Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson
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Rating: ★★★☆☆
After seeing the book Surrounded by Idiots virtually everywhere, I decided to check some reviews and what it was actually about: communication, and “how to understand those who cannot be understood” - the quote on quote “idiots”. The topic sounded interesting, so I decided to pick up this book and read it.
The scientific basis for this book is the DISC theory, which describes personality in four traits: Dominance, Inducement, Submission and Compliance. The book explores this further and dives people into four different groups: Reds, Yellows, Greens and Blues. Most people in the world have a combination of two colors. The rest has either one or three.
The book delves into how different colors react and communicate in different situations, what’s important for them, what they say, what they don’t. There is a lot of good advice in the book when it comes to communicating with people of certain behavior - albeit some of it arguably obvious.
In my mind, I kept comparing this read to The Culture Map, which I’ve read before. The Culture Map focuses on communication between people from different cultures, how we communicate in different ways, how we can resolve our differences, and make sure that we pass the right message across. That was a book I really enjoyed, and I found it more actionable, useful, and interesting for me.
I expected something different. Don’t get me wrong: the book is good and has good insights. However, I felt like a lot of the information was quite obvious and very repetitive. If this book were to be shorter and more concise, I would’ve given it a higher rating.
- 📕 Title Surrounded by Idiots
- ✍️ Author
- 📄 Pages 282
- 📚 Publisher Vermilion
- 🪪 ISBN 9781785042188