Across the Spectrum

Stephen Elkins-Jarrett

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781631577062
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Organizational Behavior

Man has tried to analyze human behavior for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks compared behavior to the earth, water, fire, and air. Freud, Jung, Fromm, Rodgers and Pavlov have all created their own models, some of these are lost to time, such as Mar's facial shapes, or Pavlov's canine types. There are 250 in current use like Myers–Briggs' and DISC. The problem with many of these models is that you need to be "qualified" to use them and have to pay up to $50+ per employee to complete a questionnaire and then hire a consultant to interpret the results, which can cost another $1, 500 per day. This new book is about an old subject—behavior. You probably thought you needed a degree in psychology to understand it? Not with SPECTRUM—a simple color will indicate your preferred style, and that of others and then teach you how to mirror and match their needs. Think of a color; what does that color say to you? Well now you have the key attributes of that behavior. Now learn to spot and tune into others, and for the first time understand that: "We are taught as children to treat others the way that we would like to be treated, but this is wrong! We have to start treating others as THEY would like to be treated!"

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me!

—Zadie Smith, author from the book NW

What is this book all about? It is quite simply a book about behavior and making behavior simple to understand and help you become more influential.

It is not a book about personality nor is it a scientific or medical book, and it is not really about psychology, but it is simply a book about understanding your style.

If you went on a holiday to a foreign country, I would like to think that you would try to speak to the locals in their language and not just slower and louder in your own tongue. So why do we try to communicate to others in our style, and not in theirs?

Derren Brown said in his recent show,

There are only two things you can totally control, your thoughts and your actions.

—Miracles stage show London—2015

So here is a way to totally control your behaviors (actions) and thoughts (feelings).

For all my early life, it frustrated me that I never understood behavior, as my parents used to say to me, “Behave yourself—or else!” but I never knew what this meant. I think my parents were saying, do as you are told or else! Don’t embarrass me, don’t be too loud or talkative, sit still and shut up, go to bed when we tell you, and so on—it was all about controlling the children—not teaching us or understanding what behavior is. The funny or ironic thing is that our parents were telling us off for behaving like them. I was copying them.

Personality is the deep you, hidden from others, but behavior is on the surface that we can hear and see, and so the next time you hear someone say “it is a clash of personalities,” tell them they are wrong. It is nearly always a clash of behaviors. For it to be a clash of personality you need to be them, or be their lifelong partner, sleep with them, and know their values and beliefs then you can have a clash of personality. A clash of behavior is what we get at work when we disagree or argue with another person when using an inappropriate style for the situation we are in—a Hawaiian shirt to a funeral.

How did I get here? How come I claim to know so much about one of the great mysteries of the last 4,000 years?

I started my career as a chef, where bad behavior and angry-head chefs were commonplace, and being aggressive seemed to me to be the norm. Then I left that career and went into the construction industry, again being aggressive or angry was the norm. If you didn’t do as you were told you got hit or at least shouted at. At the same time, I was heavily involved in amateur dramatics and after some years of performing, directing, working backstage, and putting on four productions a year, I found myself playing Willie Mossop in the play Hobson’s Choice by Harold Brighouse, a story of a downtrodden cobbler and an aggressive shoe shop owner and how their roles switch and Mossop ends up having the power and Hobson shrinks away—and this play, I believe, is where the expression “Hobson’s Choice” came from, leaving Hobson with only one choice to let Mossop marry his daughter and take over the shop. The director of this play was Mike (Michael) Smith and he got us to role-play the characters, in periods before the play starts and even after the play finishes, so we could begin to understand the characters and empathize. Not everyone’s cup of tea but I loved it and we got on well. When the show finished, he asked me what I did for a living and so I told him painting, decorating, and special effect paint finishing! He basically asked me, then and there, if I fancied being a “management consultant.” I had no idea what one was or what they did and even if I had the right qualifications, but I did it. Richard Branson said, “If you ever get asked to do a job and think I am not sure if I can do that, do it and learn how to do it as you go. It is all I have ever done!”

So, I joined him in his consultancy, worked with him, watched him, observed him, and started my studies at night school, through distance learning, modular programs through universities, and colleges in the United Kingdom, which took me five years. I have continued to learn and develop, recently qualifying as a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist (CBT) counsellor, a Neuro linguistic programming (NLP) practitioner, and a life coach. And after five years, I was on my own. I was consulting businesses on strategy, delivering leadership training, and completing one-to-one coaching and large group facilitation for top businesses. I was working with refuse collectors to chief executive officers (CEOs), doctors, scientists, psychiatrists, solicitors and lawyers, and in every sector from construction to catering across the world. It proves that it is less about what you know and more about who you know and who is prepared to help you. Mike did just that. So, the next time someone needs help—give it to them—whatever it might be, give someone else the chance to develop. I have tried to do the same with my work colleagues over the years and feel that I have had some successes.

There are people wedded to other psychometrics and behavioral assessment tools and they find it hard to accept another model as theirs must be the best. But I hope to prove to you that, in fact, all Jungian-based models are the same and even before Jung, the ancient Greeks, Romans, South Americans, and Chinese all had behavioral models akin to Jung’s, but 3,000 or 4,000 years earlier. All we have done since the first one is rewrap the present in new paper. About 15 years ago, I cowrote Spectrum, with two colleagues, Steve Berry, who has written two books on strategy, and Dr. Jon Baber a specialist in leadership and high performing teams. The new model, which is based on color like many others, has several major features, advantages, and benefits over all the others. So, to comfort the ones wedded to other models and to all the academics out there, please know that any self-questionnaire model can be wrong as it is our opinion of ourselves or others. Yes, after you have done a few it can become the self-fulfilling prophecy and you will answer the questions with a mindset that I am one type, so I will answer as that type. But you know you, better than any academics do, better than any doctor, psychiatrist, or psychologist does, and so if you try to be honest and answer the questions as you are now, not as you want to be and not how you think others want you to be, it will, in 99 percent cases, give you a general style and flavor that is 90 percent like you and can help you to be more affective, more sensitive to situations, and able to influence and persuade others better so that you do not feel wounded, upset, or put upon, nor do you feel that you have had to get cross or sulk to get your way. I promise you it works. Please suspend your judgment until you have finished the whole book and then ask yourself—does this feel right, work, and is it basically a lot of common sense? Although I was told that the funny thing about common sense is that it isn’t all that common!!

How difficult is it to change behavior? Easy, put someone into a stressful situation or put them in pain or illness and see them change behavior in seconds!

CHAPTER 2

Why Try or Even Consider a New Psychometric or Behavioral Assessment Tool?

For over 4,500 years we have studied behaviors from ancient Egypt to ancient Greek to the Roman Empire, the Chinese ancient culture, the Japanese culture, as well as South American Aztecs and Inca tribes, modern America, and across Africa. It has fascinated the learned and the average person going to work every day in a field. They have all asked the question: What is behavior? Many have come up with models and some of them are good and all have their place; some are dated and have strange labels but behind these labels is still the essence of a simple four-dimensional model that works as well today as it ever did. We must also add here that all the behavioral models that exist today are based on white middle class, often North American (USA) and Western cultural studies. We must allow for cultural differences between countries, regions, villages, tribes, and religions. Even the oldest behavioral and personality models (ancient Greece) and the modern protagonists of all known behavioral models in the 1950s where nearly all the models we have today started in the 1950s. There were an amazing number of Europeans and a high number of Jewish psychologists who studied behavior, and a lot of these went to the United States before, during, and after the Second World War. There are also some Russians, Polish, United Kingdom, and many Americans too, and many of these were looking at why some of the atrocities happened in Germany and my theory is that many became quite introspective studies of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and behavior. Here are a few I have studied.

Galen—Turkish/Roman, Descartes—French, Herbart—German, Kier-kegaard—Danish, Galton—English, Charcot—French, Kraepelin—German, Wundt—German, James—United States, Hall—United States, Ebbinghaus—German, Binet—French, Janet—French, Pavlov—Russian, Thorndike—United States, Watson—United States, Tolman—United States, Guthrie—United States, Lorenz—Austrian, Skinner—United States, Wolpe—South Africa, Freud—Czech Republic and then Austria, Adler—Austria, Fromm—German, Jung—Swiss, Klein—Austria, Rogers—United States, Maslow—Russian/United States, Frankl—Swiss, Kohler—German, Hebb—Canadian, Festinger—United States, Ekmann—United States, Schacter—United States, Piaget—Swiss, Bandura—Polish/Canadian, Chomsky—United States, Baron-Cohen—England, Cattel...