Business Book Review: Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson
Feel like you’re surrounded by idiots? Ask yourself what those same people think about you. See yourself as others do, and learn to treat them how they want to be treated.
My Rating: ★★★★
Length: 304 pages
Publisher: Vermilion - Mass Market
Released: 2019
Key Takeaways for Personal Branding
Thomas Erikson’s best-selling title speaks for itself - Surrounded by Idiots - it’s that feeling you may catch yourself having. The frustration when you can’t understand why other people can’t simply see things the way you do? Why in some instances do they seem so disconnected from reality? Because, it’s only your reality - not theirs. In their’s, they likely feel the same about you.
Personal brand and their personalities come in many colours
Surrounded by Idiots is your guide to understanding those you can’t understand. Each behavioural style is defined by four colours - Red, Yellow, Green and Blue. It aligns with the popular DISC system (Dominance, Inspiration, Submission, Compliance). Practising the tool for decades, Erikson instead leans on the adaptation of DISA (where Compliance becomes Analytic).
Reds are extroverted and issues-oriented
Yellows are extroverted and relation-oriented
Greens are introverted and reserved
Blues are introverted and task-oriented
Reds and Yellows are active implementors
Blues and Greens are passive and reserved
The book highlights that approximately 80% of all people have a combination of two dominant colours and only 5% have one colour that dominates their behaviour. The others embody three colours.
Surrounded by Idiots diligently breaks down the behaviours of each colour. You’ll likely notice the impressions other personal brands have left on you pop up as you peruse the particulars. Likely, you’ll also be able to spot your dominant colours.
Body Language: How you move matters
As the best communication experts do, Erikson highlights the importance of body language. However, going beyond the usual commentary around non-verbal communication, he emphasises the part posture plays in communicating for you:
“If on the one hand, you have a relaxed, natural but not slack posture, other people often get the impression that you are self-confident. If on the other hand, you have a shrunken posture, it can be interpreted as resignation and disappointment. If you have an erect, somewhat wooden posture, people can believe that this is a signal of dominance; in other words, you demand respect from those around you."
Applying this to your personal brand, ask yourself what your posture is saying to others about you.
Here’s a mind-blowing stat that helps put the importance of posture for your personal brand into perspective. As Erikison points out:
"The modern English language contains about one hundred and seventy thousand words, of which five thousand are used regularly. In comparison, according to certain scholars, body language contains almost seven hundred thousand signals.”
Tune into your listener’s frequency
Erikson emphasises that communication happens on the listener’s terms:
“Does that sound strange? Let me explain. Everything you say to a person is filtered through his frames of reference, biases, and preconceived ideas. What remains is ultimately the message that he understands.”
"Treat others as you want to be treated. Excellent advice and very well-intentioned. And it works, too—as long as everyone is just like you."
You are so often taught to treat people how you want to be treated. A better approach for connecting your personal brand with others is to tune into their needs. Treat them how they want to be treated. This goes against much of the misconception that personal branding is all about you - it’s almost always about another person’s experience with you and understanding your audience.
Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson: Available on Amazon.
