Surrounded by Idiots

The Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Effectively Communicate with Each in Business (and in Life)

By: Thomas Erikson

Narrated by: David John

Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

A runaway best seller in Sweden that has sold more than a million copies worldwide, Surrounded by Idiots shares a groundbreaking new method of understanding the people around you that will change how you interact with everyone from your coworkers to your spouse.

Author Thomas Erikson explains that there are four key behavior types that define how we interact with and perceive the people around us. Understanding someone’s pattern of behavior is the key to successful communication. Erikson breaks down the four kinds of behavior types - Reds who are dominant and commanding, Yellows who are social and optimistic, Greens who are laid-back and friendly, and Blues who are analytical and precise - and explains how to identify and interact with each type of person. Instead of being bogged down with overly technical categorizations, 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 for interacting with people based on their color, including the strengths and weaknesses of all the profiles, how to give positive and negative feedback to each, and the best way to word an email when writing to someone with a different profile.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Text copyright by Thomas Erikson; Foreword copyright by David Bonnstetter (P)2019 Penguin Audio

The content isn't as insightful as hoped.

I understand why this book is popular and considered a good read, but IMO that's only true if it's ones first book into this area. Having read many before hand, i find a lot of the content to be inaccurate and/or loosely correct. The reason being the concepts are based on stereotypes, not only that but they break people down into stereotypes. The only mitigating factor they add to their system is this rating in % of which stereo types do people break down into. But this is still inaccurate because the root archetypes are still wrong.

I found it hard to listen to, there are much better.

BLUF: Communicating with the 4 Behaviour Types

Recently, I had a revelation some coworkers did not think as I did at work. We acquire National Security Systems for DoD. We speak the same language, but some cut corners, willfully by past rules, communicate with no knowledge or facts, and from my Test and Evaluation mindset are National Security risks due to their persistent quest for mediocrity. I believe, with practice, the topic of this book will help me (and anyone willing to apply these technique) communicate with these coworkers and influence them to my way of thinking. Sincerely, Forever Yellow (Personal) & Red / Blue (Professional).

Best book about different personalities

I did already the test and had some corporate trainings about different personalities and how to deal with them.
But this book goes beyond and deeper. It’s easy and practical. Brilliant!

A better presentation

Ive sat through this topic as a class in grad school and from the presenter it came off as palm reading or horoscopes. I thought as much at the time and most of the type A academic gunners in the room agreed. Under any challenge the presenter crumpled and deflected. This book is a more fair treatment. Better explanation, more useable information, less horoscope prediction, palm reading, fortune telling nonsense. This book is simply about working and communicating within a team, not everyone sees things the same way and that’s why it’s not always useful to project your personal expectations onto others. There’s some wisdom in here

Logical, but over simplified and incomplete

Yes, people communicate in different ways… easy enough concept to understand. This felt more like a break down of personality traits then tools to deal with each type. Pretty much lost me completely when he said most people are two colors… out of four?!?! Felt super similar to meyers-Briggs which has been proven ineffective. Not upset that I read it, but wouldn’t recommend to others.

Fabulous!

Insightful and and very easy read! Def going to pay this one forward!

- Red with some yellow and blue

Very insightful

This book gave me valuable insights I can use at work and at home. I also helped me understand why I react to certain people differently. You truly can’t use the same communication technique with everyone.

Great!

Great book! I felt it was spot on. Coming from a 99D 99I 17S 32C

Fantastic Read

fantastic read! and great audio speaker, his voice was soothing.

cannot wait to read his other books! so happy and grateful i found this author!

this could save you a lifetime of misery in the work force.

cheers mate x

How to effectively communicate with the 4 types of people.

I can truly appreciate identifying the 4 groups by color because it helps to keep their characteristics organized with a color label, which makes the book easy to follow and understand.