The question that ended the conversation
An old friend of mine came over to talk shop. He launched a tech startup this year, the product is still a prototype, and tasks and decisions change in real time. His team, mostly programmers, is not handling it well. They are scared. They feel insecure. Every time he explains the rationale behind a change, he hits what he called a mental firewall.
He wanted a communication technique from me, something he could deploy on Monday. Instead I asked him four questions. How well do you know your team? What do they do after work? What are their hobbies? What decides whether they are drawn to one task rather than another?
I did not get an answer. I got a surprised look.
I smiled, because I recognized that look from my own years of leading technical teams. I love change and I need it, and I still have to remind myself that this is not the default human setting. For plenty of people stability is worth more than novelty, and expecting them to want change as badly as you do is wishful thinking dressed up as leadership.
What I have learned is that when we cannot get along with the people we work with, we are not surrounded by idiots. We are surrounded by different types of thinkers. Each of them carries their own ambitions, working style, and rules they live by. The leverage sits in knowing enough about the person to predict how a change will read to them, not in a better slide explaining that change.
Four temperaments, twenty five centuries later
Around 460 to 370 BC the Greek physician HippocratesHippocrates (c. 460–370 BC) was a Greek physician regarded as the father of medicine, author of the medical oath and originator of the four temperaments — the first known personality typology based on observed behavior rather than religious belief. described four temperaments, and the vocabulary has outlived every wave of management fashion since.
Sanguine people are optimistic and social, always ready for a new adventure. They turn every standup into a party.
Choleric people are goal-oriented and ambitious, natural leaders. This is the developer pushing for the deadline while everyone else negotiates scope.
Melancholic people are analytical and detail-oriented. This is the teammate who finds every edge case, including the three you quietly hoped nobody would notice.
Phlegmatic people are peaceful and easy-going, natural mediators. These are the ones who keep the team calm during a production incident.
The model is built on general observation, which is a weakness in a psychology paper and a strength on a Tuesday afternoon. You can hold four categories in your head while a difficult conversation is already happening. Knowing that the person in front of you needs the deadline, or needs the edge case acknowledged first, changes your tone before you open your mouth.
Colors on the wall
Thomas EriksonThomas Erikson is a Swedish speaker and the author of the bestseller Surrounded by Idiots, which describes behavior types through a system of four colors. His model is a modern rewrite of the ancient four temperaments in language a business reader understands, which makes it easy to recognize your own type and a colleague's, and then adjust how you communicate.’s bestseller Surrounded by Idiots takes that ancient frame and repaints it for a corporate audience. Instead of Greek names he uses colors, and across the book he shows how people land on a color through what they actually do in concrete situations.
The reframing does more work than it looks like. Nobody wants to be told they are melancholic. Plenty of people are happy to say they are blue, and once they have said it out loud, a conversation about how they want to receive feedback becomes possible at all. That accessibility is the whole product, because a framework you remember and use beats a more accurate one you read once and forget.
Where the color stops working
This is where I part company with the enthusiastic version of the idea. The moment a color becomes a label you hand to a person, it stops describing behavior and starts assigning a role. Handed generously it works like an immunity card, because the yellow one is allowed to miss deadlines, that is just how yellows are. Handed carelessly it works like a verdict, and the red one never gets to be careful again.
I learned this from the other side of the table, thinking about NeurodiversityNeurodiversity is the premise that human brains are simply different — neural fingerprints — rather than split into „normal” and „sick”. The sociologist Judy Singer popularized the term in the late 1990s, moving the language from „disorder/illness” to „a different way of processing”.
In this framing, neurotypical means a brain within the statistical norm of processing, and neurodivergent covers differences such as ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia. Some researchers go further and argue there is no sharp line — we are all somewhere on a spectrum. Note that psychiatric nomenclature still uses „disorder”, but with the rule that without suffering there is no disorder: if someone functions and is not suffering, that is simply how they are. at work. Walking into a team and announcing a diagnosis is a bad move, for a reason that has nothing to do with shame. It hands the other side a piece of information and no instructions, and most people genuinely do not know what to do with it. Communicate the need, not the diagnosis. Not I have ADHDADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is a neurodevelopmental condition in which attention, impulse control and the regulation of action over time are impaired. It is not a matter of „weak willpower” — underneath it sit weaker prefrontal-cortex function and a different neurotransmitter economy, dopamine in particular.
In practice it means difficulty starting and finishing tasks, procrastination, distractibility and a hunt for quick stimulation. Both medication and learned strategies help — structure to the day, sleep, movement, cutting down on stimuli., but what is my role in this meeting and what do you expect from it. Not I am wired differently, but comments at the end of the day do not reach me, so send them in the morning.
Swap diagnosis for color and the rule holds exactly. I am blue is a label. I need the spec before I commit to an estimate is a request you can act on this week.
The bridge has two sides, though. Reading your team does not make you responsible for every preference in the room. Budget, law, contracts, and a shared culture are the boundaries of the pitch, and nobody opts out of them because of their color.
There is a second limit, quieter than the first. The color you read off someone may be the one they learned to perform. MaskingMasking is the constant work of hiding your neurodivergence and performing „typicality” — suppressing natural reactions and controlling every word and gesture so as not to stand out. It gets compared to wearing a tight corset, or armor.
It is exhausting and a route to burnout on its own. It hits women particularly hard: socially, the same behaviors (fidgeting, interrupting) are tolerated in boys and penalized in girls, which is one reason their ADHD diagnoses often come much later., the constant work of hiding how your head actually operates and imitating the room instead, is exhausting, largely invisible, and a reliable route to BurnoutBurnout is a state of chronic exhaustion — physical, emotional, cognitive — from prolonged overload at work without enough recovery. „Only those who burn can burn out”: the highly engaged are the most exposed.
With ADHD and autism the risk is higher. Working in „airplane mode”, masking your neurodivergence and ignoring the signals of a draining motivational battery lead to repeated episodes of burnout. on its own. The sanguine teammate who turns the standup into a party may be performing energy because it was rewarded in three previous jobs. If your read comes only from behavior in meetings, you are reading the mask.
My color?
So what am I? I cannot answer that honestly with one word. Erikson allows for two colors in one person, and even that is not enough in my case. My neurodiversity draws on all of them, and I can only be one at a time.
On a good morning I am the one pushing for the deadline. Two hours later I am the one finding every edge case, and by late afternoon I am not much use to anyone. That is not a mood swing a better planner would fix. A neurotypical colleague starts the day like a car, DopamineDopamine is a neurotransmitter responsible for motivation, reward and drive — it is what pushes you to do something and delivers the sense of satisfaction afterwards.
With ADHD its economy runs differently and the prefrontal cortex is more sensitive to it, hence the constant hunt for quick stimulation (phone, snacks, novelty) and the difficulty with boring tasks. Many ADHD medications work precisely by increasing dopamine availability. flowing smoothly enough to pull away from the curb and keep going. I work like a plane, burning most of my fuel on takeoff and landing, and to take off at all I need rocket fuel, which usually means a real deadline or genuine excitement.
The battery follows the same logic. It does not drain gradually. It reads full, and then it reads empty, with no useful warning in between. So my breaks go into the calendar in advance, before I need them, because the version of me who needs one is in no state to schedule it.
One more asymmetry is worth naming. A neurotypical brain filters out roughly 80 percent of incoming stimuli. Mine lets roughly 80 percent through. That is a superpower in a workshop, where I catch the sentence somebody almost said, and it is punishing in a shopping mall on a Saturday. Same wiring, different room.
It is chaos, and I love it.
What my friend went home with
None of this collapses into the technique he wanted. The closest thing to one is a discipline. When you feel a strong urge to hand your team the right answer, that is usually the moment to hand them the question instead, because a decision the team owns survives contact with a changing prototype and a decision you own does not.
So he went home with homework rather than a script. Learn what your people do after work. Learn what pulls them toward one task and away from another. Then say the same thing about the roadmap four different ways, because you are talking to four different people.
The firewall he keeps hitting was never built to block him. It went up because nobody in that room has really been introduced yet.