What Makes a DIVERSE Team Work Together

What Makes a DIVERSE Team Work Together?

Rob: [00:00:00] So of the four types, what are you? 

Tony: Definitely an idealist.

Rob: I remember in that I’m a Rational and my daughter is a guardian. It made sense that she was trying to please me, I’ve done this. I’m following the rules. And I’m like, just be your own person.

Tony: Yeah, I’m classic idealist in terms of what’s possible, but then when I look at my score profile, which marries, I can break that temperament down into its five dimensions. It shows that the strength in my engagement and originality profile lend itself to optimistic, forward thinking, possibility oriented, anything goes type thing. It marries up really well. But of course I can break that down then to all its different aspects and then and understand myself better as the first step. Which is pretty cool.

Rob: What about you, Clark? We were just talking about the four temperaments, guardian, artisan, idealist, rational. 

Clark: The only psychometric evaluation has ever worked for me, and I learned it 20 odd years ago was the [00:01:00] MBTI. Of all of the ones that I’ve done except one once I was given a big psychometric test that was 500 questions that was evaluated by a psychologist which is a different kettle fish altogether.

But the MBTI is the only one that I can look at and definitively say, oh wow. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. And the more you interrogate it, the clearer it becomes. Every time I’ve ever done the I MBTI, I’ve always come out as an INTJ. if I explain to somebody what a an INTJ is, people will say, yeah that’s Clark a little bit.

Likes to stay somewhat in the background, but at the same time likes to think big, overall strategic planning has what’s the old saying? Cordial and polite to everybody, but it’s got a plan to kill everyone, which is pretty much the way we like to function. I’m glad this is on Zoom.

It’s the only one that’s ever worked for me, and funnily enough, I’ve often had people poo poh the idea of the MBTI because of I understand that a lot of these things, are not scientific. And yet having worked with so many psychologists, that’s [00:02:00] also a discipline that’s far from scientific.

Tony: It’s a typology, so it should be fairly stable over time because they’re using either or when they’re asking questions they’re getting your preferences all the time. So you, by asking a number of questions they put you into that typology, which is cool.

What did you say you were again? 

Rob: Clark. So he is a rational like me. This would be interesting for you for the way that you make it more granular because clark and I only differ in terms of I’m a P and he’s a J, but we are both INT.

So we’re both in the rational school. And interestingly, 

Clark: Rob, I, when I look at you before you ever mentioned that I knew that you were an INTP. It’s funny because my wife is an IST or much more action oriented. And I’m always wary of mentioning this in groups of people that have any work within a corporate or organizational setting because somebody’s always got really strong opinions on this.

And yet, I saw sometime last year when I was convalescent after my accident I came across this guy, I think his name is Bus Manti. I can’t remember his first name. But he is, he’s quite well known. And he is a little bit of a popular sort of, figure on the [00:03:00] internet, who’s an ex CIA operative, but I didn’t know this. He was saying that the CIA uses the MBTI routinely because it’s a very good, quick, way of judging roughly the perspective that a person might have with regards to any given situation.

I did some work last year with a group of people that work in television, from the production side and there was some issues within the team. It was quite a big team, and all I asked the boss to do was send me their, ask them to take a an MBTI test. Anyone, it didn’t really matter.

Because even if somebody comes out, for instance, let’s say as an ESTJ and you look at them and talk to them and ask them about it their response to what. When you tell them that they’re an ESTJ and what that sort of person is tells you very much whether they are or not, because there’s a certain characteristic that tends to we’re looking for those behaviors within ourselves, aren’t we?

Very often people are more than willing to tell you whether things ring true or not. And I had a dozen people around a table. That was the only information I had. Within five minutes [00:04:00] we’d gotten to the nub of a big issue. It was a behavioral a dynamic between two or three people.

And it was all about this behavioral this typing issue because one was much more introverted, but was being expected to do a much more of an extroverted role. Was trying to maintain the role that they placed her in and it just wasn’t working. Other people that were much more extroverted couldn’t understand it.

So it was really interesting to see. And funnily enough, the whole conversation started because I asked one particular person, what they felt about their type. And they could see some things. But then I said so you are the you are the troublemaker here. Knowing that, that was something that sort of person would really book against.

It was very interesting to see how they’re all panned out. It nearly did kick off into a massive argument, but it got to where we wanted to go really quickly. And I think that’s why when this guy Bustamanti talks about it, he said It’s a very good, rough and ready guide that’s nearly always quite accurate.

And I found that to be the case. I’ve been in lots of corporate settings where they do all sorts of other typologies, but for me, it is an area that, that’s very hard to [00:05:00] pin down scientifically. But if you can get a guide that works fairly well then stick with it.

’cause if you understand it, then at least you, because there’s an art to it as well, isn’t it? Yeah, 

Tony: absolutely. Yeah the four temperaments use MBTI as its basis. It’s it’s almost like it pulls four types together into a into a temperament type. So where you are both got NT in your play, you’re classified as rationals, but obviously you both express it in different ways.

Rob your INTJ did you say?. 

And your INTP. Yeah, 

Rob: so Clark’s much more definite in his judgment, I’m much more goes 

Tony: Straight. ’cause he’s leading through that intuition and you are leading through that heavily, need to think it through before you get to the bit that you’re going to stand behind, fascinating stuff. 

Clark: We it does speak to a very interesting aspect of human nature and that is that it seems if you were to pay much attention to this the whole idea of psychometric testing and typology, that we are fairly fluid in our character up until a certain point and then it becomes more and more concrete.

 I dunno about you [00:06:00] guys, but for me, that is definitely proven by the behavior that I see around me. Most people, over time become the thing that they are. And it’s fascinating actually because people say that, you can’t break that people, the whole of mankind down into 12 different types.

We’re all individuals, we’re all we all have control over who we want to become and so on. And yet you hear the same people say that they’re turning into their father or their mother, that they have behaviors that they just don’t understand exactly and so on. And you think, my goodness, are we being scientific about this or not?

The point is really it is a science and an art. And if you try to dump it into field completely. You’re you’re gonna get unstuck. 

Tony: If you try and stand behind the signs too much you’re gonna get caught out. ’cause anybody can challenge it, right?

 I’ve got twin nephews, identical twins couldn’t tell ’em apart as kids, but incredibly different personalities. So born with different types, if you like.

It’s the nature nurture thing, right? 

We’re obviously we’re a combination of both. As we go through life, the environment shapes us. [00:07:00] Social environment, school, family life, good experiences, bad experiences. We all get banged outta shape over time because of the experiences that we have.

But there’s definitely that thread of we were always this, it was in there. Sometimes it just gets crushed down and sometimes we go into work and it’s crushed down because we’re just trying to fit in or we’re trying to be somebody that we’re not. All of those things start to, to play out. 

It’s not measurable to the nth degree that you can say this is definitive, but I think the typologies just show us that as humans, there’s a lot of who we are, male and female in terms of characteristics that we share. 

Tony: We’re all humans. So we all share intuition.

We all share the ability to think, we all share the ability to have feelings, whether we express them or not, or show them to the world depends on the type of person that we are. It’s where we are similar that we can feel like maybe we belong to a tribe or it’s more easy for me to get on with you ’cause we like each other.

 I might recruit you because you’re like me subconsciously I’m biased towards people that are [00:08:00] like me. All of those kind of things start to play out. But I think we are to large degrees human beings who are in lots of ways similar, but it’s at the differences, that cognitive diversity where the real goal is that when you’re trying to mold teams, especially when you’re trying to put people together, where we can recognize, those, bring those differences to the surface so that we can lean into them when we need other people.

If everyone was just like me, it’d be chaotic. It’d be absolutely bonkers. I need Clark by my side to go, just stop doing that. That’s ridiculous. Let’s do this. And then we could have a discussion about it and we’d end up in a much better place. 

Rob: Yeah, it’s the differences that create growth, isn’t it?

I think it’s a mistake to try and make it too scientific. the reason it’s not that scientific is because it’s not prescriptive, it’s descriptive and it’s a tool for self-awareness. It’s not a tool for limiting. These are my tendencies, this was how I’m more likely to be. 

 When you were talking Clark, I thought, we do become like our parents. And I’ve noticed, as you get older, things that [00:09:00] I never thought I would be like my dad are coming up. But part of that is not so straightforward as nature nurture, because genes need certain environments in which to express and some genes express later. 

Rob: So it still can be a genetic component. But it’s not about trying to make people robots, but it’s a tool of self-awareness. I’ve always used not as specific and scientifically as you’ve done Tony, but, I never really found much from the Big five.

I know it’s the scientifically proven one. I the Enneagram I liked for fears, Kolbe, all of these different types, but also even just things like astrology. And it’s not because there’s any basis, isn’t it? It gives you something that it is true or it’s not true, but it puts you closer to the truth.

Clark: Here’s the thing, then Rob that’s interesting that you mentioned astrology, the interesting thing about, apparently if you listen to what the information says regarding, MBTI, they talk about IN TJs is not necessarily needing proof [00:10:00] for something other than that it works.

One of the problems that, that INTJs tend to have, that I’ve noticed is they will see a couple of things happen and see that as a pattern and based on that pattern, ’cause two things don’t make a pattern, obviously, but based on that, they will jump from step two to step 10 and start acting on that.

And they can often get blindsided. That’s the thing that I’ve definitely seen happen to me and to other INTJs that I know. But interestingly. They tend not to be bogged down in dogma. So if they see something that’s seems to work they’ll go with it and they don’t necessarily need an explanation.

Whereas, for instance, Rob, like my wife who are both ips definitely need to know some version of why before they can move forward. We have not the slightest interest in that. 

Unlike the astrology page in your local newspaper, it doesn’t tell you what’s gonna happen next week or anything like that. But it’s, again as Rob said it’s descriptive. It is a way of better understanding yourself.

I dunno if you guys saw a post I did on LinkedIn.

A couple of days ago. And it is really interesting because it got a few laughs, [00:11:00] but somebody took enormous offense to it. If you read through the comments, you can see a couple of people took offense to it.

But one person actually wrote to me via dm and we took enormous exception to it. I did reply. I had the conversation with them and I said, look, you need to understand, why I do these things. 

I poke people because I want to get a response. Because, most of the driven on that platform is just mind-numbing and it sends people into stupor.

But I said, it’s all about your perception of a situation, how you perceive that, and then your perspective on that thing. I said, because one of the problems that we have today is that people have been given so much information via the internet that they feel now, or we have a tendency to feel that we’re right.

 It’s patently clear that nobody on this planet can be right about everything all of the time. And yet there is a tendency to think that my political opinions, my religious beliefs, my ideological perception of things is correct. What I constantly try to do is to shake that up a little [00:12:00] bit because one of the problem, one of the biggest problems we have in the world today is that everybody thinks this.

Clearly we’re all at odds with each other because if you think anything differently, there’s no room for maneuver. And I said, I’m constantly trying to get people to, to realize that everything is just your perception and you’ve got a perspective on that particular set of ideas. And this whole idea, for instance, of typology is, speaks to this.

People will say what utter nonsense. How do you know? You just don’t know. 

One of the biggest issues that face us today as as a species is to recognize, and this is really odd to me because we’ve come so far technologically and yet spiritually, we’ve become much more entrenched. Ideologically we’ve become much more narrow in, in our views. It just strikes me as odd that we would, we ought to have become much more enlightened, it seems to me. And yet we’ve become the exact opposite. And so you see people on, on, on the issue of anything, let’s say gay marriage the war in Ukraine whatever it might be, [00:13:00] people have got these entrenched ideas.

And it is, it’s almost like we’re 15th century medieval peasants in the way we look at stuff. We have no room for any sort of maneuver on our belief system. And it just strikes me as strangely odd that people. Cannot recognize the need for other people’s viewpoints and perspectives on things.

And this whole typology, psychometric thing, I think speaks to that to a certain degree because once you recognize that we, we are all set in certain ways, and our job is to try to understand other people’s ways of doing things so that we can understand each other better.

But it is probably the one of the most dramatic responses I’ve got to a post, 

Tony: I’ll go back, I’ll go back and look at the comments. I’ve glanced at it. ’cause it must have been when it just popped up in my feed and I was in the middle of something and I had a quick squeeze through.

And I think there was only about two comments on it at the time. And I thought, oh, this will be, I haven’t gone back to it. I’ll go back to it after. Let’s you Yeah. Somebody said it was vile. 

Rob: We become set in our ways because we don’t want to change. And I [00:14:00] think it, it comes about that we all have a narrative of the world that puts us as the star, the hero of the story. And navigating life is about adapting to life.

And we either adapt, or what we try to do as a defense mechanism is make the world adapt to us. So we try and get everyone, we try and make everyone else wrong because the diff the alternative is that we have to change. And it’s the discomfort of change. I think as a defense mechanism, we try to avoid believing anything different.

A lot of people don’t look again at certain types. But a lot of people are very set in a way, I think. And you can see it in cults, and I think you’re seen it with Trump and that and the whole maga lot that the more that things prove 

Clark: You just described something like 300 million people.

Rob: About half of that, but Yeah. Is about, there’s a solid core of deeply stupid people. And the more crazy it [00:15:00] all gets, the more, the more they believe in it. 

Clark: The, so here’s the thing Rob I, and as always I absolutely agree with you, but there’s always a, but the thing for me and the interesting aspect of the whole psychometric side of things for me has always been, I think I know myself fairly well and I’m always open to learning more about myself. 

If somebody says, Clark, you have a deep underlying issue because your mom didn’t pat your back when you did well or something, whatever. I’ll listen to that. I’m open to at least giving that some sort of consideration.

My interest with the whole psychometric side of thing is to try and understand the other side the other person. So for instance, like I said, somebody said that my post was vile. And I will sit and think about that for a, for quite a while because I think, what an interesting word. It’s a strong word, right?

The automatic reaction that a lot of people might have is to respond with anger. You’ve said this before, Rob, a lot of these reactions stem from fear. When we want things to be right and to be true, it’s because there’s a fear that [00:16:00] our worldview will be challenged or dismantled in some way and if it falls apart then what have we got if our view of the world is incorrect.

So I understand that people have a need to label things. But when I saw this this comment, I just thought, what? That’s so interesting. Somebody actually took the trouble to open their laptop or their phone and write these words. For some reason, I dunno but I gave quite a considered response I thought to this because I said, look, maybe you’re looking at this the wrong way.

It can be, it could be perceived as being rude or, unkind in some way or maybe even sexist. I dunno. But that’s the point, because if you give it some thought, you wanna ask yourself why I’m saying this. And the whole knee jerk reaction thing that happens so often these days is because people have become enormously entrenched in their ideologies.

And the reason that they react so strongly must be because they’re afraid that they’re wrong. 

Tony: There’s another side, there’s another side to that Clark. When I hear somebody’s response to that is so visceral, [00:17:00] right? They’ve gone, they’ve come out with the word vile. There’s a trait or a tendency towards disgust sensitivity.

So some people are, have got a very acute sense of disgust that manifests as and it’s it’s all biologically wired like the germaphobes who are afraid of anything in case they get an infection. So, when I see somebody that, that’s immediate response is, that’s vial, they’re demonstrating to me quite a high level of disgust sensitivity.

So they get disgusted by things quite easily and they almost can’t help it. They just feel that way and that’s how it comes out. And it is handy to know if you have that. 

It’s handy to pull people up and ask them, where does that come from? Because they may not know that they have that or why that exists within them.

What is it about that that, that is so offensive? If it’s, indeed it might not even be offensive. And obviously in this case, maybe it was for them, but it may not be. Just a, my, my point here is I think as much as it can be, perception related, it can also be a [00:18:00] visceral reaction to, in this case, your post.

That’s disgusting. People who use that sort of language, that vile, like they have this degree of sensitivity towards anything that, so inside them there’s I can’t touch that. I can’t go near it. It’s, it, there’s something bad, it equates to bad, it equates to evil.

It equates to, potential putting me at risk if I go there. All of those kind of things. 

Clark: There’s the thing, and it’s a really 

Tony: visceral Yeah, it’s a 

Clark: deep seated thing. That whole idea of disgust that I was literally working myself up to come to that point. Because what you’ve just said is I think spot on. Because I remember reading some research, or a few years ago now relating to not just, I hate it when these conversations devolve back to the Nazis, but any system that commits any sort of atrocity towards others. And we’re not just talking about the Nazis, for instance, in Rwanda.

The Hutu and Theis the way the way they were able to butcher each other, and the way that the Germans were obviously able to [00:19:00] sanction the treatments of the Jews. 

Throughout history, people have been able to do things. We think about the racially motivated lynchings that took place in America through the late 18 hundreds and the early 19 hundreds.

These are all made possible according to the research that I read anyway, because of this feeling that’s been developed. This is was the interesting point for me, this feeling of disgust towards the other types of people. And to take Germany, for instance, over a period of time, the narrative started to speak to the fact that these people these subhumans were disgusting because of X, Y, and Z.

And you see this a lot, and as you say, the the reaction is visceral in people when they have a feeling, for instance, to toxic masculinity is disgusting because they immediately reach for imagery relating to some of the things that they’ve seen that men can do and have done and have perpetrated towards women in the past.

And, it sets up a feeling of disgust in all of us. [00:20:00] But what happens is that feeling of disgust then gets attached to all the people in that group.

We have, for instance, conversations about toxic masculinity. Is it that masculinity is toxic or is it that certain people can demonstrate that type of ma masculinity that is toxic?

And that differentiation is crucial because if you are subscribed to one over the other, then the disgust you feel towards this type of behavior can be attached to all men and anybody. Then that demonstrates any sort of rhetoric around the idea of women being objectified, for instance, in that post, about sitting on somebody’s face automatically engenders this feeling of disgust because it must mean that this is demonstration of toxic masculinity. 

The reason I was try to be very rational in my argumentation with this person was because I wanted them to see, look, this is the danger I think that we’re in society today. That we place these categorizations, these labels on people and say that they have said this, therefore they must be part of this group of people.

 We [00:21:00] feel discusted towards that. So we must eliminate them, not eliminate the behavior, but eliminate those people. 

That’s where I think we’re in trouble today, because people have spoken, for instance, in the United States about, the possibility of civil war. And you do see that there’s the reactions of some Democrats towards Republicans and vice versa is outrage and vehement and disgusted and all these other feelings that are strongly motivated towards acting on those feelings. And that concerns me because the idea of getting a perspective on somebody’s viewpoint is the only way I think that you can dismantle this idea that all people are, or all of these types of people are X. The only way you can get rid of that is by getting some perspective on your Well.

Tony: Exactly. And it’s a difference between going straight to judgment that’s vile. What you have done is vile. It’s an affront to my perception is a front to who I am. Versus I’m actually gonna get curious about that. I’m gonna explore with Clark I’ve got these feelings.

It’s a completely different disposition. If I come back to [00:22:00] you with some questions and go wow, that’s impacting me in a certain, rather than go straight to judgment that’s vile. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just come together and explore the idea? So if they’d understood where that article was coming from, what its intent was, what the thought process is going on with you in order that you post that, then that’s a completely different experience that they’ve had. That’s far nearer the reality and the truth of what was intended than the immediate perception is. That’s vile I react to.

I don’t like it, and I’m gonna tell him. 

Clark: And that’s why these these typological assessments are useful because if you start to get a feeling for the sort of person or the sort, type, or psychometric type that a person is, you can understand, for instance, that they’re much more inclined to look at the things in this particular way or they need evidence that’s presented to them in this way.

And so far from sticking people into boxes, that, that makes us all, uniform and homogenous. It [00:23:00] actually helps us to understand that there are various ways of perceiving the world and acting upon that perception. If, for instance, somebody takes unkindly to something that I say, and I ask a couple of very simple questions about their response to that with a view to get an idea of the sort of psychometric type that they are.

I can then start to get their perspective on the situation. And, very often when I’ve used this in work as I said with the t the TV people that I worked with, I made some comments that started a little bit of a disagreement, but it, the whole idea behind that was to see how people reacted.

Having done that, it was quite easy then to say, look, I understand that you have difficulty having responsibility placed upon you because you feel that the expectations are then a target that you have to meet. But actually, that’s not what they’re saying. All they’re saying is, could you try strive towards this goal?

We’ll help you as much as we can. It helped people to understand the viewpoint of the people that they were working with. This whole idea of psychometric testing and typology and [00:24:00] so on, far from being some sort of esoteric voodoo woowoo thing that, that is ab actually nonsense is a useful way of and when we talked about your typology, your assessment tool, you can’t have too many of these things.

I don’t think the fact that we were trying to understand how we deal with each other is always useful. So anything that helps us to try to get, and if I said to somebody you are an ESTP, so I think that you look at this situation in this way and they say no, actually I’ll look at it this way.

Great. Then the conversation started even if it started incorrectly. The conversation was an important one to have. And from that perspective, it’s very useful for me because, and for all of us, I think, because if I look at somebody like Rob, for instance, and I say as an I-N-T-P-I, I tend to get the feeling that whilst you take in a lot of information, you then often struggle to formulate that in a way that you can present it to other people.

And he might say, I can understand why you might think that. ’cause I have had issues with that in the past, but actually that’s not a problem [00:25:00] for me. But the fact that we’ve had that conversation, the fact that I’ve looked at them and tried to assess how he’s perceiving the world and how that compares to my perception of the world, that’s the start of the conversation.

So in as much as it it may well be wrong scientifically, it is a perfect avenue for us to pursue the way and the strange thing was, for instance, with that comment on my post, and maybe the person didn’t see my reply, but they haven’t answered. And I found that fascinated because I entered into a conversation and the person didn’t reply.

That may mean that they just haven’t seen it, but it also may mean they’re still washing their hands, Clark, they’re still washing their hands. They’re washing their eyes out with bleach. Yeah. 

The great thing is if you look at any of these things and even going back to the human design thing that, is for me bordering on some sort of it is mysterious, let’s say I can’t get my head round it, but if you look at any of those things, it, if you are curious about them, it suggests that you are there for curious about people and consequently, you are therefore [00:26:00] interested in other people’s perspective, and that’s something that’s sadly lacking in the world today. 

Rob: I’ve never heard of disgust sensitivity. I dunno if it’s a thing or if you’ve just come up with it, it is a thing, but I’ve never heard of that.

That’s another one than one hundred and six, a hundred sixty one times. It is funny that you end on that point because I think there is a spectrum, as I’m listening, I think there’s a spectrum of how open people are to the world, and I would say that disgust sensitivity is highly correlated with a closed world view.

I’m remembering I used to have debates with my mom and my sister, because they were a Catholic household and I was like, this doesn’t make any sense. It’s a ridiculous story. And I was just pull apart religion. They would say you’ve gotta have religion ’cause otherwise, people will just behave like savages. It’s not religion that’s stopping people from doing that. I was just questioning mum on these things and she’d go I’m not gonna talk to you anymore because you’ll change the way I think.

And I thought about, growing up in that kind of religious thing and what I came to the conclusion was that religion was a comfort [00:27:00] blanket and it gave people a way of understanding the world without them having to think very deeply for a lot of people. 

I can’t have that. I’ll share my view and then we can differ and then we can expand. My problem with religion is seems to me more about social control than anything else. Because when you look at Christianity, they did exactly what Jesus, in the sermon on the Mount told ’em not to do.

Rob: In Buddhists did exactly what Buddha told ’em not to do. 

They took what both of those said, Buddha said, don’t take my word, don’t believe me because of who I am. Test it for yourself. And then it’s made into a dogma. 

My understanding is a lot of people take religion and they go I don’t have to think about it because it’s all done for me.

This is good, this is bad. If I follow these rules I’m good. And I get into heaven and it’s not having to think too much. 

I think we’ve gone from tribes where we all have this tribal mentality and these are like us. That’s good, that’s bad. And what we do is we objectify people who [00:28:00] don’t fit into, because we have this simplistic view, it’s good, bad, and anyone who isn’t becomes objectified and people become objects in the way of what we want or in the way of our clean, nice, simple way of thinking of things.

We’ve gone from geographic tribes to, we’ve become globalization we’ve created psychographic tribes of people who think like us, people who are Democrats, people who are Republicans, people who are whatever liberals or all these different types. And it works on an overall basis when actually the world is much more complex and nuanced.

 It’s not either or, but it’s both. But it’s, what are we missing? 

The spectrum is people who want a simplistic view that they don’t have to work that much so they know what it is and people who are looking for, to develop and expand their view. And I think disgust is kind of a defense mechanism. 

Tony: Know Clark t get a [00:29:00] pick up on that. I did a quick search on discuss sensitivity just to give you the key points. So it is a thing and how it’s related to behavior. Is it avoidance people with high disgust sensitivity more likely to avoid situations that could cause them to feel yucky, feel disgust, moral judgments, and this is the one that’s related to your post Clark.

People with high disgust sensitivity are more likely to make harsh moral judgments of others. And it, it can predict how people feel about groups that threaten sexual morality. And there’s two types. There’s pathogen disgust, which is the germaphobes, the OCDs, washing the hands, men multiple times, all of that sort of stuff.

And then there’s sexual disgusted, which is probably more related to the, the post, and then factors that influence personality, gender and early experiences. So yeah, it’s basically it’s biological thing that evolved in is to protect us from getting infected effectively, to steer us away from [00:30:00] disease.

That’s where it was formed, and now obviously it’s become more ethically aligned or morally aligned anyway, so it is a thing. 

Clark: It’s interesting though that Tony, when you talk about the idea of having a revulsion towards pathogens. I wonder how people with that type of sensitivity would’ve reacted several hundred years ago before pathogens were a thing.

I I suspect that’s where demons, which is, and all the other things that scared people may have come from because 

Tony: yeah, 

Clark: I think the revulsion originates not outside of the person, but inside the person, by which I mean that the problem arises from a fear, a generalized fear that then focuses on something, yeah, rather than actual danger from pathogens.

And like all phobias, they tend towards the ir, irrational, not necessarily always, but certainly it’s a, it’s an aspect of it. With regards to religion, I find that a fascinating conversation because. I’ve been heavily involved with discussions around religion for years and years.

I [00:31:00] married somebody who was deeply religious, so we had some very long, hard conversations about my disinclination towards certain activities. The fact that I didn’t behave in the way that was expected of me and so on. The interesting thing I find about that whole conversation is, and it’s a massive subject probably for another day, I think.

If you were to say to somebody give me one person that, that you think could really back up your ideas against religion. They might, some of them might come up with somebody like Richard Dawkins, for instance, who wrote the book, the God Delusion. Is that right? God delusion. 

Rob: Yeah.

Yeah. Prominent atheist. Yes. And, but he almost made atheism into a religion. Almost. He, yeah, he did. So this is the 

Clark: point for me. There’s another guy called Rupert Sheldrake, another guy, a very intelligent man, great thinker. And he wrote another book following the similar premise, premise to the God delusion, I can’t remember what it’s called now, but it was a, something delusion.

And it was all of the things that atheists believe that are [00:32:00] irrational. There’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of them. Starting with the Big Bang, for instance. So the interesting thing for me is that there was a guy called Thomas Szasz, who’s a psychiatrist, I think he’s Hungarian.

But I’ve been fascinated by this guy for years because he talks about how psychology, for instance, is a religion, and how he basically follows exactly the same formula as a ministry. The way a priest would often listen to confession. This is exactly what psychologists do.

He highlights and emphasizes some of the similarities between psychology and certain religions. And this is my point. We’ve gone away from this idea of superstitious religion to a scientific religion where now science is the new God. And on the basis of and let’s not forget, for instance that eugenics was a science back in the twenties. This was the science that told us that we could kill people. This was the science that came up with euthanasia. The one that said we need to get rid of mentally and physically defective people. That was a science. Thankfully, it isn’t anymore.

Yet some of the [00:33:00] things that we believe, to me, smack very strongly of religion. So when people say, religion has caused all the trouble in the war in, in the world, it, that’s bollocks. Stalin wasn’t religious and he killed 20 million people. It’s, it is utter nonsense.

And that for me is lazy thinking because there’s much more to it. And I’m not saying you are responsible for this lazy thinking. It is an avenue that we often go down when we talk about religion. And the thing is, you go to Papua N ew Guinea, and people walking around with these little gourds on their dicks and flipping bamboo skirts and bones in their hair.

They’ve got a religion and we look at them and think, oh, poor people. Look at them. They don’t know any better. We’ve got science, we’ve got the CERN Institute in Switzerland and we can got Hadron Colliders and all that sort of stuff. We’re not like that. We’re exactly like that.

And in fact the beliefs that, that all of us hold, if you listen to anybody, whether they’re a Democrat, whether they’re a trans rights activist, whether they’re a just stop oil activist, whatever their beliefs are all put together a religion based on [00:34:00] what they’ve said.

And this, for me speaks to exactly what we’ve been talking about, but 

Tony: it’s not spirituality though, is it Clark, there’s a difference between the doctrine or the dogma. You could say Christianity in, multiply it in numerous ways to find each church that’s profited on the back of the doctrine that they’ve, tied themselves to versus spirituality. A sense of why are we here, sense of purpose, people, getting, finding a lot of meaning in, that they find themselves in service to. It becomes a very spiritual life, very spiritual experience. Nothing to do with whether I’m a Catholic or a Jew or a Muslim.

Clark: But that’s the thing, Tony. Sorry to interrupt you. I was just gonna get to my final point was this, the place that I’m working at now is a house that belonged to certain members of a large aristocratic family that was basically the family that founded Barclays Bank and some other institutions.

When I looked into it, ’cause I found some letters and stuff I just find this history quite interesting. It turns out that these people that founded Barclays Bank, came from the north of [00:35:00] England and they settled in Norfolk in the late 17 hundreds.

 They were Quakers. I didn’t know very much about Quakers. I know that they make porridge.

 I literally knew nothing about them. And that, for me is a gap that needs to be filled. And I remember being from Birmingham that there’s a part of Birmingham Bourneville where the chocolate factory was, that we’ve always known growing up. There are no pubs in, in Bourneville because it, because the people that owned Bourneville were Quakers.

So that, that sparked my interest. And I did a little bit of a Google search and you suddenly find that there are some fairly famous people that are Quakers. And so I wanted to understand a little bit about who these people were. To cut a long story short, one of the things that I found interesting was that when they go to their meetings, and these people have been around for a long time, they’re pacifists, they don’t go to war, they drive ambulances and that sort of thing.

But when you sit down, apparently, I don’t know for a fact. ’cause I haven’t been there, but the information that I’ve found is that they don’t hold it as necessary to adhere to any specific doctrine. So they’ll sit in a meeting, for instance, they’ll all reflect quietly. And then [00:36:00] if you’ve got something that you want to contribute to the conversation, regardless of what it might be, they’re all prepared to listen.

 I just thought, this is amazing. I’m not saying I’m gonna become one or anything like that, but I just, I thought this is a model that to me makes an enormous amount of sense. And these people have been around for hundreds of years. They have their beliefs. Whatever they, those beliefs are a matter of personal and individual choice.

You may have yours, but as far as each individual is concerned, that’s fine. Believe what you like. However, there is a certain amount of tolerance and amicability that’s necessary to keep this thing going. But I just thought, I think they’re onto something because if Rob me, you and Tony, we all believe different things clearly, but we can have a conversation, we can even disagree vehemently if necessary.

And yet we respect each other’s beliefs. We respect the right that we all have to hold those beliefs. There is nothing about anything that you guys think that I consider to be vile. Nothing that you guys say that I’m disgusted [00:37:00] by because I’m curious that these two people that I really like or that I consider to be intelligent people, they hold a belief that’s different to mine.

Why is that? And that for me is the foundation of everything. And when we go back right to the beginning of our conversation talking about, psychometric testing and typology and so on, we’re all different. We all have different ways. And there, there are only 12 types. But when you think of all the different permutations of how those types might interact with all the different things that go on in the world, it’s endless.

The possibilities of how we approach the world are endless. And when I speak to somebody, for instance, my dad was the exact opposite of me. He was an ESFP, he was gregarious, he was open. He loved life. I’m not saying I don’t love life, but he was out there. He was larger than life.

And when I look at him and think. I dunno how you did it. I dunno how you live like that. Clearly there’s something for me to learn from that. And we can all do that from each other. 

Tony: You’ll never be your dad and he’ll never be you. No. Thank goodness. So you’ll never be in that social environment connecting with people in that [00:38:00] magnan.

It’s just not you, but it’s how we learn from each other. Does it fit right? Yeah. Yeah. If you and your dad were a part of a team or two people like you, a part of a team, there’s times when the other can step forward and be that, and you can be doing what you do. And the power of the two together is that’s where great than the sum of the parts, for example, comes from That’s exactly that. 

Clark: There’s much more to to be learned from and to be enjoyed about our differences than to be disliked. Over the years, I’ve got friends from South America, from Africa, from the Middle East, and the fact that they have customs and cultural ideals and beliefs that are different to mine are, for me, a constant source of enjoyment and happiness and inquiry and how you can look at somebody.

We know that there are people that do bad things, and we should all rightly be disgusted by those bad things and work to eradicate them. But what we consider to be bad is really the point, because the minute we pace a judgment on something, it’s [00:39:00] set in stone. And so it is wrong to kill somebody.

But is it wrong to hold a different belief about how, whether we, we should marry somebody from the same sex, for instance? No. the first time I ever had a conversation with a close family person who was getting married to somebody of the same sex and they had been getting some grief about this because, it is wrong.

 She said, I don’t get it. And I said, look, everybody deserves to be loved. It doesn’t matter who by if you love this person and they love you, that’s really all we need to think about. All the other stuff that the people are saying to you about this is all just window dressing to hide their fear and their own insecurities.

And those are the things that I think psychometric testing and the typology things that you guys have been talking about, they’re the things that can open up these conversations for us to do away with all this nonsense. The only bad things are the things that we do to hurt each other.

Everything else is game on as far as I’m concerned. 

Rob: I think you’ve really summed it up is that when I was talking about that dichotomy, it’s about [00:40:00] openness to life. Where I’m talking about religion that isn’t about religion, it’s a people’s response. Yeah. That comes up in religion, but it’s also in coaching.

It’s also in therapy. When you look at therapy, certain therapist have to do this. They have a doctrine, they have a dogma that and they all see the world through these different things, whether you’re psychodynamic or transactional analyst or whatever it is. Humans have a way of trying to simplify life.

 I think it’s because life is completely unpredictable. It’s too big for any of us to understand. It goes back to cognitive economy, that we simplify things down to a set of heuristics. And they’re not true. But we do need to have some operating principles, and we have to act as if they’re true to actually operate in the world.

But, we have to remember that. We don’t know what’s true, what’s not. And life is a mystery. Joseph Campbell talked about religion. God is the name that we give to the mystery of life. And it’s something we can never know, something that we can never [00:41:00] understand.

And for a lot of people, that is terrifying. And I think that’s why we try and cage life into this set religion. We try and say this coaching school is the answer. This therapy is the answer. This typology is the answer. None of it is the answer, but every part of it is a clue. And the more that we can, live in that without going mad, but just being able to operate in the discomfort of not knowing.

Tony: Sorry. Just pick up on that. If you are more open than you are traditional, let’s say, in terms of your preferences. I prefer the proof of what exists. I prefer to be told the rules. I’ll follow the rules versus I’ll actually try and explore something different.

I’m not gonna take what you’ve told me as certain, I’m gonna go and explore something that could be different. So I live on that spectrum, which keeps me more open-minded about spirituality and all of that versus a more traditional, just tell me the rules and I’ll follow them type person who’s [00:42:00] more likely a more conservative thinker, who’s more likely to follow a religious doctrine just by nature. And then you get into the fear of uncertainty. Like what happens when we die. I’d much rather believe that if I’ve been a good person, I can go to heaven.

‘ cause that gives me a sense I can live with myself knowing that. Believing that, versus not, it’s that level of discomfort or comfort with the uncertainty of it all versus needing to get control over things that we’ve clearly got no control over. So there’s two. 

One is the typology around that which, ’cause you can, people are predisposed to be more likely to follow a, formulate religious doctrine just by the type of person that they’re more traditional, more compliant, all of those types of things.

Versus the exploratory open-mindedness of what could this all mean? What it’s a lifelong search for meaning, there’s two different things, but then there’s the fear factor, which is, oh, this world terrifies me. It’s changing too fast. I don’t know what the [00:43:00] hell’s going on.

So let me just lock onto something that gives me some sort of grounding, that I can live by. And all that thing just makes it beautifully 

Rob: human. And that’s why we need everyone, because we need someone who’s gonna create systems that are gonna be repeatable and stable, the kind of managers of the world and the administrators.

And we need the adventurers and the pioneers who are gonna go off and try new things. We need the innovators who are gonna create new things, and we need the people who are going to teach and go to war and all of that stuff. So we, that’s why we need, all of it. We just need to appreciate more.