Know you and the other!

 

Have you ever wondered why it is easier to get along with some people than others? This happens because each person's references and biases have an impact on how they perceive and react to what you say. So, to establish positive relationships with others, it is important to understand how people behave.

“Surrounded by Idiots”, a book written by Thomas Erikson categorizes human behavior into four types. Namely, dominant behavior(red), inspiring behavior(yellow), stable behavior(green)and analytical behavior(blue).

People with dominant(red) behavior tend to take command to initiate things. However, they are hard to deal with as they tend to overcontrol and frequently tread on others.

Yellows(inspiring) are creative and often capable of amusing others. They make a friendly atmosphere regardless of whom they associate. However, when given unlimited freedom, they tend to prevent others from joining the conversation.

Greens(stable) are calm and easy-going. However, they tend to be indecisive, which eventually makes them hard to deal with.

Blues(analytical) are analytical and sensible. However, they easily suspect people due to over analyzing.

Diagonal combinations in the above diagram are known as challenging combinations.

It is recommended to include members from all colors in a team to achieve the most effective results. So, it is important to identify one’s behavioral type. It can be either one type or a combination of several types. To do this, we had in-class group discussions on the acceptability of recent tax policy changes in Sri Lanka.

We concluded from the discussion that to face the current economic crisis, changes to tax policies are acceptable under the conditions that, government expenditure is transparent and tax money is used wisely.

Through the discussion, we were able to determine each other’s behavioral types with mine being blue. This allowed us to have a meaningful conversation and made us realize that behavioral-type combinations of members who had disagreements were challenging combinations.

In conclusion, recognizing the behavioral types of others around us enables us to maintain stronger social connections.

 

References:

Erikson, T. (2019). Surrounded by Idiots: The Four Types of Human Behaviour (or, How to Understand Those Who Cannot Be Understood). Random House.