The Emotional Intelligence of Contrary Combinations Hustler-Artists

Hustler-Artists are another contrary combination.  Hustlers are social, manipulative and flexible.  Artists are introverts, purists, and stubborn.  Very high levels of these two components are rarely found together but when they do make for an interesting personality. 

I describe them as creatively cunning.  They often change their approach to another unexpected angle, dismaying their subordinates, who become exhausted by the lack of consistency.  They are very cynical in their attitudes to people and are always ready to think the worse of others.  They will attempt to use their influence and pull strings to advance their own interests and even create trouble for other people if it is expedient.  When attacked they will not openly defend themselves but will subsequently lie readily to protect themselves.

HAs will only respect cunning in other people—you need to demonstrate that you have a shrewd awareness of their attitudes.  A good approach is to appeal to their imagination and their excellent business acumen.  Ask them for their ideas on the solution of problems; note that they will argue against your ideas but the next day act as if they were the originators.   However do not condone their dishonesty.  Freely acknowledge the past personal successes of the HA, especially where they have shown financial acumen or have struck a good bargain, but try to make sure they do not twist facts to suit themselves..

The archetype HA is Steve Jobs.  I have blogged about him before but I have recently finished the authorised biography by Walter Isaacson.  I highly recommend the book, but you will really enjoy it if you first understand the Humm (ie read my book.)  Isaacson spends a considerable amount of time in the book asking other people what makes Steve Jobs tick and in the end fails to really come up with an answer.  He talks about the intensity and focus of Jobs but does not understand why he was so visual, why he was such a product perfectionist, why when he rejoined Apple his salary was $1 per year but subsequently screwed the board for an unbelievable options package.  Incident after incident in the book demonstrates an HA personality with low Normal.  His Normal did grow over time but not by much.

My favourite story was about the development of the special ‘gorilla’ glass for the IPhone.  John Seeley Brown, a friend of Jobs and a director of Corning Glass, suggested Jobs contact the Corning CEO, Wendall Weeks.  Jobs tried via telephone, was trapped by the gatekeepers and complained bitterly to Brown that Corning was useless.  Weeks, instead of getting upset. tried to contact Jobs via the telephone and he too was blocked by the gatekeepers.  He fed back his difficulties to Brown and Jobs liking this attitude invited Weeks to the Apple head office.  Jobs started to tell Weeks how glass was made, until Weeks told him to shut up and then explained actually how the gorilla glass might be made.  Jobs fell silent, listened for an hour, then told Weeks he wanted it in production within six months.  Weeks said that was impossible.  Jobs fixed Weeks with his laser stare, told him not to be afraid and that he could do it.  And Corning did it, to Weeks’s absolute amazement.  On the wall of Weeks’s office hangs just one framed memento.  It is an SMS text “This is the first message from Jobs sent on the first IPhone: We could never have done it without you.”  

This story sums up the emotional leadership style of Jobs.  Checklists of leaders generally contain factors such as empathy, realism, being a good listener, realistic, being a good follower, etc.  Jobs was none of these, yet as Isaacson says in 100 years time, he will probably be mentioned in the same breath as Ford and Edison.

The Emotional Intelligence of Contrary Combinations: The Doublechecker-Politician

As I have blogged earlier we should consider our temperament as a web with seven strands.  Each strand represents one of the seven Humm components.  We have all seven strands in our personality but some are stronger than others.  Typically for most of us two strands are stronger than average, three are around average and two are weaker than average.  What makes for interesting combinations is when the two stronger strands are antagonistic.  For example take a temperament where the two strongest strands are the Doublechecker and Politician components.  Politician loves to make decisions while Doublecheckers do not because of the fear they will make a mistake.

Whether two components work together or fight each other depends of the level of Normal component.  The DP suffers from underlying feelings of insecurity but attempts to mask these feelings beneath a veneer of aggressive criticism.  They like to look important but will probably never be satisfied.  In their Normal is low they will be outspoken in criticism of their work situation and will be disgruntled without cause.  Often their attitudes have an undertone of bitterness.  Obtaining the co-operation of a DP is difficult. They are negative perfectionists, seeing all those areas in which proposals fall short of ideal.  They are outspoken in their criticism of new ideas or innovations.  If your proposal is not well thought out, their cynicism will often destroy it.  You need to overlook their sarcastic and often unfounded criticism, and counteract their pessimism with optimism.

DPs often become either operational or administration managers.  They make decisions carefully but having made the decision adhere to it.  They suspect that people are trying to take advantage of them and are very watchful for such attempts.  Their staff often fears them because they freely criticise shortcomings in their employees' performance.

If the Normal is high then the D and P work together and lead to carefully considered decisions.  A great example of such a person is the former Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard.  Howard comes across a compassionate, conscientious individual.  The Labor party often tried to criticise Howard for being over-cautious and dithering.  Howard was certainly cautious making decisions which is in conflict with his P component.  Ps generally like to make decisions.  On the other hand, if a D decides to adopt a cause, he can attack it with an energy and persistence that surprises his colleagues.  So it was with Howard when he attacked the issues of gun-control and tax reform.  Although he was attacked incessantly by the media during his tenure he did manage to win four elections.  Even more surprising in a recent poll Howard has been named Australia’s best prime minister of the past 40 years attracting 39% of the vote, followed by Bob Hawke with 14%.

Emotional Intelligence: What Makes Us Tick?

In 2011 I read Hugh Mackay's most recent book, What Makes Us Tick? after hearing him speak at the Sydney Institute.  I must confess disappointment.  According to MacKay there are ten basic desires within all of us that drive our non-rational behaviour.  Those familiar with my work is will know that I favour seven as the maximum number in any list thanks to what is perhaps the most widely quoted paper in psychology Miller's, The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information (1956). However, the major weakness of the book is that there is no scientific model at the basis of the work.  This leads Mackay to draw very long bows when discussing his desires.

For example Mackay accords primacy to the desire to be taken seriously.  We all want our voices to heard as authentic, legitimate and worthy of attention. However he then goes on to say that this desire is the basis of sporting success. Sorry but athletes do not succeed from a desire to be taken seriously; they succeed because of an overwhelming desire to win; which, interestingly, is not included in his list of ten desires.

Take also his discussion for the desire to connect.  I totally agree that the desire to communicate is a basic desire of humanity; indeed it is our ability to form complex languages that really differentiates humans from other animals.  However, Mackay takes this desire and says it is the basis of needing to connect first with our "inner" self and then secondly with nature.  Some have argued that until Rousseau, Thoreau, and the Romantics came onto the scene that the desire of mankind to connect with nature was muted to say the least.  Again these are two very long bows.

It would be otiose to continue with other examples; the problem to me is that there is no underlying scientific model such as the Humm-Wadsworth.

Indeed the references to science in the book are limited, Mayo and Milgrim being the two that spring to mind.  I find it difficult to believe that any book about human behaviour would make no reference to the work of Mischel and his marshmallow study.  Goleman makes Mischel's work the core experiment of Emotional Intelligence.  Also there is no discussion of whether the basis of the ten desires is genetic or cultural.  I would argue the desire to connect with nature is cultural (the result of nurture) while the desire to connect with others is the result of nature..

On the other hand the book contains one metaphor that I will use from now on.  Mackay recommends that we consider the ten desires as strands of a web.  We have all the strands within us, some are stronger than others but they all intertwine.  This is an excellent way of thinking about human behaviour and much better than so many popular models that put you into boxes.

Lift your Emotional Intelligence Using a Model of Temperament

As I said in my previous blog, I found
The Emotionally Intelligent Manager: HOW TO DEVELOP AND USE THE FOUR KEY EMOTIONAL SKILLS OF LEADERSHIP by David R. Caruso and Peter Salovey a disappointing read, along with almost half of the 39 reviewers on Amazon.com.
I believe one of the major problems with the book is the Emotional Blueprint model it advocates, and which states that one’s Emotional intelligence quotient (or EQ) comprises four related abilities:

1. The ability to read people by identifying their emotions.
2. The ability to use emotions to get other people to work in harmony with you.
3. The ability to understand emotions and so predict the emotional future.
4. The ability to manage emotions and ensure that we use the available emotional information when making decisions which to me is a roundabout way of using intuition.

The problem with this model is that it says it is the transient emotions that are important. I disagree. I believe that what is essential in lifting your Emotional Intelligence is an understanding of temperament, which is that part of the personality that is genetically based and is what determines our habitual emotional response.
Caruso and Salovey do refer in passing to some people having typical ways of looking at the world and call these dispositional traits. I would argue the opposite and say all of us have core dispositional traits and that it the mixture of these traits with some being dominan
t and others weak that make us all unique. The model that I have found best at explaining temperament is the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale.  This model says we are all slightly insane and as I get older I am more and more relaxed about this hypothesis. The model also says we have seven core emotional drives six based on the most common forms of insanity and a seventh that tries to bring logic and order into our personality.
The following article from the 27 July, 1942 issue of Time, “Pegs that Fit“, provides a practical introduction to the model.
I like the Humm scale because it uses seven components compared to many other models which use only two or three variables to analyse people and are too simplistic and put people in a box. Why is seven important? Seven points are the limit short term memory can handle, as demonstrated in George Miller’s famous paper.
You can read more about where the Humm fits in my free white paper:
A Practical Tool to Lift Your Emotional Intelligence: The Humm-Wadsworth model of Temperament