Episode 309: Understanding Different Personalities in Leadership with Thomas Erikson
Effective leadership is a critical component of any successful organization. Leadership is not simply about managing tasks and processes but about understanding and connecting with individuals on a deeper level. Thomas Erikson highlights the importance of communication in leadership and the need to adapt our approach based on the personalities of our team members.
Thomas Erikson, author of “Surrounded by Idiots” and other best-selling books, shares his journey of becoming a successful author and behavioral expert. He discusses the inspiration behind his books and the challenges he faced in getting them published. Thomas explains the four basic personality types he outlines in his books and how understanding these types can improve communication and relationships. He also provides insights into leadership and the importance of adapting communication styles to different individuals. Thomas emphasizes the need for self-awareness and the ability to connect with others in order to succeed in business and life.
Understanding and communicating with different personalities is a crucial skill in today’s interconnected world. Thomas Erikson’s framework of the four color personalities provides a valuable tool for decoding human behavior and tailoring our communication styles to suit the needs of others.
Show Highlights:
- Thomas’s journey from banking to becoming an author
- Struggles on getting his book published
- The concept and description of the four color personalities
- Understanding and adapting to different personalities
- Applying the concept of color personalities to leadership
- The importance of personal responsibility in leadership
- The challenge of leading a team with different color personalities
- Thomas’s feelings about his success and impact on readers
- Importance of perseverance, understanding the hard work, finding your why
Links Mentioned:
Get Thomas Erikson’s book, Surrounded by Idiots at https://www.surroundedbyidiots.com/en/
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
Adams website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod
Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
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Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
[00:00:00] Adam Stott: Hello everybody, and welcome to a very, very special episode of Business Growth Secrets. I’m joined by Thomas Erickson, author of the best Seller, um, surrounded by Idiots and, and many other. Uh, Bestsellers as well, surrounded by psychopaths and many, many more. I’m sure many of my listeners have read the books.
[00:00:22] I personally have read the books and have been very, very excited about bringing Thomas on who has worked with some of the biggest companies in the world, including ikea. Coca-Cola, Microsoft. He’s been a lecturer and speaker. He’s a behavioral expert. His books have been translated into 60 languages, which tell you something about the huge success he’s had and, and I’m really, really excited to, uh, get some business go secrets with, uh, Thomas and, and really dive a bit deeper and, and get to know this much, much better.
[00:00:52] So welcome on. Thank you for coming on. Loved your book. How are you?
[00:00:58] Thomas Erikson: Thanks for the invitation. Oh, I’m great. It’s, uh, fantastic to be here.
[00:01:02] Adam Stott: Fabulous, fabulous. So, um, I’ve just mentioned, obviously the massive success of the books. You can’t go into a shop in the UK without seeing that brand now. Um, I’ve seen it many, many, many times and it’s absolutely everywhere.
[00:01:15] So you’ve had huge success. But what I really love to do, Thomas, is, is, is try and understand the journey that you’ve been on in terms of becoming that, that great author, becoming that speaker, that behavioral expert, you know, how did things start off for you? Where did we. Where do we start from? Why don’t we go back a little bit and find out a bit more about the journey you’ve been on in your career.
[00:01:36] It’d be awesome to hear.
[00:01:39] Thomas Erikson: Okay. Well, so I, I’m an ex-banker, actually very boring. I’m not gonna talk about that at all, I promise. But I was a management consultant for many years after the banking. Uh, Period, uh, let’s call it. And I was working with the behaviors, with the day-to-day psychology, leadership, um, coaching, those sort of things.
[00:02:01] And I was obviously interested in, in personalities, in, in behaviors, as I find human beings so fascinating and so hard to understand. Sometimes, sometimes even for me still, I, I, I struggle with understanding some people that I actually, actually, Uh, have encounters with, let’s say, uh, I was working with this tool, uh, this disc profile, which isn’t new for, for, for at all.
[00:02:28] I didn’t invent anything. I only put it in a book, and I, I met this entrepreneur many years ago who was this old school guy. I, I would say, Late sixties, something, and I was 30 plus something. And, and he was surrounded by idiots. He, he, he told me that constantly, idiots here, idiots there, idiots everywhere.
[00:02:46] And I said, you know, you really don’t mean that, do you? You don’t mean what you say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Department A over there, morons, stupid people, department B over there, nobody understands anything and department C, don’t even get Miss started. And I said, the only thing that I could come up with was this question.
[00:03:05] Who brought in all the idiots, uh, meetings over. He kicked me out actually. He said, you’re about to leave now, Sonny. I managed to get back into this, this, uh, mass, uh, office, and we started talking and, and he was, he, he was carrying this feeling around this emotion of actually being surrounded by idiots.
[00:03:24] It’s nothing unique with, we’ve all been in those situations, but he kind of got stuck with me. So when I, after some years, decided to write a book about this specific topic, uh, I went to Sweden’s biggest publishers and I took the idea to them and I said, this is what it’s gonna be about. It’s gonna be about behavior.
[00:03:43] It’s gonna be these four colors. It’s gonna be called surrounded by Ediths, and the coverage sign, my own design. And they said, it’s the dumbest idea we’ve ever heard. It’s really silly. Forget about the whole, just scrap the whole idea. And I said, why? They said, well, firstly, it’s a stupid title. People’s gonna get, people are gonna get angry, you know, and it’s an ugly cover.
[00:04:04] Don’t do it. And I was shopping around in all the publishing houses, in all of all of Scandinavia, and everybody said, but no, no. Basically they told me I was the idiot. That was kind of the story. It’s amazing, right? I’m not good at taking rejections. Well, it was too, too, too extreme. I don’t know. I, I, I don’t know.
[00:04:25] People didn’t dare to go in that direction and I, I’m never been really good at taking rejection, so I, I self-published a book. I financed the whole thing myself. I had no budget for marketing or advertising or anything as a consultant. I was driving around with boxes of the book, books in, in the back of my car and forcing them onto my clients.
[00:04:44] You could take 10 books. Take five, take two, take a book. And they looked at it, said, what is this a book about? Its, uh, I don’t know. And that’s how it actually got started. Then I managed to get it into the Swedish airports and then wound like this. Uh, so it was not an overnight success that I was struggling quite a lot.
[00:05:05] And of course, doubting myself quite a lot, as all entrepreneurs do, I guess.
[00:05:11] Adam Stott: Yeah, absolutely. It’s amazing. You say you don’t take rejection well, it sounds like you take it really well because you use it to drive you to beat a path forward. Right? Which is, if more people did that, you know more people will create success.
[00:05:24] Right. Not taking no for an answer by the sounds of things. Right. And, and what is it that made you so persistent? What is it that made you want to get this into the world particularly?
[00:05:39] Thomas Erikson: Well, I’ve been working with this tool and with this kind of, kind of, of, of issues, uh, within the different kinds of organizations for, I would say, well, 15, 20 years at the time. This is, this is actually nine years ago when I published a book. First in, in, in Swedish. So it’s not new. Actually, it isn’t. I could see the impact it had.
[00:06:03] I did many, many things and this, this particular part of my, my, my business, let’s say it, it really made people listen. It really made people connect and, and they said, this is interesting. This actually explains quite a lot when it comes to human daily interaction. And I realized if people within corporations and, and, and, uh, organizations of different kinds, if they can benefit from this, why not let more people take part of, of, of, of the content, let’s say.
[00:06:33] So when I put the book together, I was trying to, while I was trying to address. As broad of, of an audience as possible. Not only professionals, but also people who could use it, you know, in their families, in, in their private lives, amongst friends, amongst couples. So I try to sort of use this relationship oriented kind of attitude towards the whole thing.
[00:07:04] Uh, and I think it worked. Pretty well.
[00:07:07] Adam Stott: Yeah, well it worked very well and I think, you know, for those people that haven’t read the book, I think it’s a really quite a simple, easy read. And I think that that really is positive because, uh, those types of books sometimes can be too complex and because they’re too complex, people can’t take to the concepts as well.
[00:07:26] But I think that actually reading it, it resonates very, very quickly and everybody knows these types of characters. So why don’t we talk a little bit about. The characters that you, uh, that you outlined, um, you know, and, and, and what those characters look like and give a bit of context just as someone that hasn’t read the book.
[00:07:45] Um, I think that would be really good for people to understand.
[00:07:50] Thomas Erikson: Yes, sure. Well, it’s, it’s, it’s based on, uh, extroversion versus introversion task orientation versus people orientation, uh, let’s say, or relationship orientation. And you get this two by two matrix. Um, it doesn’t tell you everything, but it can describe behaviors.
[00:08:06] It is not a personality assessment that’s important to, to emphasize. Personalities are are deeper. You need more things to understand the full personality. So I’m fully aware of that and I hope most people are by now too. But you get this two by two matrix, so you get these four basic characteristics.
[00:08:23] Let’s say you had read yellow, green, OU because of pedagogic is easier to remember color combination and it is to remember numbers or or letters or, or anything. So the red person is extroverted and task oriented, dominant. Fast forward thinking, very decisive, very competitive. You know, very, very straightforward.
[00:08:44] Some people think they are a bit pushy, which I wouldn’t agree with actually. Uh, so they can be, you know, a little bit in your face because they, they are demanding. Bam, bam, bam. Fast forward, you know, everybody’s too slow. Then you have the yellow character. There’s also extroverted, but more than a smiley type because this is a people, people’s person, let’s say.
[00:09:05] So they are sort of friendly, open-minded, you know, positive, very creative. These are the people who can solve problems you never heard of. They ask the questions, nobody’s asking, but they can see everything, you know, in a new perspective. And they are sort of, you know, you can see they can’t always explain what they’re up to, but they are.
[00:09:23] Range of things in a super fantastic way. Uh, excellent communicators, people usually like that because they’re happy, they are smiling, they are positive. And then you have the other people oriented, uh, uh, uh, character, which is the green one, people oriented, but introvert, which makes them more calm, more caring, more sharing, very more low key, let’s say.
[00:09:48] Excellent. Listen. They really hear what you say and you know what? They will remember what you said, especially if it was something negative. They will keep this on shelf one A for eternity. They won’t tell you. You can feel the frostiness on the liability. So something between us, do we have a conflict?
[00:10:03] And they will say, no, no, no, no. You have to go to body language. They’re very conflicted word. Very conflicted word. One thing they hate more than anything are changes. Who asked for changes. You know, it was better before, well, maybe it wasn’t better before, but it’s worse now at least. So let’s stay where we are.
[00:10:24] And then the last character, okay, I’m making fun of all them. I’m a little bit, that’s a part of my way to do it, but actually you can, you can recognize this type. And the last one is, of course, the blue one, who is introverted and task oriented. So here you have yourself. An engineer or an accountant perhaps, or some sort of tax sheriff, precise, detail oriented, extremely focused quality above everything.
[00:10:51] Everything has to be 100% correct, which is of course impossible. So they ask questions all the time, and they look like this. They are a bit suspicious, you know, very, very detail oriented. They don’t mention details. They would dig themselves to the groundwater. So, and then you have these four basic characters, let’s say.
[00:11:09] Very few people is only one color. Most people are a combination of, let’s say two colors. That’s the most common statistically. And we have about 50 million analysis made to, to, to get some data from. So usually people are two. It could be any combination, uh, but these are sort of the basics. It’s like baking a cookie.
[00:11:29] You need to understand what sugar does. You need to understand how much butter and milk and everything. If you understand the basic ingredients, you can also understand the combinations. I would
[00:11:39] Adam Stott: say absolutely. And, and you said, you know, you are, you are making fun a little bit. But that is the thing that actually connects a lot, um, because as you are explaining it, It’s very easy for somebody to be able to imagine a person in their mind.
[00:11:55] And as you were explaining it, in my mind I’m picturing individuals on that. I’ve just had a big team meeting. I said to you outside, right, I’ve had the old team in and I know exactly what though. And because my understanding of this is, is quite deep, and I understood this profiling in a big way. I think I really like the simplicity you use in, in the explanations and I love the fact that you said people remember the colors.
[00:12:18] ’cause they absolutely, absolutely do. Right. Um, that certainly sticks with people, I think, in a big way. Uh, so of course I’ve gotta ask you, you know, what combination do you feel that you are right? Or do you feel that you are one? Because
[00:12:30] Thomas Erikson: I feel that I am. Well of course I Sure, sure. I know who combination I am.
[00:12:35] I’ve changed a little bit over the years. I have a really high red bar. Really high blue bar. Yeah, yeah. Equally high, 82% and then I have quite some yellow in me, quite some yellow, no green at all whatsoever, which, which makes me, generally speaking, a more task oriented person on stage. I am very yellow because otherwise it would be boring.
[00:12:57] It would be too much data would be know, showing Excel sheets and things and you, you can’t do that when you’re on stage. You have to tell stories. You have to work on your storytelling and so on. That’s how I do my writing as well. You. Thank you for the positive feedback. I appreciate it. You said it’s e it’s an easy read.
[00:13:13] That’s the hardest struggle to, to phrase all of this into a context, context of which makes people say, ah, that’s the way it is. I recognize this guy, I know this guy. I know this guy. That’s the hard job because you can write books like this, you know, as I was us going through, you can write these kind of books.
[00:13:31] I don’t do that because we, you know, What’s it called? This, you know, notes a hundred pages of notes. I can’t do that because nobody would read it. I do not write and address university professors and they don’t like me at all. I get criticized. You’re making it too easy. I understand that. I fully understand.
[00:13:51] I am simplifying things, but what I wanna do is to drag people into the whole idea. To in investigate and to research the field, let’s say I want people to be curious. Read another book and another of them go to take a lecture and take a, take an online class, be curious and stay in there, you know, and, and develop your, your ability to communicate and to adapt to different kinds of people.
[00:14:15] That’s what I wanna do. And you have to sort of not lower the bar too much. Of course not, but you need to make it. Easy for people to sort of attach to the whole idea. So that’s, that’s, that’s the tricky part I would say.
[00:14:28] Adam Stott: Yeah, absolutely. And I, you mentioned stage speaking and, and that is essentially what, what I spend most of my time doing.
[00:14:36] And uh, and despite knowing where I sit on that matrix, I am having to bring in language patterns and be able to do all four in order to be able to communicate more with people. And, and I feel that for people that are listening to this, I’d really recommend they go and get the book. And, and I, that’s a personal recommendation, not ’cause you’re on it because I’ve read it and I think it’s a great book.
[00:14:58] Um, because I think that people’s understanding of, of people can really bring them a lot into their life because essentially everything that I. Everything you want in life that you don’t have is gonna come from someone else. Well, you’ve gotta be able to communicate true with other people in order to be able to, to do that.
[00:15:17] Right. You know
[00:15:18] Thomas Erikson: exactly. I mean, we don’t use this phrase in Sweden, but in English, this, this phrase called I’m a self-made man. No, you are not. No, I agree. In any way. There are no self-made man. The only people who say this are, are the successful. Uh, on top of everything else, everybody’s self-made or no one is self-made.
[00:15:38] No one has succeeded with anything, ever without a lot of other people. It could be your mother, it could be your friends, it could be your coworkers, it could be other entrepreneurs or in, in inspiring people. You know, it could be anything, but you didn’t do it on your own, and you need other people. And the better communicated you are.
[00:15:58] You said it already, but I. Bring this forward. The better you can communicate with other people, the easier your life’s gonna be regardless of where you’re heading. It sounds like a cliche, I know that, but it’s always gonna be the truth. If you can’t speak to other people, if you don’t understand the other ones, if you think you’re surrounded by it, then you are.
[00:16:19] You are in deep trouble, mate. You need to actually. You need to pay attention. You need to do this properly, and I made the fool out of myself so many times. As a young man, I messed it up completely. You have no idea the mistakes I have done, and it cost me dearly. It cost me friends, it cost me business. It cost me other kinds of relationships until I actually decided this doesn’t work.
[00:16:48] Usually I went too yellow. Yeah. Making cracking jokes when I should have been caught. All of these things I made probably all the mistakes in the book, probably. Absolutely. It’s, it’s, it’s, uh, it, it, it, it’s, for me, it hasn’t been easy. Uh, so, but if I could learn these things, anyone can learn these things.
[00:17:10] Everybody can be better at communication, social skills, people skills, whatever. And all starts with understanding. It doesn’t start with understanding other people. You need to start with yourself and build yourself awareness. That’s the main, that’s the key point for me to work on my own awareness. I would say, like if I, if, if I was going to, to land, let’s say for the sake of argument, I’d call my, my, my travel agency.
[00:17:39] Not that we do that anymore, but let’s say that I did and I said, get me a ticket to Heathrow, and they would say, no problem. And then they would ask me from, where would you like to go? Just imagine. I say, nevermind that. Just fix me the ticket. Get me the ticket. Don’t be so problem focused. Get me a ticket.
[00:17:53] You know, how will they solve it? They won’t solve it because you need two dots on the map to connect them. He throw on the other hand, but from where am I coming? Yeah. If you don’t have these two dots on the map, you can’t connect the same thing verbally, emotionally, uh, psychologically. You can’t connect if you don’t know where you are.
[00:18:13] Like if you meet a green person as an example, and people say, well, when you meet a green person, you need to do this. Well, it depends. You need to speed up if you’re blue, but you need to slow down if you’re yellow. So, which is it? That’s the tricky part.
[00:18:28] Adam Stott: Absolutely. And what you’ve said there about starting with yourself, that’s what I like about the book particularly because you call people out.
[00:18:37] I think it, it calls out that actually how are you behaving? And that definitely is where it starts, right? So, um, I, I totally resonate because I have, I’m very much in that red in terms of driving and being fast paced and, you know, I have other characteristics again, but I totally get that, you know, when you are like that and you are too dom dominating of people, it can really, really, uh, allow people to struggle.
[00:19:05] So in order to get what you want, You’ve gotta change first in order to be able to motivate, inspire, allow other people to be able to, and speaking their language, basically the way that they receive. Um, so taking that personal responsibility for a business owner is vital. Uh, taking that level of responsibility.
[00:19:23] We say, you know what, um, everything in this business, and I, I, this is something that I share with entrepreneurs. Everything in your business is what you’ve created. If you don’t like what you see, you know, you have to take that first responsibility and say, well, I created it. I hired those people, I made those decisions.
[00:19:39] And some of, and, and a lot of people just don’t do that. And then they run into a lot of problems down the line because they want to that blame culture. I. But looking at yourself first, changing what you do and then communicating with others, um, can really change things. The example that you gave of the person, uh, the, you know, the person in their sixties running the business, you know, I meet, I meet people with teams and businesses where it’s the same message again and again and again.
[00:20:06] What the problem often is, is people get so in the weeds and the dirt and in the day-to-day of running that business, they never leave their head. And what you mentioned earlier was leadership. So I’d be really interested to hear how you apply these concepts to leadership. That I think would be a really good insight for some of the audience.
[00:20:27] How do you look it in that way?
[00:20:31] Thomas Erikson: Right. Well, for me, uh, it’s, that’s a huge word for me, for, for all people who have tried, everybody who’s ever tried. It’s a huge difference between being a leader and being a manager. Let’s say managing is easy. So that’s about writing business plans, you know, and time management and all that stuff.
[00:20:50] But leadership is complicated and it’s getting, getting more, more and more complicated, uh, as, as the world evolves, I would say. I. People’s demands are quite high these days, which you just have to go along. You just have to sort of challenge yourself there. Uh, when it comes to leadership, it’s always gonna be a communication process.
[00:21:12] Being a manager is being an entrepreneur. That’s, that’s the entrepreneur, is the, you know, who’s spraying new ideas all over the place and it’s, you know, sort of, uh, digging into new markets and inventing stuff and all of that. You need managers to keep control of things, to keep things in good order, but you need leaders to sort of lead the troops.
[00:21:31] I’m only interested and focused on the interaction between human beings. So that’s my basic focus. I could give you a class in, in. High management, but it bores me out completely because you have to do that anyway. So, but when it comes to leadership, communication will always be the most essential key, I would say.
[00:21:50] If you’re gonna lead a red person, you need to know how to express yourself, because if you treat him or her the same way as you treat a yellow one, you’re gonna lose them completely. You have to be straightforward. You know, we have to get sit down, you know, don’t ask about the family. Don’t care. You don’t care about the cat or the dog or the car.
[00:22:08] Forget about all the, you know, when will you deliver? Bam. Like this? Well, Thursday, 11 o’clock. Okay. Don’t be late. No, I won’t. You know, quick meeting. Why it’s the meeting one hour long? Who decide that? That’s a really silly idea. Why? Well, because Outlook suggest, well, Outlook, who cares? 15 minutes. Now that’s a good meaning, you know, for the red person, for a yellow person, you have to smile.
[00:22:33] You have to, you know, make some jokes. You have to ask them about their family. How’s your kids? You know, what about your new boat? Are you going to the summer house this morning? This is the summer. You know? Oh, how do you feel Friday? What are you gonna do during the weekend? You have to start with these things.
[00:22:49] Not with the rest, but you have to with the yellows and the greens, you have to keep it down. You know, how are you? Are you feeling good, stressed? No good? Can I do something for you? And for blue people, you know, you have to give them the Excel sheets and the planning and everything. These are just completely basics.
[00:23:04] The, the trick with being a leader for a team is because you’ll probably most likely have all the colors in the room at the same time. That’s the the challenge here, because you need to address reds, yellow greens and blues, and usually the combinations, probably red and yellow. Red and blue, blues and greens, greens and yellows.
[00:23:24] Usually it goes like this in the Matrix, and so you have to find a way to address all of them at the same time without losing anyone’s interest. That’s why so many people say, my manager is real lousy. He’s, he, he usually, he is not a leader. He is more of a boss. You know, I can’t listen to him or her because if you have one tone of voice, you’ll will lose the majority.
[00:23:47] So you have to use a huge variety of, of, of ways to, to address the team at the same time. That is one of the reasons why leadership is so complicated. It’s not enough to paint your vision on the wall and say, we are, you know, going for, we are gonna conquer the world yet, well please do. But how? Someone will go, go and ask you what is supposed to be done here.
[00:24:10] That’s the, that’s the red guy, the yellow paper. We know who’s gonna be in the team. Am I on the team? Who’s gonna, who am I gonna work with? The greens, while ones would like to know how would this gonna go about, you know, we’re not in a hurry in now, are we? Is there a plan? And the blue ones major question would be, why?
[00:24:31] Why is this a good idea in the first place? So you need to address all of these things at the same time. Which I understand why leaders are struggling. Totally. Yeah.
[00:24:42] Adam Stott: I think that the value you just gave in, in that short talk is if, if somebody is listening and they are managing a team, you know, maybe even re-listen to that because there’s so, there’s actually so much good advice in how you can communicate and communicate a team meeting, which for a lot of people is a big challenge.
[00:24:59] And, and you know what? Because it’s a challenge, people don’t do it. Then it gets worse and they wonder why it got worse. Right.
[00:25:05] Thomas Erikson: Little bit. Sure. They take this, uh, this class, they go to this masterclass. They could be sent from their, from the c e O to, to some, some, uh, some training. You know, they would probably very soon sort of, Go back to be themselves, because changing yourself is really hard.
[00:25:24] The main issue here is changing other people is impossible. You will never change anybody else. That’s 100% impossible. You can change yourself if you can motivate yourself. If you actually have a good enough reason, then you can do it, but it’s always gonna be hard work. The benefits, I mean, the ramifications are totally awesome.
[00:25:47] You’ll have to put in the work. I mean, this is what I do. This is what I do when I mentor leaders and entrepreneurs over Europe. They are, if you have a, you running could be running a billion pound, uh, business, they will still be struggling. Interpersonal connections, I. Because it’s just on a higher level, but still people will be different.
[00:26:09] The same issues if you scratch the surface a little bit. I, I don’t understand Howard over there or Mary over there. This is, you know, surrounded by this famous, so, so, uh, yeah, that’s why I wrote the book, wrote the books surrounded by bad bosses and lazy employees. That’s, that’s a sequel to, I haven’t actually read that actually.
[00:26:29] Adam Stott: Tell, tell us a little bit about, I’ve read the, the, the main one as we mentioned, but tell us a little bit about the bad bosses.
[00:26:38] Thomas Erikson: Bad bosses. Well, that’s actually, that’s actually a British inspiration for the book because firstly I said to myself, well, after the, well you called it Success with Surrounded by I.
[00:26:48] So thank you. I, I appreciate that. It’s, it’s a bit surreal, honestly, I have to admit still, but I’m happy, but. As I was a management consultant, I was lecturing on the topic of leadership. Leadership is my main game. That is where I’m coming from. So I use all these things mainly from a leader’s perspective, and I said to myself, well, why not write the book specifically about leadership?
[00:27:15] And as I like to sort of, uh, make people angry, why not call it. Surrounded by lazy employees that that’s a great title now, isn’t it? So I wrote the book, this is How you lead people using different tools, set of set, of new set of skills, and is one of. Then I actually saw this documentary about Margaret Thatcher.
[00:27:38] I’m not gonna talk about politics, but I saw this documentary about Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, and she fascinates me in a way. She, she was going for a reelection and she went to this political advisor and he said, last time you forgot about the unemployed. Don’t they count for 10% of your voters or, or of the voters, let’s call them.
[00:28:02] Don’t forget about those, the unemployed, and she said, well, piece of advice. Then she went to another guy and he said the rest of them are.
[00:28:12] So she went for those people. Is that if that’s a good decision, that’s not the point. But the point is this, when you look at an organization, you have obviously around roughly speaking 10% team leaders, managers, bosses, CEOs, whatever. And then you have 90% everybody else. And then I had a book about leadership.
[00:28:30] So I was thinking why not address the bigger public here, the bigger audience, and write a book about the bosses themselves. Of course The Bad Bosses. It’s the Red book actually. So I wrote about how is it to be led when your manager is trying to do all these things to you? What is it that Leaders today is trying actually to do to you as an employee, as a staff member.
[00:28:57] And then I had two books, one about leading and one about being led. So I, of course, I put them together. So that’s actually two books for the price of one. So, How you go and get it. Get it. Yeah. Yeah. No, but that it, it turned out really well. I’m quite proud of that book. You can read it from two sides actually, and understand.
[00:29:14] Ah, because as with all communication, if only the leader is trying to do all the work, it’s not gonna work. You need your staff members to actually also sort of participate in the process. You need your. Your people to understand the leadership processes, they need to understand the communication process as well.
[00:29:33] If you have a team of sales guys or salespeople, they will probably mostly be, guess what color? Yes, yellow. Probably 70% of the sales organization here in Scandinavia are yellow. Even those, mainly speaking, 25, 20 6% of the population in general are yellow, but anyways, People like to talk to salespeople.
[00:29:58] You get my point? Yeah. But if you’re gonna lead this, this team of yellow, happy, creative guys, you know, who can’t find their papers and never feeling the reports the right way, and all these things, if you’re gonna lead them, it’s good. If they understand that they are good at talking about bad writing, for example, they can’t remember the phone number to people they won’t use, you know?
[00:30:20] Uh, Sales, uh, management system, they won’t use this, but they don’t read instructions. But if they understand who they are and they understand what you are trying to teach them, then you can work together and make the sales team much, much more efficient if you know what to do and if they understand what you’re up to.
[00:30:39] So that’s kind of the main game here to, to make everyone in the team. Small or big, uh, part of the process there, you have the real benefit for any kind of tooling that is used, I would say. Yeah,
[00:30:53] Adam Stott: huge. Because if the whole team can come together, work together, then you’ve, uh, it’s not just one brain and lots of limbs, it’s multiple brains driving together.
[00:31:02] Right. So it can make a, a, a tremendous impact for, for sure. And look, you, you know, you mentioned the successes of the books and you mentioned selling these books out of your boot initially because you had no idea that you wanted to progress with, uh, now being in. Every airport, every w h Smith, you know, you can’t, you can’t not see this book wherever you go.
[00:31:23] Just wanna ask like, how does it feel to go through that transition of being where you were, to creating that, you know, and how, how do you, how do you feel now? And how did you feel actually when you were struggling, and how and how’s that feel now you’ve persevered.
[00:31:39] Thomas Erikson: You know, Adam, that is of course the right question. How does it feel? My schedule is so busy, so I don’t usually, that’s, that’s the downside to, to being red and blue mostly. I don’t stop to feel that much. I, I, I like to keep myself busy. I think I’m onto something positive. I think I’m helping people. That makes me happy.
[00:32:02] Yeah. I’m thrilled to receiving thousands of emails each year where people say thank you. How fascinating. I knew that was kind of the problem. Now I have a, now I have a sort of a, a roadmap to deal with. Could be my husband, could be my boss, could be my employees. It could be my, my, my, my buddy, my neighbors.
[00:32:24] Now I understand why we get along so well and these people are struggling all the time. Thank you and the what fascinates me so much. You mentioned that the book is translated into close to six languages. That’s, that’s realist, that’s super surreal for me. I am actually the most translated Swedish author still alive, which is, it’s hard to wrap my head around.
[00:32:47] The thing is this, I get, I get feedback from all over the globe. From New Zealand, from the uk, from Poland, from Denmark, from Canada, from India, from Indonesia, from, you know, South Africa. Literally all the continents, all positive. And everybody says the same thing. Yes. That’s the way it is Now, I get it. I did not know this when I started this.
[00:33:11] I thought there were bigger differences between, you know, part different parts of the world. I, I actually did, maybe that was a stupid idea. Probably was. But the notion is people are very, very similar. When you come to an individual basis, the culture differs. Of course it does. There’s difference between the and Sweden course.
[00:33:30] We can learn from that. But you and I, we can talk you in colors because you are mostly, rather than I am Sam, so I can sort of turn that up and turn down the blue part because they would bore you completely. We can do that on an individual level and I can talk to a guy from, you know, from, I don’t know, from Russia or from, from, from, from, from, from Ukraine, and I can make them talk if you take out the politics and, and the horror on an individual level.
[00:33:55] They will find, oh, you kind of like me. You know? That’s the, the beauty of it. Absolutely. That’s the beauty of it. Yeah. I, I, that makes me feel really, really good. That’s my most thing You’re proud of. That’s my, my most. Yes, that too. My most, my strongest emotion when it comes feeling, when it comes to all this.
[00:34:19] Is it? Yes. It feels good. Yeah. Awesome. I’m, I’m happy. I think I’m doing some good in the world, some at least.
[00:34:26] Adam Stott: And you mentioned about the culture and, uh, from Sweden versus, um, versus UK almost. I had a, uh, a guy that worked, uh, very closely with me and he had a saying from Sweden, you know, a, a word that’s very popular out there that he just said nonstop.
[00:34:44] I’m sure you can guess what it is. Do you think it’s a log on? No. Is the Swedish one? What? Sisu.
[00:34:54] Thomas Erikson: Sisu. Ah, sisu. That’s a Finnish word actually. Oh, we use it in Sweden as well. The word is actually no, you know, but lot of Swedish use it because we know what it means. It means sort of, uh, sort of, uh, stamina, sort of, you know, grit, you know, sisu just, just, you know, just dig yourself down into the ground or just do the hard work, you know?
[00:35:16] But it’s actually finished work. Sweden and Phil, and we close names Sweden.
[00:35:20] Adam Stott: Picked it up in Sweden, which I thought was really interesting. So look, I’ve, I’ve just got one other, uh, question for you. I think it’s been an amazing, uh, uh, amazing interview. I think there’s so much here for people to be able to, to learn from in terms of understanding people communicating, um, but really wanted to ask if, if there was someone listening that would be an aspiring author.
[00:35:41] Somebody that wanted to get a book into the market. And at some point, you know what, maybe three or four pieces of advice would you have for somebody like that, that wanted to write a book to, to, you know, further their brand or to build their business or to just because they feel like they got a story they wanted to sell.
[00:35:59] What sort of pieces of advice might you give somebody like that?
[00:36:03] Thomas Erikson: I see, I see. There is a couple of things to, to, to, to consider. The eye of the needle is really, really tiny, really small, close to invisible when it comes to traditional publishing. To get over the T threshold or, I mean, just to get into the room when it comes to traditional publishing houses, it has never been harder than it is today.
[00:36:27] Uh, you know, you don’t have to, to, to use these systems. You can self publish and you can do marketing online yourself. When it comes to the writing itself, you need csu, you need perseverance. Writing a book is, it’s bloody hard work, technical term. It’s like going over the Atlantic Ocean, you know, in a really, really small boat, and you’re on your own and you’re gonna, you’re going to doubt yourself basically every day.
[00:36:59] Mm-hmm. If. It’s completely crazy. Why, why, why people are writing books. I don’t understand that because it, it, it’s too many hours unpaid. It takes me about, I’m logging my work these days, about 1200 hours to write one book, including research and rewriting and editing and, and, and, and all of these things.
[00:37:21] 12 hours. That’s sort of a half, half a year in working hours really? I’m constantly traveling and, and, you know, doing these kind of things. So I’m, I’m, I’m basically riding at nights basically, or with super early mornings, four o’clock in the morning, these kind of things. This suits my, my personality quite well though.
[00:37:38] But you have to, I’m gonna go the Simon Sinek way here and say, you need to understand why you do it. I’m gonna ride a bestseller. That’s not a good enough reason because if that was an easy thing, everybody would write bestsellers. So you can’t aim for the bestseller. What you have to do is to find a really, really good reason.
[00:37:57] What is your message? What is it that you actually try to put on these papers? What’s your advice? What’s your journey? What’s your, what’s your message here? Is it Is your why strong enough? I had this basic idea about writing about things that will connect people, and I had all of it in here, so, I made it easier for myself and I used my, my lecturing skills to, to write a book and so on.
[00:38:24] So maybe I was a bit lucky there perhaps, and I would probably do it a little bit different today, which some people say, no, no, no, don’t change anything, but, but you need to know.
[00:38:36] Adam Stott: Sorry. It makes for good books because you’re speaking and it’s conversational. Right? And when somebody opens that, that page, they are having a conversation to a degree with you.
[00:38:47] Right? It’s just a one-to-one conversation. And I think it’s definitely, yeah. Yes. Definitely seen in that way. Right.
[00:38:53] Thomas Erikson: Well, yes, thank you. If I had been published or been taking on board on, you know, one of the bigger publishers, they would’ve edited me in a different way. I’m pretty sure. So maybe the book actually wouldn’t have been as, as, uh, such an need to read as it is, but, but anyways, but still going back to the great thing, you really need to understand the hard labor that you have to put in the process.
[00:39:16] You need to understand what it is like, and you need to schedule things. You need to block time at least, right. Page per day. One page is more than no. Page half a page, one paragraph is. One sentence. One sentence is more than, you know, no words whatsoever, step by step, slowly, but sure. I would recommend reading, uh, atomic Habits by James, uh, clear, I think, which is another huge runaway bestseller.
[00:39:47] That book helps you to write a book by yourself because it’s all about building really, really strong, let’s say habits that works for you. I remember reading, read the habits and then you can write. Have
[00:40:01] Adam Stott: you ever read that? Yeah. Which is very similar about the creation of habits, but it’s so interesting what you said because I’ve written a few books that were popcorn books, really self-published stuff.
[00:40:12] Um, n not really my heart in it, but actually I have, um, a published book being released, um, very soon. I have sitting on my desk. Right. And I, I just wanna reference what you just said.
[00:40:28] Thomas Erikson: Now you have to send me a copy. You, you understand that, right? I, I’m waiting for my personal, uh, personal, uh, copy with an autograph.
[00:40:38] Adam Stott: You can, but that, that I am somebody that doesn’t suffer from self-doubt ever. Right. But writing that, okay. Good on you. Book. No, but write in that book. It is, it has unlocked something in me that I’m not used to having because it’s so weird. Why does writing a book have that effect on people? It’s so strange, isn’t it?
[00:41:00] Because it really does, doesn’t it? It makes people go, oh, you know, you, and I think maybe that really unlocks that perfectionism in someone, doesn’t it? I think.
[00:41:09] Thomas Erikson: Is that what it unlocked with? With your perfections? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to do you po polishing and polishing and polishing? Yeah. It could be over.
[00:41:17] It could be. It could be over polished also and over edited and overthink and everything. The thing is go with you, go with your gut feeling. I mean, if it works for you, it’s gonna work for a lot of other people as well. Even though you might not reach, you know, I don’t know, a million sold books. That’s kind of unusual.
[00:41:36] Still. But if you think this is good, a lot of other people will also believe it to be good. That’s just the way it is. So that’s interesting. You have to start with that. Don’t plan your, your, your online activities until you have the damn book on your desk because, you know, writing ads for a book that doesn’t exist, that’s just a waste of time.
[00:41:59] You have to write the book and you have to get some feedback, and you have to. A second and a third and a fourth and a fifth opinion on, on, on the manuscript. And you need to listen to people. If some say it’s too much of this and some say, no, it’s too little, then it’s probably good. You know? Um, I have, I have carrying this idea around writing a book, about writing books.
[00:42:22] I have a title I’m not gonna tell you, so don’t ask.
[00:42:31] Irritating. Probably for most people. Mostly for, for published authors. But I think I’m gonna do it sometime somewhere in time. I don’t know. Sounds like you should for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, so what, what I’m, what am I saying here? Find your why. Use as much gr and tell me as you possibly can, Zu and, and just go along with it.
[00:42:54] It’s easier to do, do this raw manuscript and put it in a drawer and read it after four or five weeks than to fill with each and every page. Write a whole in one kaboom if you can, and then put it aside, and then you reread it and rewrite it and reedit it. Because if you don’t have 100% on paper, there’s nothing to edit because you have to edit it 10 times.
[00:43:17] I still edit my things 10 times. Awesome. Probably. ’cause I’m a professionalist, the blue bar there, you know. Sorry. Well, look, it’s a
[00:43:28] Adam Stott: struggle. I really, I really, really loved, um, uh, our conversation today, Thomas. I think it’s been amazing and there’s a lot of value there for people. Not only have we discuss communication personalities, team meetings, relationships, uh, book writing, authoring, persistence, grit.
[00:43:45] There’s so much in this episode. So I wanna say a big thank you for, uh, for coming on. For sure. Um, been incredible. Uh, go and check out, uh, Thomas’s, uh, book, uh, surrounded by Idiots. He’s got many other books as well, uh, which are absolutely incredible. I personally would recommend that one I’ve read it. I think it’s a fantastic read and I think it would help a lot of people.
[00:44:05] So, you know, go and find that on Amazon or Wherever’s best for maybe on your website. So, do you have a website? People could go and find out more about you or is it
[00:44:14] Thomas Erikson: surroundedbyidiots.Com. Okay. You remember?
[00:44:18] Adam Stott: surroundedbyidiots.com Fabulous. Thank you again. It’s been absolutely amazing. And if you’ve been listening to this, uh, podcast and you’ve been enjoying, uh, take just two minutes.
[00:44:28] One tap of the thumb to go over and give us a five star review. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast or share this with somebody, That could get some real value. Perhaps, you know, a business owner that needs to hear this or you know, somebody that in a relationship or a friend or a family member that could really do with the motivation.
[00:44:46] So go and share this episode with somebody else. That’s how we spread the message to help more people, help more business owners succeed with business growth secrets. Thank you again, Thomas. It’s been amazing. Love speaking to you. Thank you so much.
[00:44:58] Thomas Erikson: Thank you. Cheers.