

I originally tried to stay with the four temperaments in order to
simplify matters as much as possible.  But soon found that third
dimension is important for purposes of leadership.    While the two of
each color group share many of the same core motivations, they look
very different and seem to prefer different work environments.  

After that there is an extravert and introvert of each.  That gets yo
back to the 16 types.  
  

    

Whew!!  Thanks.  

Lib just reported back to me on the results of my latest MBTI.  I used to
be an ENTP and now she says I am an INTJ.  It's been about seven years
since we last did this.

So I am changing or have changed.  How do you account for this?  Do people
change often, or most often stay true to type?  Do they ever change back?

And, she says, according to your book, that would make me a Blue, not a
Green as I turned out to be when I took the quiz, although you may recall
me saying that I was very attracted to the Blue scenarios in some cases,
and to the Green in others (but never Red or Gold).

Is this typical of the kinds of change you might see over time?  That
Blues might shift to Greens and Reds to Golds but never Blue or Green to
Red or Gold?