文章基本信息

标题：The Personality Compass: A New Way To Understand People - Review
作者：Linda Weber
期刊名称：Natural Health
印刷版ISSN：1067-9588
出版年度：1999
卷号：Jan 1999
出版社：American Media Inc

The Personality Compass: A New Way To Understand People - Review

Linda Weber

THE PERSONALITY COMPASS: A NEW WAY TO UNDERSTAND PEOPLE By Diane Turner and Thelma Greco; Element Books, 1998; $12.95.

A book that proposes "a new way to understand people" by grouping them into four simple types has to raise suspicions. A new way? I know of others that work pretty well, such as the widely known Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. However, once I began The Personality Compass, I soon discovered that the authors' typing method is far more nuanced than it first looks. Yes, they view each individual as having one of four dominant personality types, but that type is leavened by characteristics from a subdominant type and, to a lesser degree, from a third type. Also, their method is clearly more useful than any personality typing method I've seen.

Authors Diane Turner and Thelma Greco, whose work in academia and industry focuses on "team building" and conflict resolution, do a lot more in this book than identify your personality type. They describe the aspects of each personality type that are pivotal in personal and work relationships. For instance, you learn what "turns on" a North or an East, or turns them off; how to reward an East or a South; the dos and don'ts of living and working with Wests; which employees will and won't work well together; and so on. They even list the kinds of jobs each type is best suited to. This is probably the most detailed and useful personality assessment book I've come across.

All this overshadows an annoying trumpeting by the authors of their method over all others. In question-and-answer sections at the end of each chapter, they repeatedly hard sell their method to the point that sometimes it reads like copy spit out by a publicist.

Still, The Personality Compass is an intriguing tool for those who want to know their own quirks, as well as those of the sweetie pies and grouches, skinflints and spendthrifts, blabbermouths and sphinxes they hate to love, and love to hate.