Does your get-it-done, angry director style help or hinder your practice and personal life? Do your team members have the optimal director style strength for their positions? Do you want a happier more fulfilling practice and life? If so, maybe this pearl series can help.
Synopsis of Human Personality:
Human personality is composed of four basic emotions (anger, fear, joy and sorrow) and four rational styles (director, analyzer, socializer and relator). The four basic emotions are built into our emotional brain’s right and left amygdala and the four rational styles are built into our rational brain’s right and left frontal lobes. Human personality exists for our physical and social survival. The emotional (mammalian) brain evolved for our physical survival in a world where humans were not the physically dominant species. Fear alerts us to danger, anger alerts us to confrontation (attack), joy alerts us to our connections, and sorrow alerts us to a disconnection from our connections. The rational brain evolved for our social survival when it became evident that humans with limited physical prowess needed to work together to survive. The director style evolved to get immediate results, the analyzer style evolved to unerringly proceed, the relator style evolved to reconnect with our connections and the socializer style evolved to interact with our connections.
Synopsis: We have four emotional-rational reaction pairs: anger-director, fear-analyzer, joy-socializer and sorrow-relator, each with its own survival purpose.
Sensory input triggers an emotion memory that triggers a rational style. Anger triggers the director style, fear triggers the analyzer style, joy triggers the socializer style and sorrow triggers the relator style. We get angry when confronted and react with our director style to deal with that attack (whether physical or mental). We become fearful when in danger and our analyzer style helps us choose the best way to avoid that danger. We become joyful when we recognize our connections, engaging with our positive connections and avoiding our negative connections. We become sorrowful when disconnected from our connections (anything important to us) and our relator styles helps us to reconnect. If you are wondering about the other emotions (surprise, regret, love, etc.), they are rational emotions evoked by rational thought using rational memories, not emotional memories.
Synopsis: An emotion triggers its rational style to react to the situation based on past memories.
Everyone has all four emotions and all four rational styles to draw upon for physical and social survival, but they are not all equally strong. The strength of a style/emotion is based on how much we use it throughout the day. We react much of the time with a strong style/emotion. We rarely react with a weak style/emotion. And we react as needed with a moderate style/emotion. We only have one strongest style/emotion that we react with when distressed. And every time we give in to that strongest style through rationalization we make it stronger by creating more experiential memories to support that style. The opposite is also true. Every time we react with a weaker style we create an experiential memory that strengthens it, giving us the ability to have a more appropriate reaction to a similar situation in the future.
For example, if a strong director, we might react with our relator style to reconnect with others instead of escalating that disconnection.
Synopsis: Each emotion/style is strong, moderate or weak based on daily usage; we only have one strongest emotion.
To achieve its purpose each style has its own set of built in attributes containing: motivations, sensory (pace), and attitudes. These attributes will be more fully explained in the other parts of this series for the relator, socializer and analyzer styles. The director style’s attributes are listed below.
Synopsis: Each style has its own unique set of attributes to achieve its survival purpose.
The four rational styles are grouped into two opposite cognitive pairs. The director style and relator style have opposite attributes and the analyzer and socializer styles have opposite attributes. This is important because if you are strong in one style and weak in its opposite you are double strong in one and doubly weak in the other. If so, the weaker style can’t effectively balance out (be used instead of) the stronger style to react more appropriately to socially survive.
Synopsis: A style's attributes create opposite pairs; director and relator styles are opposite; analyzer and socializer are opposite.
The relator and socializer styles are people-oriented and the director and analyzer styles are task-oriented. When using the people-oriented styles, people are more important than the task at hand. When using the task-oriented styles, tasks are more important than the people involved.
Synopsis: A style is either people-oriented or task-oriented, never both.
Understanding the DIRECTOR Style by its Attributes:
Its Main Value to your practice is to: Focus on and Complete Tasks
It has a task-oriented Purpose to get results
Its Symbiotic Emotion is: Anger (whose purpose is to alert us to confrontation/attack)
Its fast-paced Sensory Attribute is: Visual-action, I think quickly in action pictures
Its Motivations are:
Self-directed: I reject other’s beliefs if different from mine
Self-concerned: only my needs are important
Decisive: I make immediate decisions to get results (get past it)
Its Attitudes are: adventurous, aggressive, arrogant, assertive, competitive, compulsive, concise, controlling, critical, demanding, distant, dominance, faultfinding, independent, persistent, pioneering, temperamental, tenacious.
These attributes are opposite to the relator style's attributes.
To better understand the affect the director style's attributes has on the effective and efficient operation of your practice, see the attached PDF.
I hope that this helps you to better understand and take advantage of your use or avoidance of the director style and the director styles of your team.
