I Need Your Help: Personality Poker Book Subtitle

I need your help!

I am in the process of finishing the manuscript for my next book, “Personality Poker.”  The book will be published by Penguin’s Portfolio books and is expected in stores September 2010.

We have been working on a subtitle for the book – and I would love your input.

I realize that you don’t know the details of the book.  But in general, it is about creating high performing innovation teams through the use of my specially designed poker cards.  There are a few key concepts:

1. Individuals should “play to their strong suit.”  In Personality Poker, the four suits correlate to the four primary innovation styles and the four steps of the innovation process.  Therefore, if you understand your innovation style/suit, you can maximize your contributions to your team.   [NOTE: "strong suit" is actually a term from bridge and not poker]
2. Organizations must “play with a full deck.”  That is, companies must have all of the styles (and sub-styles) in order to truly be innovative.  Most organizations are out of balance and have too many of just one or two styles.  This inhibits innovation.
3. “Deal out the work.”  Once everyone is clear about their role in the innovation process, you want to divide and conquer.  Avoid having everyone do everything.  Give people specific tasks and roles.

That’s the 10,000 (maybe 30,000) foot view.  You can learn more – and watch a video – on the Personality Poker page.

So, the question is, what is a good subtitle? Here’s a list of some ideas we had…

• “[How to] Play Your Best Hand to Win Big in Business”
• “[How to] Play with a Full Deck to Win Big in Business”
• “[How to] Play to Your Strong Suit to Win Big in Business”
• “[How to] Play with a Full Deck to Create High Performing Teams”
• “[How to] Play to Your Strong Suit to Create High Performing Teams”
• “[How to] Play Your Best Hand to Create High Performing Teams”

Do you like any of these?  Note that the “How to” is optional as each subtitle can stand on its own without those words.

Better yet, I would love to get new ideas for a subtitle.

Please leave your suggestion (either a new idea or a vote for an existing idea) as a comment.  If we end up using your subtitle, we will send you the Personality Poker system (a $200 value).  Plus, when the new book is published, we will send you a signed copy (with an additional deck of the redesigned cards).

Thanks in advance for your help.

Take Our Ultracool Test that Assesses the Unconscious Mind!

As many of you know, I am working on the manuscript for my next book.  It is based on “Personality Poker,” a game that is primarily used to help organizations be more innovative.  But everyone enjoys it because it is a fun card-based game that tells you all about your personality.

As part of my research for the book, I partnered with a professor in the psychology department of a well-known Cambridge, MA based Ivy League University (I’m sure you can guess who they are).

This university (ok, it’s Harvard) developed an approach for testing the implicit or unconscious mind.  You can read about it a previous blog entry.  This is fascinating stuff!  Read the article if you have not done so.

I loved the Implicit Association Testing so much that I had them develop a Personality Poker version. There is nothing out there like it!  Admittedly, it is not as much fun as the card-based version.  You take it on your computer.  And it takes A LOT of concentration.  But it is an interesting process.

And for the holidays, for a very limited time, I am allowing people to take the current version of the test with 4 simple stipulations:

1. You will not share the “experiment file” with anyone else.  This is important because we are constantly refining the process to make it more accurate, simpler, and more insightful.
2. You will take the entire test which lasts for about 30 minutes without interruption.
3. You will send the “dat” file to me via email after taking the test.  This will help us compare explicit and implicit beliefs.  Your personal information is confidential.
4. You agree not to sue me for damages if your head explodes after taking this test!

If you are interested in taking this test, please write us at iat-test@personalitypoker.net (please note it is a .net and not a .com).  We will send you the link and the password.  You will not be added to any lists.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Happy New Year.

NOTE: I am told that the software will not work on a MAC unless you are running a Windows emulator such as Virtual PC.

Are Your Conscious and Unconscious Minds Aligned?

While working on Innovation Personality Poker® over the years, one question has lingered in my mind…

How do we know we are getting the most accurate picture of someone’s personality?

Personality Poker is based on a 75 year old psychological testing technique called a Q-sort.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, in a Q-sort, “a person is given a set of sentences, phrases, or words (usually presented individually on cards) and is asked to use them to describe himself (as he thinks he is or as he would like to be) or someone else.” In some variations, the cards are sorted from most like the individual to least like them.

If you read academic paper about Q-sorts, you will see that the question arises as to whether or not a self-assessment is accurate. Researchers question if other methods of personality testing are more accurate.  They posit that there are three testing methods…

1. Self-assessment (of the conscious mind)
2. Assessment by a friend, family member, or colleague
3. Assessment by an unbiased 3rd party who is expert in the Q-sort process

Which method is most effective?  It appears that the answer is “all of the above.”  All methods are accurate, depending on the situation.

However, there is a 4th method that is not listed above that may prove even more interesting.

Can our unconscious mind be a better predictor of our personality than our conscious mind?

There are very few methods available to answer this question. Fortunately I was introduced to people at Harvard University who developed a tool called “Implicit Association Testing (IAT).”

Harvard’s website gives a very simple introduction to the concept…

“It is well known that people don’t always ’speak their minds’, and it is suspected that people don’t always ‘know their minds’. Understanding such divergences is important to scientific psychology. This web site presents a method that demonstrates the conscious-unconscious divergences much more convincingly than has been possible with previous methods.”

In short, these tests tell you if your conscious mind (i.e., explicit) is aligned with your unconscious mind (i.e., implicit).

We are about to start work with Harvard that will assess if the conscious mind (tested via the card-based version of Personality Poker) correlates with the results from the unconscious mind (tested via a specially designed Personality Poker IAT).

One of three scenarios will prove to be true:

1. In most people, the conscious mind is perfectly aligned with the unconscious mind
2. In most people, the conscious mind is not aligned with the unconscious mind
3. Alignment between the conscious mind and unconscious mind varies from person to person

If scenario #1 proves to be true, then we will have proven the validity of the Personality Poker at both a conscious and unconscious level.

However, if scenarios #2 or #3 prove to be true, we have a new opportunity…to develop an online IAT-based Personality Poker game that we can make available to the public. In some respects, scenario #3 is most interesting, because it means that in some cases “explicit” personality testing (done via cards, questionnaires, and other diagnostics) is accurate. However in order to get a full picture of one’s personality, “implicit” testing is also required. Only through both types of testing can we get an accurate assessment of one’s total psyche.

In order to better understand Implicit Association Testing, I encourage you to take some of the tests on the Harvard IAT website. This may give you some interesting insights into your own personal biases…some of which you might not want to even admit to yourself.

What’s Your Twitter Personality Style?

After giving a presentation last week on Personality Poker to a client, one of the other speakers discussed social media and Twitter.  The emcee for the event asked me to comment on which personality style uses Twitter.

My response was, “All of them.  But WHY they Twitter and HOW they Twitter differs.”

We designed Personality Poker to focus on attributes rather than activities.  The reason is that activities do not differentiate personality styles, motivations do.

Nearly everyone reads.  You are reading this blog.  Maybe you read books.  Maybe you only read toothpaste tubes.  It doesn’t matter what you read.  The fact that you read is less interesting than WHY you read.  This  may give insight into your style.  Do you read to learn as much as possible?  If so, you might be an analytical “spade.” Experiential “diamonds” may read to escape.  Competitive “clubs” may read to make them more successful. Emotional “hearts” may read romance novels (I’m joking about this one…maybe).  Of course this is a broad generalization.  In reality, we read for different reasons at different times.

HOW we do what we do also helps us understand our personality.

I am primarily a “high diamond.”  That means I love new experiences.  Travel is my favorite activity.  I am thrilled to be returning to Copenhagen and Greece to speak next week.  What is interesting is HOW I plan my travel.  Although I knew about this trip for many months now, I just made my flight reservations an hour ago.  I still haven’t booked my hotels.  Spontaneity is a cornerstone of my personality (which admittedly is a strength and weakness).  Many people travel.  But HOW we travel may differ.  For example, clubs (especially “low” clubs who are methodical), would have everything planned out well in advance.

So WHY we do things and HOW we do things are indicators of our style.  Not what we do.

So back to Twitter.

If you were to assess who Twitters, I suspect you would find a good cross section of people.  I know many who are competitive clubs and Twitter to help them be successful.  The heart-oriented Twitters are more interested in the connection with other human beings.  Spades may be more data gatherers. Diamonds may be using Twitter because it is new and cool.

I’m a diamond.  I don’t Twitter to become more successful or grow my business (the club style), although that would be nice.  I don’t Twitter to build relationships with people (the heart style), although that too would be nice.  My motivations fall more into the spade (my secondary style) and diamond (my primary style).  I spend more time reading tweets than writing them  And I tend to read more about topics than people.

I use Tweetdeck.  This software allows you to create columns with filters.  For me, my first filter is the word “innovation.”  Anyone who uses the word innovation in a tweet shows up in that column, even if I don’t follow them.  The next column is Boston.  I am interested in my community and the “cool things” going on (a very diamond attribute).  The next column is Boston Innovation.  Finally I get to my friends status updates, replies and direct messages.  The other columns change over time and often feature a client’s name.  Click the image above to see my Tweetdeck.  And no, your eyes are not going bad.  I blurred out the conversations…

Based on WHY I tweet and HOW I tweet, you might get a good sense of my personality style.

Based on the limited information provided in this article, I would love for you to answer the following 3 questions:

• What do you think is your primary style (analytical spades, creative/experiential diamonds, methodical/competitive clubs, people-oriented hearts?
• Why do you Twitter?
• How do you Twitter?

I plan on doing more formal studies on Twitter personality styles in the future.

P.S. I love this story…The other day I did a Personality Poker session with a client.  Someone in the room came to me with their hand – a combination of hearts (lovers of people and relationships) and “high” clubs (lovers of action and competition).  He laughed and said, “I love to play tennis.  And I love to kick the butt of my opponent (a typical high club attribute).  But afterward I feel bad for the person I beat (a heart attribute).”

Shadow Personality Poker

If you own the Innovation Personality Poker system, here’s an interesting game to play. It’s called “Shadow Poker.” It was suggested by my colleague Jason Bates over at Executive Rockstar.

Shadow Poker is the same as regular Personality Poker, except with one small difference: the goal is to choose personality traits that describe the people you don’t like. All players choose the five cards that best describe the people who get on their nerves.

This version is based on Carl Jung’s “shadow” work. The theory is that people have an irrational dislike of others who demonstrate characteristics that they most dislike in themselves

This game works best when all of the players do not know that this is based on shadow theory, because then everyone will be thinking of others and not themselves. Revealing this “projection” motif at the end of the game can prove quite insightful. Jung suggested that everyone eventually has to come to terms with this shadow self.

Shadow Poker is just one of the many variations included in out new and improved 80 page instruction manual.  Order your Innovation Personality Poker Starter Kit today.

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