Book summary “Personality Plus”: summary

Introduction

You often feel frustrated when family members or coworkers refuse to change their habits. You try nagging, explaining, and pleading, yet misunderstandings persist. Florence Littauer argues in Personality Plus that you cannot change others until you understand the inborn design of human behavior.

You can transform your professional and personal relationships by understanding the four inborn temperaments and tailoring your communication to meet the emotional needs of others.

The book explores the four classic temperaments, reveals how your strengths become your weaknesses, and teaches you how to supply missing emotional needs to resolve friction. You will discover answers to practical questions about human interaction.

• Why do certain people talk constantly while others remain silent?
• How do you stop taking the rude remarks of others personally?
• What causes your specific workplace and marital conflicts?
• How can you motivate different personality types without causing resentment?

1. Origins and Foundations of the Four Temperaments

Human personalities are inborn genetic traits rather than acquired characteristics, matching Hippocrates' classic categories of speed and emotional intensity.

You cannot fundamentally change another person because core temperament is written in your biology.

Geneticists have mapped 3.1 billion biochemical letters of human DNA containing instructions for operating a human being. This genetic code includes inherent personality patterns. While family dynamics or social environments might mask your core temperament, the root nature remains unchanged. Parents and employers who try to reshape children or co-workers into different types only create frustration and rebellion.

Florence Littauer's son Fred, a perfect Melancholy, disliked crowds and intrusions from an early age. Her daughter Marita was a fun-seeking Sanguine who pulled pranks on teachers like Mr. Hamilton.

Inborn Genetics

Culture often treats people as utilitarian objects valued solely for their productivity. True success comes from recognizing that people are unique gifts. Trying to reshape others into mini-clones of oneself leads to misery. You should focus on changing your own understanding, appreciating opposite traits, and helping others shine.

Speed and Intensity

Greek philosopher and physician Hippocrates identified four temperaments stemming from ancient body fluid categories around 400 BC. Medieval monks preserved these concepts, and Thomas Aquinas discussed them in his Summa Theologica. This system maintains two thousand years of accuracy in observing human behavior.

Cholerics and Sanguines move quickly, whereas Melancholies and Phlegmatics move more deliberately. In terms of emotional intensity, Cholerics and Melancholies are intense and deep. Phlegmatics and Sanguines are easygoing and light.

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines temperament as the aspect of personality concerned with emotional dispositions, reactions, speed, and intensity. By evaluating these dimensions, you can accurately predict reaction styles in workplace and social environments. Everyone can function in a quiet introverted fashion in places like classrooms or hospitals. Your natural temperament remains your default response under pressure or unscripted moments.

• Don't try to change other people; change your own understanding of them.
• Learn to appreciate the Sanguine's light touch.
• Learn to appreciate the Choleric's take-charge energy.
• Learn to appreciate the Melancholy's attention to detail.
• Learn to appreciate the Phlegmatic's faithful support.

2. Recognizing the Four Personality Profiles

Every individual operates from a natural default mode defined by combinations of Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholy, and Phlegmatic traits, whose greatest strengths turn into weaknesses when carried to extremes.

Rather than dealing with inherent flaws, workplace friction usually stems from people letting their selfishness or emotions push their natural strengths past healthy limits. For example, a Sanguine's storytelling ability turns into endless babbling when driven by an immature need for attention. A Sanguine can talk for thirty-eight minutes straight before being timed and interrupted.

Strengths and Extremes

People possess one perception default and one pace default. These pairs create distinct blended styles such as the double extrovert Sanguine-Choleric or the double introvert Melancholy-Phlegmatic. Carmen identified herself as a Melancholy-Phlegmatic combination, balancing a love for detail in the classroom with a desire for peace and quiet at night.

External pressures from parents, teachers, employers, or culture can force individuals to hide their true temperament. Rose wore a navy blue outfit, low heels, and plain glasses to look authoritative when testifying as an expert witness in superior court.

Sanguines frequently struggle with financial overspending, losing keys, and forgetting follow-through due to their distractible nature. Sanguines view credit cards like gift cards, ignore rising interest rates, and often lose track of personal items because they use their hands expressively and move constantly from one audience to another. A debt-straddled Sanguine on the Suze Orman show confessed to owing 44,000 dollars in credit card bills.

Default Behaviors

Managing and supporting Sanguines effectively requires acknowledging their emotional needs for approval, attention, and fun while setting structural guardrails. Because Sanguines easily lose focus, forget details, and lack goal orientation, you can apply these guidelines:

• Be generous with authentic praise and compliments
• Listen even when they ramble
• Don't withhold; give appropriate smiles, hugs, winks, and pats
• Let them have their fun and plan appropriate fun for others
• Set up a reminder system that works for them
• Ask someone to be their reminder coach
• Don't nag; pair them with a Melancholy
• Help them with making charts and schedules
• Help them write goals and save them in a computer file

Maturity is defined by self-acceptance, personal responsibility, and taking the blame for mistakes rather than projecting it onto others. Although dictionary definitions focus on full growth, you can outline maturity through specific behavioral choices that require stepping outside oneself to work for the greater common good, avoiding overreactions to criticism.

3. Meeting Emotional Needs and Eliminating Conflict

Just as children need food to grow physically, people need emotional nourishment. If raised with stress, abuse, or neglect, adults will develop insatiable emotional hungers and manifest extreme behaviors to fill the void.

Unmet childhood emotional needs drive people into extreme workplace behaviors, which you can resolve by providing specific attention, control, space, or peace.

Emotional Hungers

Sanguines carry an insatiable desire for attention into adulthood. When neglected, they turn to extremes like overindulgence, constant babbling, or making a joke of everything. They thrive when coworkers notice their efforts, praise tasks done right, and make them feel included.

Howard admitted he liked being the center of attention and patted his bulging belly while acknowledging his Sanguine traits.

Cholerics' zeal for life can be pushed to extremes into a tyrannical workaholic when they seek appreciation. To help them, put them in charge of what they do well, ensure they do not degrade subordinates, and give them autonomy without micromanagement.

Darlene reported experiencing constant mutiny from people because of her heavy-handed management style until she understood emotional needs.

Introverted Melancholies keep their feelings hidden, expect rejection, and seek perfection. They work best by themselves, doing research or thinking things through. They need coworkers to affirm their deep thinking without making light of their problems.

Carmen shared that she preferred the misery of loneliness over the mockery she received from a Sanguine man she previously dated.

As natural counselors, Phlegmatics long for peace and quiet. Because they are quiet and do not brag, Cholerics often overlook their contributions. They perform well when given a measure of respect and inclusion.

Tailoring Workplace Responses

A task-oriented, utilitarian view of others ruins leadership efforts. Leaders must stop projecting their own desires onto staff and instead provide the specific environment and validation each individual personality requires.

Kristi and Pam joined Rose at a Florence Littauer conference after which Rose restored Kristi's authority and moved Pam to a quiet back-room number-crunching role.

You must adjust your daily interactions based on these specific behavioral requirements:

• See employees as whole persons valuable for who they are rather than what they do
• Provide clear guidance and support tailored to individual emotional needs
• Visit and give gifts
• Recognize effort
• Reassess emotional desires and avoid obvious seeking of attention, whining, or looking for pity if you are a Sanguine
• Put them in charge of whatever they do well
• Ensure they do not insult or degrade supervised staff
• Be open and honest
• Do work without asking for praise or bragging if you are a Choleric
• Keep conflict down
• Listen to problems and respect personal space
• Show warm concern and affirm their worth
• Join in and socialize, and do not assume everyone is talking about you if you are a Melancholy
• Accept that your work group may not be best friends, but participate anyway
• Laugh with the Sanguine, lift up the Melancholy, and affirm the Choleric

4. Applying Personality Intelligence in Work and Partnerships

You can maximize business productivity, manage teams effectively, and build lasting spousal partnerships by distributing responsibilities and communication according to temperament strengths.

Business and organizational failures are often rooted in personality conflicts rather than financial or structural deficits. When profits, education, or spiritual endeavors are struggling, you should look at how well you place people according to their temperament strengths and weaknesses. A mail-order company manager turned around a struggling, chaotic staff of ten unmotivated part-timers down to two full-time and one part-time employee in three months simply by instituting accountability and matching tasks to personalities.

Personalities and profits are directly related:

• You might have to move your office employees around
• Do put the Sanguine in charge of fun
• Do put the Melancholy in charge of money
• Give the Phlegmatic structure
• Train the Choleric to be pleasant and patient

Spousal Partnerships

Working relationships require a foundation of mutual respect and clear communication. You must sit down without interrupting to share what you appreciate and what needs modification, review personality strengths and weaknesses, eliminate public corrections, and strictly divide your areas of control. Florence and Fred Littauer established a system where Fred wrote down Florence's speaking errors on three-by-five cards to review on Monday nights instead of correcting her in public.

Follow these four steps to make a working partnership thrive:

• Step 1. Explain what you do like and respect about your mate in an uninterrupted conversation, list problem areas, and pledge to work on at least one.
• Step 2. Take time to know your inborn personality by reviewing strengths and weaknesses together.
• Step 3. Be willing to help each other without getting defensive, avoiding public corrections and offering sincere thanks.
• Step 4. Set boundaries and divide responsibilities clearly, separating areas of control like the stage and home management.

Practical Procedures

Loud or impulsive individuals can use a structured five-step verbal filter before speaking to avoid offending colleagues and customers. Office manager Lisa established a practical procedure for a loud co-worker to slow down her communication style and prevent interpersonal friction in the workplace. Lisa called a loud employee privately into her office, gave her practical steps to improve her communication, and successfully helped her correct her behavior.

Apply this verbal filter before you speak:

• Think
• Edit
• Soften
• Edit again
• Speak!

Becoming multilingual in workplace communication means identifying the emotional language of different personalities rather than expecting everyone to be the same. Rose explains that just as you would find a translator if someone spoke a foreign language, understanding the four personalities allows you to identify people's emotional language and adapt how you communicate with them. At a farewell party, Rose compared trying to communicate without personality awareness to offering hors d'oeuvres to someone who only speaks Spanish and says Una mas, por favor.

You can adapt your communication style across the four profiles:

• Sanguines tone it down, get serious when necessary, listen to others, avoid gossip, and let others finish their stories.
• Cholerics slow down, actually see and hear other people, and give them credit for their ideas.
• Melancholies speak words of authentic praise and encouragement despite perceived imperfections.
• Phlegmatics speak up, speak out, and get to the bottom line instead of waiting for others.

Conclusion

You can transform your professional and personal relationships by understanding the four inborn temperaments and tailoring your communication to meet the emotional needs of others.

The concepts of personality intelligence fit together to form a complete framework for human interaction. You start by identifying your own natural strengths and weaknesses across the Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholy, and Phlegmatic profiles. You then recognize that other people operate from entirely different default settings. You eliminate conflict by supplying the specific emotional attention, control, space, or peace that others lack. You apply these insights to build balanced partnerships at home and productive teams at work.

You can put these ideas into practice with a few rules for daily communication.

1. Assess your own temperament tendencies honestly before you judge the behavior of others.
2. Identify the core emotional needs of your spouse, children, and coworkers so you can provide appropriate support.
3. Adjust your communication style to match the processing speed and emotional intensity of the person you are addressing.
4. Appreciate the unique strengths of each personality type instead of demanding that everyone think and act like you.
5. Practice intentional self-discipline to moderate your extreme weaknesses and develop your underdeveloped areas.

10 Key Ideas

1. Florence Littauer argues in Personality Plus that you cannot fundamentally change other people because core temperament is an inborn genetic trait written in your biology.
2. The ancient system of four temperaments maintains two thousand years of accuracy in observing human behavior by categorizing people based on speed and emotional intensity.
3. Workplace friction usually stems from people letting their selfishness or emotions push their natural Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholy, or Phlegmatic strengths past healthy limits into extreme behaviors.
4. Managing and supporting Sanguines effectively requires acknowledging their emotional needs for approval, attention, and fun while setting structural guardrails.
5. Unmet childhood emotional needs drive adults into extreme behaviors, which you can resolve by providing specific attention, control, space, or peace.
6. Leaders must stop projecting their own desires onto staff and instead provide the specific environment and validation each individual personality requires.
7. Business and organizational failures are often rooted in personality conflicts rather than financial or structural deficits when people are poorly matched to their tasks.
8. Spousal partnerships thrive when couples sit down without interrupting to review personality strengths and weaknesses, eliminate public corrections, and strictly divide their areas of control.
9. Loud or impulsive individuals can use a structured five-step verbal filter to slow down their communication style and prevent interpersonal friction in the workplace.
10. Becoming multilingual in workplace communication means identifying the emotional language of different personalities rather than expecting everyone to be the same.