Four Groups

Archive for the ‘4G’ Category

Myers Briggs (or MBTI) is possibly the most popular psychometric is use today and there is no shortage of people who write about this model. Given, however, some of the similarities between Myers and 4G, people often ask what the key differences are. In essence, 4G introduces the idea of Social Relationships and more specifically, a framework which outlines optimal relationship combinations. The following re-written extract is taken from the Myers Briggs site and hopefully highlights this point. The italics show the changes added whilst the original is shown below.

Type differences in relationships can be a source of growth and/or conflict. However, within 4G, there are a number of ideal or more successful combinations of types in relationships than others.

The original from the Myers Briggs site follows.

Type differences in relationships can be a source of growth and/or conflict. However, there are no best or more successful combinations of types in relationships.

Building on from the previous post and the idea that there are 14 Social Relationships, I thought it would be worth introducing and examining some of these relationships one by one. I won’t go through all 14, but hopefully this post will give you a flavour.

The first that is worth mentioning is Relationships of Action. In essence, this is all about creating energy, new ideas, brainstorming and motivation between two people. These ideas are well reflected in a post entitled ‘Energisers‘. You could think of this relationship like a set of spinning gyroscopes, constantly firing off one another and creating lots of noise and activity in the process. Now, while this relationship is ideal for motivation, there is a slight danger that the partners burn each other out or they run out of energy.

The second relationship is a Relationship of Reflection. This acts rather like a mirror and just as a mirror highlights imperfections and is used to guide delicate work (e.g. make-up or shaving), so Relationships of Reflection are a source of critical insight and are ideal for correcting problems or oversights.

Both of these relationships are Green and can be seen as being very positive and for the benefit of both people. What is also interesting is that while these relationships require ‘no effort’, they also represent differences in thinking styles and approaches adopted by the various people involved. In particular, there is no cloning taking place here!

Our first post in the 4G category (An Introduction to 4G) was an attempt to introduce some of the key ideas behind 4G and give people an overview. In this post, I’d like to explore the Social Relationships in a bit more detail.

As you can see in the diagram, there are different grades of relationships, ranging from ‘no effort’, through to ‘significant effort’. The main idea in this instance is to outline that certain relationships are more preferable than others. In addition, this grading of Social Relationships creates a framework for decision making, facilitation and interventions.

What is also worth mentioning is that behind the simplified grading in the diagram, there are actually 14 Social Relationships in total. This then creates a far more complex and ‘rich’ context with which to apply the insights from 4G.

To the best of our knowledge, we don’t know of any other tool or technique which offers such predictions, or insights. We are aware of the work of Fiske and Kenny who have put together other means of understanding relationships but they don’t seem to offer such predictions or insights.

This post is designed to introduce some of the ideas surrounding 4G and its applications. In essence, 4G articulates and predicts relationships (Social Relationships) and culture (Social Groups) in a systematic and logical manner. Also present within 4G is the ability to rank or grade the quality of relationships between people from ‘easy’ to ‘hard’ in terms of the amount of effort required and corresponding levels of morale, performance and productivity. The following diagram illustrates this grading of relationships.

As can be seen, there is a mixture of different relationships amongst the group of five. In particular, Paulo and Susanna and Jim and Kate both share very easy relationships and accordingly, they work very well together. On the other hand, Ulrike and Jim and Ulrike and Kate have a far harder time of things. They need to spend more time, energy and effort in order to achieve the same levels of performance that people with other relationships do.

There are many people who talk, write and blog about relationships and hopefully our take on predicting relationships will add to this thinking.