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JackDermody.com Newsletter
Your Personality Matters
In This Issue
What Do the Colors Mean?
Color of the Week
On YouTube: Carter & Bush
What's YOUR Story?
Quick Link
 
Questions of the Week
Jack at Workshop

FAQ re your doubts (?) about Four Windows

Greetings!

 

I had to miss last week's letter. Rose and I had the most wonderful vacation in the D.C. area and Virginia. The highlights for me were consecutive visits to Washington's Mount Vernon and Jefferson's Monticello. Those guys were giants,

I have a Couples Workshop coming up for Leadership West in May. There will be a new wrinkle with the Four Windows Personality Survey. Each couple will be invited to take the Survey twice. The first time is about oneself; the second time is about the spouse. What each person will end up with is not only their personality type" as they see it," but also a report of their personality type "as the spouse sees it." I've never done this before with a large group, but expect some great conversation as a result.

I don't know who said it first, but each one of us is three people:  (1) the person we think we are, (2) the person others think we are, and (3) the person we really are. And who has the report for #3? Something to think about.

Jack

Gold is the Color of the Week

Gold Gatekeeper Guardian George Washington Was The Best Possible First U.S. President

 

Flying home with us from the D.C. area, the fellow in the next seat mentioned what a good guy he thought Mikhail Gorbachev was a great leader to make the Soviet Union's breakup possible. Unfortunately, he added, the first elected leader Boris Yeltsin was a mess - naturally impetuous, and a drunk to boot. His tenure opened the door for a takeover by KGB leader Putin, an over-centralized state, and rampant corruption that continues today.

 

How lucky it was the first President of the United States was George Washington - a dependable, steadfast, serious captain of the ship of state. He was "good as Gold" - a poster boy for the responsible Gold Administrator type, Gold-Green. There were others like him, e.g., John Adams. In fact Gold-Green Adams, who also served two eight-year terms, assured that the nation's first sixteen years were ultimately anchored in the principles that the Founding Fathers proposed.

It's important to remember that the whole lot of Founding Fathers had ideas as varied as those of Woodstock attendees of the 60s, todays Tea Party protesters, Bible Belt Christians, and out-and-out agnostics. It took the Gold values, principles, beliefs, and strengths of a George Washington to focus on compromise and take careful action regarding the implementation of the new Constitution, Amendments, early laws, first conflicts between North and South thinking, to oversee the military, and to connect with the rest of the world.

Gold Administrator (likely a Supervisor type) George Washington did most everything well - from running his farm to leading the Revolutionary War to becoming our first President.

Before we get too excited about the merits of Gold values, not all thinking in Washington's administration was Gold. He wisely surrounded himself with all the people who mattered so that tactical Oranges, strategic Greens, and diplomatic Blues could freely propose and implement as necessary. His leadership style was tough (he would shoot you during the Revolutionary War if you went AWOL, even if you came back voluntarily and begged forgiveness), but Washington listened - from his wife and farm overseers, to the officers in his war councils, to his cabinet members.

It needs to be said that Temperament only partially explains Washington, of course. He ultimately stood out for the force of his character, his integrity and strength, his steadfastness, his high intelligence, his principles, his greatness. About half of U.S. Presidents have been Gold - and not all met Washington's standards, to be sure.

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Carter and Bush on YouTube

Two Gold U.S. Presidents Were Stark Contrasts in Their Need for Responsibility

 

A Gold personality is all about being responsible. Gold Jimmy Carter and Gold George H. W. Bush will be seen in the history books as dependably responsible in many areas. Neither is remembered for corruption, flamboyance, weak morals, needless warmongering, thoughtless remarks, or most anything else scandalous. Both possessed the leadership skills to bring important powers together - Carter who helped Egypt and Israel resolve some differences, Bush who carefully created an international coalition to deal with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. With Rational Green as his second Color, Carter turned out to be more of a detail-oriented supervising manager than folks liked. Bush - with Blue accenting his Gold - may have seemed too easy-going, especially as he gave into tax increases that he had promised not to support. Both served only one term. Both men were crushingly defeated by highly colorful (pardon the pun) opponents, i.e., Reagan and Clinton respectively. Both Reagan and Clinton were bursting with charisma and charm - both Orange-Blue Performers, great communicators. Carter and Bush didn't stand a chance.

Watch the two YouTube videos below of the inaugural addresses of both Carter and Bush. Notice the Gold structure, the importance of tradition, the simple messages, the steady pacing.

 

1977 Inaugural Address of Jimmy Carter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pHMv7grxYE&playnext=1&list=PL699086941AF64C80

1989 Inaugural Address of George H. W. Bush:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_43gWaeT-Dg&playnext=1&list=PL699086941AF64C80

What's YOUR Story?

 
You know your Colors, so what info would you love to share about that? Or about your relationships? Submit a story to [email protected]. If we like it, we'll publish it in a future JackDermody.com Newsletter. The next article is this week's story.

Janet Johnson Writes Again:

My Blue Boss Runs Endless, Useless Meetings

 

Help me out, Jack. The ten of us on our staff are forced to attend a weekly staff meeting that is scheduled for an hour but ends up to last nearly two hours. Our boss (I'll call her Laila) talks endlessly, ignores the agenda, and is easily distracted with minor issues. We have proposed time limits on agenda items, rotating chairpersons, and meeting administrators. Ironically, Laila will agree on the changes, but then regress to the two-hour marathon within weeks. Laila is Blue, an overly flexible Idealist who - in this case anyway - cannot seem to distinguish between the importance of ordering paper clips and designing a long-term business plan. We are at our wits' end. What can we do?

 Janet 

Jack: Sometimes, Janet, the solution is not about Temperament. Laila appears to lack leadership knowledge and skills and may, in addition, harbor a history of poor team playing, shallow awareness of business priorities, and possibly questionable ethics. An unhealthy Blue person can be annoyingly and irreversibly wishy-washy.

This might be a case where you and your staff need to use your cumulative brains to outsmart her. For example, in a case similar to yours, the staff worked with the boss's manager to get him assigned to a committee which met when the weekly staff meeting was supposed to end - yes, after the scheduled sixty minutes! To assure the meeting length would never be extended again, staff members got themselves scheduled to be outside the office in activities that could not be easily changed. In effect, the most important staff decisions were conducted in the hallway throughout the week - with quick visits to the boss's office for approval.

 
 

 


Once you understand the power of Colors, most of your relationships with others make sense. And you begin to breathe easy.

Sincerely,

          Jack Dermody

Jack Dermody
JackDermody dot com