S2E1 Corey-osity Unleashed with Thomas Erikson

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Welcome to our next episode of Curiosity Unleashed, and today we have a very, very special guest, Thomas Erikson. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Of course, thank you for having me.

And a double thank you because we have so much to talk about that we're going to do two episodes. So we're going to do part one on some of your books and part 2 on some of your other books. So yeah, we've lots, lots for the listeners. So yeah, thanks for that.

All right.

So let me tell you a little bit about Thomas for those of you who don't know him. He is a Swedish behaviorist and bestselling author of the Surrounded by Books, a series about human behaviors and communication. And the series, including Surrounded by Idiots, has sold over 10 million copies in 70 languages, which is absolutely brilliant. Congratulations on that. Your mission is to make people's lives easier on a daily level by making them aware of themselves, but also to help them to a better understanding of what it takes to achieve the best possible ground for effective communication. You're also a highly sought-after public speaker, a coach, and a mentor for for high-level executives and entrepreneurs all over Europe. And you live by a simple but useful quote, which I love. You cannot change somebody else, but you can change yourself. So thank you so much again for joining us. And this first part, this first session is gonna be focusing mostly on your first book, which is Surrounded by Idiots. So let me just ask you my first question about the title of your book. So where did that all come from? I know you and I spoke briefly about it when we were trying to come up with the title of our book, but I think it's great how you came up with the title. And then also, once you do that, since it's all based off of colors, for those people who aren't really familiar with the whole idea of colors, can you sort of introduce everyone to the concept, please?

Of course. Well, to begin with the title, I don't think it's that provocative. Some people say, well, people are going to get angry, don't do that. That's what I heard when I introduced the idea to my then publisher. I said, I want to write about behaviors because it's about efficient communication and so on. And they said, it's a stupid title. And by the way, it's an ugly cover. It's my own cover design. This is the silliest idea you ever come up with. Don't, no one is going to be interested. Just scrap the whole thing. And I'm a bit stubborn, is probably the word. Rebellious. Yes, that could be good. Perseverance, you know, or conscientious or whatever you want to use. But stubborn is what my wife usually calls it. You don't really take good advice now, do you? And in this case, it was actually a good idea to not listen too much for from the smart people in the business. But the title Surrounded by Idiots, I mean, I was working with the DISC profile. It's based on the old DISC profile. We dressed it in colors for pedagogical reasons. It's easier to remember red and yellow behavior instead of an high D over an I with a low C or an ENTJ personality. Or is it IT, INT, I? TPK? Now, which one is it? Anyway, red and yellow. There you go. So the idea, the phrase surrounded by idiots, well, that's not very exclusive now, is it? Most people have been in those meetings. You know, you sit around the table, you put your phone on the table, you look at the agenda, and you realize no one is paying attention to anybody else but themselves. No one is listening, and maybe me neither, frankly. And when you leave the meeting, the only thing you can think of is, what is wrong with these people? And sometimes you feel surrounded by idiots. Interestingly enough, based on my own research and experiences, I have come to the conclusion some people seem to be surrounded by more idiots than others. That's interesting. Why is that? Some people are some kind of idiot magnets who draw weirdos and lunatics to themselves. And for me, that's always been kind of fascinating. It's like the old high school buddy you had who couldn't hook up with the girl because she's strange and she's weird and she's too tall and she's too short. And, you know, What is the lowest common denominator in this story? It's an old story, but it's true in many cases. People don't view themselves in the mirror enough, I would say. That was sort of the, what would you say, the basic idea to make people kind of observe themselves a little bit more than usual and maybe get everybody to think, I could do a little bit better. Now that's my game, I think. If I can just contribute and make everybody pay 2% more attention to everybody around them, I think we could solve a couple of problems. That's my naive view of things, at least. Yeah. Oh, then what's in the book? Yeah, you asked that too, actually. You actually asked, so what is in the book? Well, the profile, extroversion, introversion, task orientation, people orientation. So you get this 2x2 matrix. Before somebody closes their phone and says, I'm not going to listen to this. There's got to be more than 4 types of personalities. Yes, there are, because you can, of course, mix the basic, the fundamentals. It's like baking a cake. You had yellow, you have red, yellow, green, and blue. But most people are, it's a combination of colors. I have a combination of 3. I'm hard to read. They say, I don't know, I know myself pretty well now after 30 years of studies, right? So it's around that, how to interpret people and how to understand how you present yourself to the room and what people see when you introduce yourself and how do they perceive you in your sort of conscious, maybe unconscious behavior. No, not unconscious, subconscious behavior. That's a better word. Remember, I am from Sweden. So, yeah, so that's it. A lot of examples and anecdotes and not so many pointing fingers, but sort of a pledge for use your imagination, try to be a little bit creative here. Maybe even because you're right, I don't have to be wrong actually. That's kind of my perspective here.

So you mentioned that you are Swedish and also the book was written in 70 languages. First of all, what is "surrounded by idiots" in Swedish? Does it sound better or worse in Swedish?

It's exactly the same phrase, "omgivener idioter." In Dutch, "omringtoor idioten." Yeah, Finnish, "idioteet ympärillene." Norwegian, omjetavidiotter, and so on and so forth. Don't ask me about Japanese. I don't know.

So it translates well. I was just curious, because you travel the world speaking and such, were there any times you had to explain to people what do the words mean, or is it something that everybody just gets the word idiot right away? No problem with that one?

No, no. Everybody understands it. Because it's a generic thing, you know, this sense of nobody understands me, no one is listening to me, I am the only one who gets it, I get it, they don't get it. And it's so fascinating. People usually say, ah, that's it. Now I know. The aha. I get feedback from every continent on a weekly basis. And it's kind of cool really, because people have the same aha moments. And people have the same, oh no, moments. Oh, I shouldn't have done that. Oh, that's bad. Oh, I've done that for 20 years. Oh no. Oh no. Now I understand why my wife is so mad at me sometimes. It sort of makes sense because, okay, so are you ready for a really big cliché? Are you ready for something beautiful? People are the same everywhere. People are the same everywhere. That is kind of the thing with Homo sapiens. We might look the same and our cultures differ and everything, sure. But weirdly enough, the same conclusions are drawn in New Zealand as in the United States, as in Iceland or Poland or India or Canada. It's the same conclusions, the same questions, the same assumptions. And that's, for me, I didn't expect that, frankly. I have to admit, I'm a bit surprised but also happy about it. I don't know, what do you think?

No, I was gonna say that. So in the books that I've written, I've gone around and done tours around the world and same thing. I keep expecting each time, you know, I go to, I don't know, Asia or Europe or America or something like that, I'm gonna be questioned and challenged. And no, I mean, different interpretations obviously, and they're in different places, but fundamentally. But I read a statistic somewhere that like DNA is only like a small percentage. We only have a small percentage of our DNA that is really different from person to person. So you are right, there's more consistency than inconsistencies. It's maybe how we apply it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That could be another one. But it's really great news when you think about it. You have to sort of polish the cultural differences away because culture is the problem, not humans really. Because I mean, our closest neighbor is Finland. I don't know if you've ever been to Finland. They hardly speak at all. They're so introverted, you know, and when they speak, they usually speak the truth. You can absolutely trust someone from Finland. They are a bit grumpy, a bit, you know, like this, but when they open their mouth, pay attention. And if they say, I'll go there and do this and that, they will do exactly that. That's their culture. Finnish people are super trustworthy. It's the best people ever when it comes to actually delivering on their promises. That's for sure. But their culture is this super introvert sort of, I don't know you. But when you get to know the individual, when you sit down with a guy over a cup of coffee, and this koskenkorva/vodka thing, that's a myth. They don't need a koskenkorva to open up. When you get to know them, they are exactly like us Swedes or an American or someone from, I don't know, Nigeria. It's really, really fantastic. But the culture tricks people into thinking, oh, Germans are like this and Canadians are like that. And that's usually not the case. You only have to go in another direction, you know, just in another neighborhood. People are a bit different because the houses are cheaper or more expensive or whatever. You know, people on that side of the streets, they are feeling whatever weird stuff you have there. But that's usually not the case. I think that's good news.

One of the things that we talk about a lot is not to put people in boxes. Our book is Bad Bosses Ruin Lives. And if you talk to an employee, they can tell you that boss is a good boss, or this other boss is a bad boss. And we try to explain to them that those are labels, those are boxes, and they don't do you any favors. They don't do you any good. And we try to step away from labels. When I first heard about the color model, you know, red, green, yellow, blue, my first reaction to that was they're just boxes with a nice outside. They're just, they're colors. And that's all well and good, but how is that useful? And then when I read your book, I realized that you come out quite clearly at the very beginning and say, that there's a lot of people and a lot of people have more than one color. 80% have two, 5%, only 5% have one, which I found a bit surprising. But then you said 15% of people have three colors. When you're talking to somebody for the very first time, you don't have any evidence, you don't have any experience, you haven't looked at their emails, whatever. How do you know which color to use? Is is there a sliding scale here?

All these things exist on some sort of continuum. That is the case. I mean, as I said, you have extroversion versus introversion, left, right. And then you have from top down, task orientation, people orientation. And you are probably somewhere in this 2x2 matrix. Somewhere we will find you. Otherwise, you're not a human being at all. The thing is this, if you go to the lower left corner, you'll find green people looking for stability, which are people who are people-oriented. It's the people's people, but they are also introverts. One good thing about those people are they are good listeners, excellent listeners. They actually hear what you say. And you know what? They will remember what you told them, especially if it was something negative. If it was something negative about the green person, that's just horrible. My recommendation, Ken, for that question is go green if you don't know who's in front of you, meaning close the big lid in the front and just open up your ears. It sounds like a silly thing, but it's actually true. Just lean backwards in your chair and just ask a couple of open-ended questions and just see what happens. That'll give you a lot of fuel for your analysis. But you have to sort of keep yourself a little bit to yourself in the beginning if you don't know. Some people are easy. If you find a yellow person who is people-oriented and extrovert, it's a hooray people. Yay. Whoa. You know, howdy doody. How are you? Look at the sun. Well, it's kind of raining. Yeah, but the sun is always shining somewhere. These people, they are easy to sort of interpret. Red people, the same way. They just stare you down by saying, who are you? And you're too slow and go away. Some people are easier to wrap your head around, but most people are not. But by going green, you will actually solve the puzzle most of the time. No systems are bulletproof, and this is certainly not. No systems are bulletproof, even if it's the MBTI, Myers-Briggs, or if it's the Big Five or whatever you want to use. That's really not my point. I use the color model because it's easy to understand, easy to remember. As I was joking about before, an ID or an eye or a red and yellow, it's easy to remember my color than a letter combination. But you can use, it's probably more of a coincidence I picked this one. I like it. I think it's useful. It's not perfect at all. It's lacking certain things, drivers, motivators, and so on. But if you pay attention and you sort of don't talk, there's an old saying that goes something like this. I'm paraphrasing some smart thinker probably. If you talk all the time, you're only going to hear things you already know. And I think that's wise. If you shut up, basically, technical term, you can learn something from other people, but then you have to actually shut up. Makes sense.

I absolutely love that message. When I give one-to-ones to my people, one of my failings is that I like to talk too bloody much. And it's just time for me to shut up and listen. It's really good advice almost all the time.

I'm speaking from experience, let me tell you. I speak way too much. Ask my wife who is red, just red, nothing but red. She usually says, so many words, so many words. Why do you have to keep talking all the time? Well, you know, I had something interesting. No, no, no, no, it wasn't interesting. You're repeating yourself. You told me this 3 weeks ago. Well, you never answered, you never responded. So I did. I take that story once more. It's a great story. I've heard it, she says. Please be quiet. And the funny thing is, you think I'm kidding. I'm not.

No, no, no, no, Thomas. I'm laughing because we have those same conversations, exactly those same conversations in our house.

I'm a red, I'm a red yellow. So yeah, that's me. Absolutely.

I know, I know. It's painful, you know, but still. And that also goes to just taking a shortcut to maybe a future question here. I don't know. But people usually ask me, so where should I turn myself? Where should I turn in life? Where should I go depending on my personality profile or my communication style? What should I do? I'm wrong. I need to change my whole setup here. And I used to say, no, no, no, no, no, you shouldn't do that. You should find an environment where you fit in basically the way you are. Not saying you don't have to adapt to a situation or work on yourself and get a new set of skills and all of those things. Sure, we all have a responsibility to build ourselves, well, as much as possible, I guess. But some environments, some contexts are just impossible. If you sit down with 99 IT technicians who are mainly blue, guys with their headphones on, they sit staring into the wall. If you close in, then you're just going to look scared. You know, oh, please don't address me. Don't talk to me. Can I work from home? Because this guy said hello Monday morning. That just freaked me out. You know, I don't want to see any people. And you are a yellow person, meaning you are this extroverted, hallelujah person. You're gonna suffer. This is not for you. This is not for you. We can't be good at everything. That's just a myth. Mother was wrong. Oh, can I say that? Mommy was wrong. You can't be anything. You can be much more than you might think, but you can't be anything. I wanted to be a basketball player when I was young. Too short. I'm 6'2", say. Too short. Then I wanted to drive Formula 1 cars. I didn't fit into the cabin. Life has treated me very unfairly. I had to find an occupation where my height didn't matter. Writing books. There you go.

Who knew? Do you know, it's interesting when you're talking about that bit about finding the right job, the right company. I had a situation once where I, as I was leaving the company, I had two bosses and one of my bosses said to me, you see too much color.. And you should never work for a company that sees things in black and white. And that was more about the culture of the company. It was a very black and white organization, processes, certain ways of looking. There was no creativity. And I'm very much yellow and red. And I think that, you know, it's good to have diversity. But if that's the way the company is run, I was hitting my head against the wall, being frustrated all the time because I was the wrong personality for the company.

It's not worth it. It is not worth it, actually. And when I mentor people, I usually get a question. I know you didn't ask for this, but hey, I'm using my yellow factor here. There you go. Leaving your probably well-thought-through manuscript completely here. But people come to me and they say, you know, I don't feel okay at my job because of this and that, and the people are weird, and my boss is a maniac or a bully or whatever. And I say, well, walk away. There's more than one job in your area, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, but it's hard times. No, no, no, no, no, you have to walk away, you see. No, no, I can't because it's my dream job. And I say, so you're surrounded by people you don't like, people who don't like you, people you don't get along with, you can't communicate, and your boss is an idiot. What are you doing there? Walk away. This cannot be your dream job. This doesn't make any sense at all. A dream job is where you thrive and feel good about yourself and you're longing to get in there on a Monday morning. Those people exist. I read about them. I'm one of them. Sundays are work. This is some sort of work prohibit, not unspoken rule. I can't work on Sundays because of my wife says I can't do that. So I'm trying to negotiate. Well, I can start at 4 in the afternoon. That's okay because I have so many ideas all the time. And so I'm really when a week starts, wow, that's fantastic. I love it. But I have my own business. Maybe that's why. They're all my hires.

So, you know. Everybody should be blessed with a job that they feel that way on a Sunday. I did see a quote on LinkedIn that I thought was really appropriate. Culture can be defined as how your stomach feels on Sunday night. If it feels really bad, You're in the wrong culture.

Right, right. If it feels bad, it is bad. It's as simple as that. This is not brain surgery. I mean, if it feels bad, your body's telling you something. Maybe your belly's protesting or your head or whatever. Your hands are shaking. You get a rash on your, you know, it's telling you something. Listen, listen. Anyways.

So let me pick your brain a little bit on the whole color concept. And I have to say, when you talked about how, you know, you go out and these people have light bulb moments— personally, the first time I started working with colors was like, like, light bulb moments. It absolutely fundamentally helped me understand myself, understand my people. I mean, I think, I think your work is brilliant. From your experience, do you think that people's colors— I know we're a blend, So it's not necessarily going to change, but is one stronger in some situations based off of the circumstances, the people, the environment? What have you seen as a behaviorist regarding this?

That is, of course, the right question. But generally speaking, I will try to use as few words as possible. This is important. Let's say you have two profiles. Kenneth's laughing. You can't hear that, but he is. I can hear it. I can see it, actually. But you see, you have two profiles. You have one when you fill in the questionnaire. There's a number of DiSC profiles out there. DiSC isn't a brand like MBTI is a brand. DiSC is a system. It's a model, if you want. And when you fill it in, you think about you in a work situation. At work, describe yourself, and then you fill in a questionnaire and you have to make some decisions and you have to contradict yourself and you have to do it spontaneously and so on and so forth. Okay. What you'd pick, you say, this is mostly me and this is mostly not me. This is the least me. What you fill in as mostly you will be your work profiles. You will get a work a diagram over you at work. What you fill in that is least you is actually your natural style, which is who you are when you are not at work. The question is, where are you? Are you at home? Are you with your mother-in-law? Or you're on a beach? Depends. But the work profile, if you have answered honestly, which of course you have, it will describe who you are and what other people see when you meet them in your job context, let's say. So that profile is what— that's your interpretation of how you must behave in order to fit in this specific context at work. This is your analysis of how you will do the best possible job. Interestingly enough, on the same job, a lot of people change into different profiles. Some go red, some go green. On the same job description, which is kind of interesting. So, but you have interpreted it the same way. Your natural style is who you are when you don't have to adapt to anything, anywhere, or anyone, usually anyone. Some people say, well, when is that? Maybe it's asleep. Maybe when I'm sitting on a Sunday afternoon with a cup of coffee and reading a book just for the fun of it, then I don't. But that's not true either because I am listening for My wife, is she coming? Is she seeing me sitting down on the couch? Is that okay? I don't know. Can I read another chapter? Who knows? We have a big house, which is a blessing. So I can sort of hide a little bit. That's also not a joke. She calls me and says, where are you? Which, what floor are you on? I have a job for you.

No, she's, she's, you're not helping me, Tom. You're not helping me at all. Ken's just laughing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I guess you could steal from it. I have a— That's the deal. That's the deal. Anyways, you have two different sets of profiles in the same assessment. And what's interesting is how much do they change from your natural style, meaning who you are when you feel that you can be, well, you, and who are you when you enter and go through the door at work? Are you sort of the same? You're probably a little bit different, slightly different. You could go, you raise one of the bars, which probably means you lower one of the other ones. There's four, red, yellow, green, and blue. But let's say you, at work, you are, let's say, red. But at home, you're green. Oh, that's a huge adaptation. You shouldn't, that's a violation of who you really are. You're trying to violate your personality. Because green and red are opposites. Blue and yellow are also opposites. If you go too, if you stray too far away from the true you, you're going to get stress-related physical diseases. Seriously, you can, you can go into complete burnout if you are violating who you are. I never recommend that.

But Thomas, it's my dream job.

No, you hate it. It's my dream job, but I can't be myself. I can't speak spontaneously. No one is listening. And I'm sure, you know, my boss thinks I'm an idiot. And at home, my kids agree with my boss. You know, no, it's not your dream. This is not for you. You should actually pay more attention. Again, if it feels bad, it is probably bad. Maybe you don't realize what's wrong in this situation. Something needs to be changed. What is it? You have to sort of peruse the whole idea, the whole context, and sort of look into it and ponder why it feels so strange on a Sunday evening, for instance. Great example, by the way. Is it the culture? Is it your colleagues? Is it you? Maybe it's you. It could be you.

So it sounds like you can go back and forth between them. But if you stray too far, there's a huge price to pay, you know, leading to things like burnout and stress. And, you know, in talking to people I know and looking at my own personal situation, I completely agree. And it's a good red flag. Are you, you know, if you're straying too far away, what is the, what's the impact to me?

Yeah. Now, as a coach, would you say that a large part of your practice is mainly aimed at trying to get people to have a career that's aligned with their colors, with their natural inclination? Is that a significant portion of your coaching?

Yes and no. You know what it is when you work with people. I usually only— I don't even call myself a coach anymore. I'm more of a mentor, and we can discuss the definitions here, of course. But I usually work with people who have no one to turn to. It's a CEO or maybe the chairman of the board or the founder who they have no one to go to and say, hey, I don't feel okay with this. Okay, sorry, you're out. You know what it could be like. And usually when they are confused, it's usually the closest relations they have. It could be the top management team. Something is off in the team because the CIO is always giving me a weird look and people are calling me names behind my back and everything. Could be anything. What I say to people, you know, the colors, the behavioral patterns, again, that's just one thing that can really trouble people. Of course, if you have this green tendency and everybody else is task-oriented, meaning they are red or blue, meaning they will never ever ask you, how was your weekend? How about your kids? I heard you got a dog. They don't care about you. They are here to do the job. They are looking into their assignment. They couldn't care less about you and your personal problems. Some people find that offensive. Some people find that, oh, that's harsh. That it's a cold environment in here. It's inhumane. You know, they hate me. No, they don't hate you. They just don't care about your private life. You are not wrong and they are not wrong, but you're different. And if that So for some people, this breaks their heart. It's too much of an effort to try to fit in, I guess. I usually recommend people say, maybe you are not in the vicinity of the perfect workplace. Maybe you should look around a little bit and see. Because our interpersonal communications are, you know, the relationships at work, They are important. These are the people we spend a lot of time with. When the chain breaks, it could be, I usually say on, on, on, from a stage, I would say it's 10% bad routines or lousy processes and so on. It, that could happen, sure. But it's 90% bad communication. People just, you know, talk over each other's heads. They don't listen. They don't pay attention and they don't understand he's using this. Line of thinking or this line of expressing himself because he's thinking in another way compared to you. And again, he might not be wrong, but he's different. You have to pay attention. You have to work on this. Sometimes you have to sit down and say, hey, you and I, we don't get along perfectly. I know it. You know it. Let's have a cup of coffee and let's chat about it. What could possibly go wrong? Usually people say, yeah, thank you. You're right. This is a bit, I don't know, we need some to grease the system between us a little bit. That could be done. When I talk to people, we can usually open up these things. People say, yeah, that's right. I've never asked Jimmy about his dog really, because I'm one of the task-oriented people. That's bloody right, you know. I should ask him a little bit more. I think he's got 3 kids, But I'm not sure. I say, are you his closest boss? Yeah. Ouch. That's an oh no moment. And you don't know anything about his family? Do you have like 100 people? No, I have like 5. Oh dear. Sometimes you are the problem or I am the problem. That is something people usually don't want to hear about, of course, because they are surrounded by idiots. But sometimes we find the idiot in the mirror. Happened to me once, didn't that happen? I was a young man, let's not talk about that. Still a little bit painful because I was a lousy boss. I was so bad. 24 years of age, first position, management position. I really messed it up. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I can still feel the embarrassment when I left. When you know, you sit around the coffee table, sorry, you can cut this out if you want, that's fine by me. You know, when you sit around the coffee table, someone baked a cake, they hand you a gift and they say something like, well, good luck on your next career step. They didn't give me anything. I gave them a plant and basically said, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. And it was so awkward. At the end of this horrible, horrible 20-minute-long, I don't know what to call it really. Some lady felt bad for me and said, well, Got a little bit better at the end, I guess. It was just the pain, you know. Don't, no, no, we have to consider our own part of any, well, possible conflict, I guess, outspoken one or just hidden beneath the surface.

When we sat down and we were originally thinking of the book that turned into Bad Bosses Ruin Lives, I had been writing down all the incorrect behavior I'd seen management do, all the poor behavior and all the consequences. I'd been taking notes for about 10 years at that point. And I have to confess, I had in my mind that we were going to write a book about how those bad managers should get it better. And we ended up settling on these 10 kinds of bad, 10 kinds of bad boss behaviors to talk about in our book. But I very quickly realized I had stories for every last one of these. And when you were talking about being a very young manager and then looking around going, no, I'm getting it so wrong, that resonates so deeply with me because that's exactly what I did when I was a young manager. There was no hope. There was just no hope at all.

Yeah. And it's interesting, Ken and Deborah and everybody who's listening. The thing is this. The person who is a bad boss in your case might be a perfect one for somebody else. I mean, let's say everybody hates micromanagement. Okay. I have never heard anyone say, oh, I love to be micromanaged. Oh, I love that. That's the best. I don't have to think at all. I can use his brain or her brain. That's perfect. So I don't have to use my own. I can get a good price down at the, I don't know, used brain stores. Is there a store? I think some people have bought them. Secondhand. Anyway, let's continue. Let's move on, shall we?

Slightly damaged.

Exactly. Some people love detail-oriented managers. They love that they have everything in a huge spreadsheet. They love Excel. They love to discuss details and numbers. And is there some comma error here? Yeah, you're right. Let's have another equation. Equation. Let's see if we can figure it out. Some people love this and some people hate it. So who is the bad person here? Of course, bullies, ignorance, and the other 8 on your list in your book. Great book, by the way. I recommend everyone to read it. Absolute perfect book in this case. So helpful. But you know, what's good for me might be bad for you. I like red bosses who can point with the foot and say, shut up and pay attention because I will say this only once. For me, that's perfect. So easy. Yeah, I see the faces here. For me, that works because I have a higher red bar myself. I don't care. I know it's not personal. It's going to save me some time. I don't care. Some people completely hate it. They feel bad on a Monday morning. I'm not saying But sometimes clarity is a tool for a manager to use, for a leader to use. You need to be clear. Some people don't like clarity. They would like to fiddle around and have another meeting and then another meeting. And in Sweden, we have meetings about the next meeting. That's just stupid. Too many. In Finland, they don't. They make a decision once and then they go out and just do it. In Sweden, we don't. We talk and we discuss and we negotiate and back and forth and blah, blah, blah. It takes too long. But when everyone's on the train finally, yeah, then we just top gear immediately. But the way there, it's complicated. Some people like it, some people don't like it. So it's more tricky than just say these are 10 really bad behaviors. There are bullying and psychopathic boss and so on and just ignoring people, never saying hello. Of course, that's always bad. But what I mean is if you're on the other side of the, I almost said, on the continuum, regardless of whatever axis, Y-axis or X-axis, if you're very different from your closest manager, leader, boss, you will struggle with the communication. You won't understand them. That is the way it is. They have a greater responsibility to fix this, the gravel in the cogs, so to speak. They should sort of sense this before you and say, hey, we need to have a sit down. We need to have a conversation. This isn't working. Oh, I gave you an order Monday. You did nothing about it. You nodded to say, uh-huh, but you didn't do anything. What is wrong here? And then you have to say, well, you know, I didn't like that assignment. That's not a pretty answer. That won't do. But some people are like that. Then you need someone who dares to be a bit clear and say, when I give you an assignment and you say yes, I expect you to deliver before deadline is here. That's a proper expectation from a leader. And some people do, some people don't, right? So it's not all about bad management. Sometimes it is actually lazy employees or bad employees. It's very taboo to talk about. I understand that. But you find bad people everywhere. Would you agree?

Absolutely.

And I would say one of the things that I love about your work though, and there's a lot of similarities in what we talk about in that a lot of bosses, people in general don't make the mistakes intentionally. And what I love about your book is it helps people understand better and raise awareness so that you can then be more intentional in what you're doing. So, I guess maybe just to sort of bring this, this first part to a closure. If I think about, you know, the book and your, you know, it was your first book, you're writing— I heard you're— a new one is coming out. What is— what's your thoughts and what's your reason for doing a new one now? I mean, how can you make it even better than it is already?

You mean a new one? You mean the, the expanded edition of Surrounded by Idiots? Is that the one?

Yes. So tell us what it's going to be about. What do expanding on?

Well, frankly, I'm going to be very sincere with you, not saying I'm right because it's absolutely possible to be sincerely wrong. I understand that. But to be completely open here with you, the original book was written in 2013. There has been some water under the bridge since then. I don't think it was perfectly edited, by the way. I had to self-publish. I didn't have a budget. I didn't have anything. So I think I could polish it and sort of take out some things that wasn't maybe not okay because the world is changing. I'm not afraid to be politically incorrect. That doesn't scare me one bit. But some things could have been taken out. And also I have gathered I don't know. I have tried to answer the 50 most asked questions based on the first edition. So I've added those things into the book. I've added the combinations, but I also added the things that the DiSC profile doesn't explain, which is the drivers, the motivations behind certain behaviors, not only how people are active, but why do they choose this or that or whatever. So that is in the new edition, which comes out in, in The American edition comes— is it this fall? Could it be October? Maybe, possibly. I don't know.

And how about in Europe?

It's a much better book. It's a little bit more pages, but it's a vastly better product, basically, for the same price, really. So did I actually answer your question? What was the question?

No, that was my question.

Nope.

What was your reason for updating it? And I completely get it. If I think back to my very first book, I think I would love to go back and write it. And it sounds like you're not just rewriting it to make it better, but you're adding some really valuable information.

35% new material. Lots of new material. Sure, sure, sure. And also, also, it's more— I have sort of washed off some too consultancy stuff in there because I was a management consultant when I wrote it. So it's a little bit too much boardroom stuff in there. So now anyone can read it. And because of that, there will also be a business edition, of course, coming out most likely next year. So there you go. Maybe you see it.

Who knows? Yeah, we, we brought out, you brought out more of your yellow in the book, it sounds like. Yes, you say youth, but it's funny because when my kids were young, I went to some class once and they had put kids into different colors. And so that I could understand my children. And again, light bulb moments, it was brilliant trying to understand which colors my kids are.

You should of course be a little bit careful when it comes to kids because according to William Alton Marston, who came up with the disc theory originally based on Carl Jung. Marston, you know Marston, I assume. He was the inventor of the lie detector, also Wonder Woman, sort of a Renaissance man in the 1920s. He said you shouldn't test people younger than 23. I don't know why 23. I think it has something to do with the frontal lobe. It closes when you're you're an adult, basically. In young ladies, that's around 18, 19. Young boys, young men, 23, 24. Some never get, some never reach adulthood. That's why it's so, because when the frontal lobe closes, now you understand the consequences of your own decisions. That's why it's so expensive for young men to insure their motorcycles, by the way. I think that's one of the main reasons.

Hey, I'm still looking forward to my frontal Lobes closing.

I am too, Ken.

Oh dear, oh dear. But anyway, so you can see traits within young kids. You can see if it's an extrovert or an introvert. You can see if they smile and play or they're more serious tone. Everything is okay. We shouldn't form them too much, but you can misuse. You can do that with any tool. You can misuse any tool.

Toolbox.

Oh, in the workplace, we— yeah, we did a workshop the other day and this one person was a blue. And anytime we do things, he go— he was almost using it like, you know, I'm a blue, I'm a blue. And, and finally people are like, no, you got a little yellow and green in you as, as well. So, you know, it should be used as something to help shape things, not necessarily to prevent things.

Not a label, not an excuse.

Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, Ken, you're gonna wrap us up?

Yeah, I just wanted to say, how can people reach out and contact you? How can they find out more information about your upcoming book? What's the steps here, Thomas?

The easiest way to go is, of course, to take a look at my website, surroundedbyidiots.com, which I secured before I even wrote the book because I had an idea in the back of my head, maybe what if Who knows? So that was a smart move. Now I'm a genius. That was actually, I'm happy I thought of that. Otherwise they find me on LinkedIn, Thomas Eriksson, and you will see it immediately if you look it up and Instagram. I even have a TikTok account. Don't ask me too much about that. I'm really not good at social media. I don't understand those algorithms at all. I understand people. I'm really lousy at trying to figure people out online because everything gets so filtered through layers of weird things, really.

Well, and the algorithms keep changing on a different basis based on what the business needs today as opposed to what it needed yesterday. So I do think trying to figure out the algorithms is a a little bit of a fool's errand because there's always, you know, 100 people online who will tell you, oh, they have the secret. And, and it's, it's kind of chasing fool's gold really to try to figure out the algorithms.

But read your, read your books. You've got a great newsletter. Um, yeah, keep doing what you're doing, and we are going to bring you back for the second part of this where we're going to talk a bit more about the whole boss side of things. And focus on your other book, which is Surrounded by Bad Bosses. So thank you very much, Thomas. I really enjoyed this, and Ken got a lot out of it as well, right, Ken? Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

And that's a wrap on this episode of Curiosity Unleashed. Huge thanks to our amazing guests and of of course, to you for tuning in.

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