The Four Tendencies
🔗Connect
🔼Topic:: Human Nature (MOC) 🔼Topic:: Behavioral Psychology (MOC)
✒️ Note-Making
💡Clarify
🔈 Summary of main ideas
- Don't fight yourself - each person has its own tendency, and this is a core aspect of your being, so instead of fighting yourself and trying to change it, a loss battle, learn to work with your tendency
- It's all about communication - how we interact with others have to take into account their tendency.
- The four tendencies:
- Upholder - respond to external and internal expectations. Rule followers, internally motivated and trustworthy. However, since discipline is easy for them, they might not trust, criticize and lack empathy towards others that don't follow through. Also might obey unnecessary rules, or be useless when no rules are presented to them. Best to communicate through tradeoffs of internal vs external values/obligations.
- Questioner - As a general rule, they don't take anything at face value, they question everything, make their own research before accepting any claim. Very useful for out of the box thinking. They only respond to internal expectations and external if they make sense. It's difficult to make them cooperative, they might fall to analysis paralysis, perfectionism, and over confidence. Best to communicate through reasons and logic and justification.
- Obliger - Obligers are those who have no problem with "showing up" when expected of them, but fail to do stuff for themselves. In be motivated, they need to feel accountable. Therefore any type of accountability device or person could be useful. However, sometimes the accountability can't be forced upon, it has to relate to actual harmful consequences if they fail. Also they might have a hard time saying no, which will cause them to experience burnout and be exploited. While they need others' help to manage the load, they often get no sympathy from other tendencies.
- Rebel - freedom is their top priority. Anything that binds them to a schedule, a behavior, goes against their freedom and feels like an attack against their authentic life. Their tendency to subvert expectations is a double edged sword. On the one side, they can be highly creative and effective people, stopping at nothing to achieve their goal . However, The more we want them to do something, the more they want to do the opposite, even at the price of self harm and going against their goals, so managing or working with them can be a nightmare. To communicate with a rebel, it's best to provide information and potential consequences without implying which action to take, and reassure that they can choose whatever they want.
🗒️Relate
⛓ Life lessons, action items I'm an Upholder, and Yasmin is an Obliger.
🔍Critique
✅ by following this method, what will happen? A person who not only understand himself better and what drives them to action, but also others, thus improving your relationships with people from other tendencies.
❌ the logical jumps, holes or simply cases where it is wrong... I wonder whether it is harmful to say that one can't change their tendency, is is a sign of realism or a fixed mindset? It is also evident that many people would have liked to change their tendency, as shown by her. So it is more harmful or beneficial to say to them "learn to live with who you are"?
🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are...
🗨️Review
💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style... While I enjoy the content greatly, it's evident that there's not a lot of content to go through, and this book could have easily been half the length.
🖼️Outline
📒 Notes
The Four Tendencies
She has discovered from her research four main tendencies that accuracy portraits how people interact with the world, specifically the tension between their time and others.
The main divider is Expectations, both:
- External expectations - what our family, society, friends excepts us to be or to do Social Environment
- Internal expectations - what we aspire for ourselves, our personal goals Goal Setting
From these two types of expectations, we get 4 archetypes of personality:
- Upholders - respond both to internal and external expectations
- Questioners - doubt the justification of expectations, usually stick with only internal ones
- Obligers - respond to external expectations but fail to uphold internal ones
- Rebels - resist all forms of expectations
While it's true that we sometimes act "across tendencies", in general we all stick with one tendency, no matter who we are with or where we are.
The goal is not to change yourself, there's no "best tendency", the goal is to live in harmony with yourself harmonious self, to match the environment Environmental design to your tendency. Also, she believes that change of such a deep part of yourself is impossible fixed mindset
Similarly, when you communicate with someone, it's essential to know what their tendency is and match your way of speaking, aka the explanations and justifications that you use for that person, to have a much healthier communication resonance.
- self-knowledge is crucial because we can build a happy life only on the foundation of our own nature, our own interests, and our own values. (Location 180)
- whatever our Tendency, we share a desire for autonomy. We prefer to be asked rather than ordered to do something, and if our feeling of being controlled by others becomes too strong, it can trigger “reactance,” a resistance to something that’s experienced as a threat to our freedom or our ability to choose. (Location 208)
- Each framework captures a certain insight, and that insight would be lost if all of the systems were dumped together. No single system can capture human nature in all of its depth and variety. (Location 221)
- The happiest, healthiest, most productive people aren’t those from a particular Tendency, but rather they’re the people who have figured out how to harness the strengths of their Tendency, counteract the weaknesses, and build the lives that work for them. (Location 228)
Upholders
"Discipline is my freedom"
Upholders are those who meet internal and external expectations. They love structure and Self Dicipline, and they don't have any difficulty following up with their plans, they just "do it", even if it's something they don't enjoy doing, simply because it's needed/recommended. In that sense, they are self motivated. The don't need reminders or commitment devices to stay on track.
This makes them trsutworthy and reliable, both to themselves and to others, and might even make them a person who others want to follow. They don't want to fail anyone, either themselves or others, and like it when expectations are clearly communicated to avoid misinterpretation.
While to others they might seem as rigid, they see themselves as free. Knowing they can act according to whatever plan they have without intrapersonal conflict is a liberating experience.
Their weaknesses are:
- Following unnecessary rules - since they meet all expectations and love rules and discipline, they might follow rules even if they are irrelevant, or can be ignored.
- Lack of empathy - they have a hard time seeing through the eyes of another that fails to meet their expectations. "If something is good for you, why won't you just do it?". They could become impatient, demanding, disappointed and even harsh.
- Lack of trust - since they know that not everyone is an upholder, they might not trust others to follow through with their goals or tasks, leaving them to "do everything myself"
- Lack of adaptability - loving structure and rules can become difficult when the situation changes unexpectedly. They hate when things don't go according to plan or when suddenly asked to change it.
- Dysfunctional in ambiguous situations - since they adore rule following, they have a hard time when they don't know what is the "correct" behavior, what is expected of them in this situation.
Since they listen to both internal and external expectations, they often manage to take care of themselves and have a healthy lifestyle since they care about their habits and needs as much as others. That is, as long as they have self awareness and know what their true needs are.
When communicating/arguing with an Upholder, it's better to focus on the tradeoffs between expectations, rather than on the arbitrariness of those expectations. For example, instead of saying "why won't you just skip this habit today?", say "it's understandable to prioritize this vacation we have now that won't repeat itself later, and clear time for shared activities, and you can continue your habits when we come back"
- Upholders also tend to love schedules and routines—they’re the people who wake up and think, “What’s on my schedule and to-do list for today?” They like to know what’s expected of them, and they don’t like making mistakes or letting people down—including themselves. (Location 407)
- While their discipline may make them appear rigid to others, Upholders themselves feel free, effective, and independent. (Location 458)
Questioner
"I'll comply if you convince me why"
Questioners only respond to internal expectations. Any external expectation has to be thoroughly tested before being implemented (and converted into internal expectation). As a general rule, they don't take anything at face value, they question everything, make their own research before accepting any claim. The comply with rules only if in their specific context and based on what they know it makes sense.
They are those who likely find how to optimize a system, as they "think outside of the box" Critical Thinking. To convince a questioner, you must attach explanations, sources and logic behind it.
They enjoy collecting information, even playing the "devil's advocate" in debates, and voice their opinions even if it goes against norms.
Their weakness:
- Not a team player - it takes time to turn a questioner into a cooperative person, since it's not something automatic for them. Also, cooperating on point A doesn't promise cooperation on point B. Cooperation
- Analysis paralysis - it might take them a long time to reach a decision because they have to carefully weight all options and conduct an extensive research, which makes them terrible at making quick decisions, even on trivial things lost in the infinite
- Arrogant - since they enjoy exploring reasons and evidence, they usually are very good debaters, which causes them to feel as if they are the smartest in the room, more than experts, and even mock those who question them because they just don't know how much time and effort was invested to reach this level of knowledge.
- Inefficiency - questioners can easily fall to Perfectionism, either doing something the best way possible, or not at all. If something seems to them as inefficient or a waste of time, it will be very hard for them to do it, even if the end goal is worth while.
To best communicate with a questioner, remember to include the reasons for your request, and be inquisitive rather than blaming towards the other's lack of cooperative behavior.
- “I do what I think makes the most sense, according to my judgment, even if that means ignoring the rules or other people’s expectations.” (Location 829)
- Because Questioners require solid justifications for what they do, they can add tremendous value to relationships and organizations by ensuring that they—and also the people around them—don’t unthinkingly accept expectations that aren’t well justified. (Location 857)
Obliger
"You can count on me, and I'm counting on you to count on me"
Obligers are those who have no problem with "showing up" when expected of them, but fail to do stuff for themselves Standing up for yourself. While we can trust them to get the job done, It doesn't mean that they necessarily enjoy being needed or have a lot of external expectations. Some do this reluctantly and might experience burnout in the end, while others find serving others as a source of meaning and motivation.
To help an obliger, the best thing would be to create external expectations of their preferred internal expectations, using Commitment Devices, systems, groups or people.
These can either be negative or positive, personal or technological:
- Positive:
- personal: an accountability partner that gives praises and encouragement when goals are reached.
- Technological: apps that provides rewards, awards and notifies when goals are reached
- Negative:
- Personal: an accountability partner that checks in once in a while, provides feedback and criticism when needed
- Technological: deadlines, fees or other forms of punishment through commitment devices to deter slacking.
Some obligers feel that the Accountability has to come from a real place. An app or a fake partner is not enough, the damage has to be relevant and real. For example like inviting friends over to motivate to clean the house, only their true shame from seeing the mess is a good source of motivation, any other option would still allow slacking because the damage is fake.
While it could motivate obligers to view internal expectations as an external one, like "to sleep well would make me a better parent for my child", it's important to note that obligers aren't inherently more empathic or altruistic (or lazy or apathic for that matter), it's just the matter of what moves them to action, and the answer is accountability. For example, a close accepting relationship like a marriage can cause one partner's expectations to be perceived as internal to the obliger, even if they are not the same person, because they know that they would be no accountability when they fail.
When they feel overwhelmed with external expectations, the temptation is to clear more time for themselves. However, that free time won't be used wisely without external accountability, since it's precisely those commitments that drive them to action. For example, if they want to read more, they don't need more free alone time for reading, but rather to sign up for a book club.
When overwhelmed with expectations, obligers tend to get frustrated, exhausted and Burnout. Even worse, they lack support from other tendencies that see things differently, either because they think that obligers "should spend more focus on themselves", or "care less about what others want from them", both unhelpful for the obliger, and only prompt disappointment or disrespect from other tendencies. Even worse, they might be exploited by others.
In those cases, the obliger tends to snap into an act of rebellion, shutting off everything, even in the price of self harm. However, we can stop an obliger from burnout if we help them Saying no by:
- Focusing them that saying no to one thing will clear time for other more important commitments
- Enforce external limits
- Stop others from exploiting them
- Help them carry the load
- When what others expect from Obligers is what they expect from themselves, they have the life they want. (Location 1355)
- The Obliger pattern is not an issue of self-sacrifice, self-esteem, boundaries, motivation, people-pleasing, or discipline, but rather—and I repeat it yet again—an issue of external accountability. (Location 1622)
- the Obliger expects others to know to stop imposing their expectations, without prompting, to provide relief for the Obliger. But very often that doesn’t happen, and then the Obliger becomes furious that others have imposed those heavy expectations even when the Obliger hasn’t objected to those expectations. (Location 1759)
Rebel
"You can't make me, and neither can I"
Rebels are all about living their true authentic life. Usually this means that their freedom is top priority. Anything that binds them to a schedule, a behavior, goes against their freedom and feels like an attack against their authentic life.
The "problem" is that their rebellion doesn't necessarily brings freedom. Often just to feel as if they are free to act otherwise, they go deliberately against whatever they are asked to do, and the more pressure they feel, they more the want to act the opposite. This means that they are affected just as much from peer pressure, but express it differently, even in self harming ways. It's the The law of reverse effect, the more you encourage (either positivity or negatively), the less you get back. So Micro-Management, praise, deadlines, all these sorts of things are bound to fail.
The best way to help a rebel act is to provide information as much as possible, both on the context and the possible consequences, and be clear that they are free to choose. Another option is to display a request as a challenge, like "I bet you can't get this done by tomorrow".
- Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. They want to do what they want to do, in their own way and in their own time, and if someone asks or tells them to do something, they resist. (Location 2010)
- Rebels place a very high value on authenticity and self-determination, and want their lives to be a true expression of their values. (Location 2063)
- Rebellion is the opposite of compliance, but rebellion is not freedom. (Location 2095)
- Rebels respond best to a sequence of information, consequences, and choice. We must give Rebels the information they need to make an informed decision; alert them to the consequences of actions they might take; then allow them to choose—with no lecturing, hovering, or hectoring. (Location 2172)