Bookstrapping: Surrounded by idiots by Thomas Erikson

The secret sauce to workplace relationships

Have you met people who believe that they're surrounded by idiots? And that they're the only smart person in the room? And because they think this way, they destroy a beautiful chance to co-create something? Now here's a book about why people struggle when it comes to relationships.

For people with limited exposure to psychological concepts or spiritual concepts, author Thomas Erikson demystifies why people 'do not get along' with each other by classifying human behaviour into four colours, red, yellow, green and blue. There are theories, classifications, diagrams and suggestions aplenty in the book "Surrounded by Idiots" and they're put forth in an entertaining fashion.

Without giving spoilers, here are our Bookstrapping insights:

1. Communication happens on the listener's terms. That's because 'we see what we do, but we do not see why we do what we do', as Carl Jung said famously.

2. Highlighting the importance of body language, the author says that modern English language contains about one hundred and seventy thousand words, out of which five thousand are used regularly. Body language however contains seven hundred thousand signals. Clearly more than we are aware of!

3. Behavioural adaptation is not necessarily manipulative or dishonest because good communication is often a matter of adapting to others. And whether it is appreciation or criticism, one MUST know how to deliver it. We often think of ourselves as open to change and everyone else as not! And this impacts our behaviour profoundly.

4. It's useful to learn how to deliver negative feedback! The book details this, in reference to each behavioural type and this may be particularly useful to many.

5. There are some very useful tips on how to put teams together, depending on which colour in the behavioural spectrum people belong to.

And finally, the author says that most of us are a combination of two colours! This, somehow, comes as a relief!

Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta is a columnist and bestselling biographer. She is credited with the internationally acclaimed Red Dot Experiment, a decadal six-nation study on how ‘culture impacts communication.’ On instagram @officialReetaGupta