How NASA Builds Teams: Mission Critical Soft Skills for Scientists, Engineers, and Project Teams

CHAPTER 6

Using the 4-D System to Color Your Personalities

 

 

 

A scorpion wanted to cross a river. Scorpions, of course, cannot swim. Just as he was about to give up, a frog swam by. “Hey, Mr. Frog, how about a ride across the river?” he called. Mr. Frog answered, “I don’t think so. You might sting me and then we would both drown.” The scorpion answered, “Why would I sting you? That would be stupid.” Mr. Frog said, “Okay, hop on,” and off they went.

About halfway across the river the frog felt the sting in his back and said, “Oh no, you’ve done it. You have killed us both! Why did you sting me?” The scorpion answered, “Because scorpions do what scorpions got to do.” We will now see that people do what their innate personalities drive them to do, even when it does not serve them well. Innate personality trumps reason.

Carl Jung and Innate Personality

Carl Jung posited that our preferences for deciding and information are innate. Innate means present at birth. That is, we each innately prefer to use emotions or logic for making decisions. We each innately prefer to use intuited or sensed information to make decisions. Moreover, we build our personalities on these innate preferences.

The 4-D System illustrates this in Figure 6.1. The diagram shown is for an innate logical decider who prefers intuited information. This is the personality foundation for a Blue, visioning leader. (This happens to be my personality foundation.)

After an overview of the deciding and information preferences, ...