September 29th, 2020
I just finished reading a book called The Platinum Rule by Tony Alessandra, Ph.D., and Michael J. O’Connor, Ph.D. It was recommended to me by someone that I’ve been working with who is starting an executive coaching business. He’s recommended that I read this book and then Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves and then Leadership 2.0 by the same authors. Other things that he has recommended I do have been to develop an identity statement, use a high-performance planner, and to develop 5 focus areas: Reading, Meditation, Journaling, Exercising, and Gratitude. This is all to develop the “Lion Attitude” (See video). I figure it might be good to read the books and have more focus on the areas described. The Platinum Rule was a good book. It promotes this idea to “treat people the way they’d like to be treated” as opposed to the Golden Rule which is to “treat people the way you’d want to be treated”. It emphasizes that people are not all similar and to find success when working with others, it’s wise to consider their needs and how they’d like to be treated. The book presents four different “behavioral styles”: Director, Socializer, Relater, and Thinker. It turns out I’m a Socializer which is odd because my MBTI for the longest time has been INTJ which one would associate with the Director or Thinker. One explanation of this may be the fact that since I’ve taken Adderall for so long, it has somehow altered my personality and by reducing the dosage I’ve come to a more “normal” state and that may be reflected in the results of this assessment. How this was determined was through 36 questions aiming to figure out how direct or indirect and guarded or open I was. I scored 19 for directness and 8 for indirectness and 14 for openness and 13 for guardedness. The book had a further substyle for this that said I was a thinking socializer (or the “impresser”) I figure it might be good to copy from the book the description for this substyle so that I may remember it:
“You’re a people oriented thinker with high expectations for yourself and others. You like to make good impressions. In fact, for the Thinking Socializer, style is often as important as content. You show an admirable balance between thinking and feeling, and thus you can be analytical as well as intuitive abut people. Your tendencies include these:
- wanting to achieve results with flair;
- seeing winning as an all-or-nothing proposition;
- judging people by their ability to make things happen;
- working harder when bigger risks or rewards are at stake;
- preferring to share in work and goals with people;
- being concerned about looking bad;
- wanting to do things the “best way; and
- becoming restless, short-tempered, and even lashing out when under pressure.
Your Growth Opportunities
With tasks: You tend to underestimate the time and effort required by you or others to accomplish tasks. So you should pace yourself better and draw on outside resources. Be more selective about the tasks you take on and don’t hesitate to ask others to do their parts/
With people: Your hard-driving approach means you tend to be impatient, especially when stressed or under the gun. If you blow off steam, you may later regret what was said or done because of its impact on your image. So learning to relax and to enjoy regular recreation is important for recharging your battery.
Personal Empowerment Pointers
- Pace yourself better by adding one-third to one-half the time to original estimates of when tasks can be done. Similarly, reduce by one-third to one-half the number of projects you take on.
- Maintain your perspective by seeking to be less emotional and intense about noncritical issues.
- Take a stress-management course and learn simple breathing exercises as a way to deal with pressure.”
The rest of the book talked about how to interact with other behavioral styles as well as how to lead teams as a supervisor, how the different styles work in groups, and considerations when it comes to being in sales or customer support. All in all I think it is a good read for folks who may not be on top of their game in sales or leadership positions. It’s not something that I feel is super useful for me at the moment only because I’m not in sales or a leadership position where I have people under me. I will most likely want to read it again at some point in the future as I feel it will be of use if and when I enter into one of these positions.