18 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
of thinking are not as important, because I am not aware of them. Out of
sight is out of mind, so to speak. What happens when I meet a Teacher
person? He will tend to assume that the only type of thinking which really
matters is Teacher thought. Each of us will observe the behavior of the
other and come to the conclusion that the other person is either trying to be
obnoxious or else acting less than sane. After all, we both know that no
person in his right mind would act and think like that other person. But,
what is a right mind? Is it just the room in which I live, or is it the whole
house? A
On the other hand, if I know about cognitive styles, I will realize that
other cognitive styles are not crazy, but merely blind. Just as I live in one
„room‟ and may not see the „room‟ in which another person lives, so he
may be blind to the „room‟ which I call home. No one has the whole
picture.
I have suggested that each mode of thought, or room in the house,
corresponds to a physical part of the human brain. Lane and I reached this
conclusion after comparing personality with neurology. Our research
began in about 1978 when Lane stumbled across a scheme which divided
people into seven different categories. Using this „pie-cutting tool‟ as a
hypothesis, Lane analyzed the biographies of about 250 historical figures,
individuals such as Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Napoleon
Bonaparte, John F. Kennedy, Florence Nightingale and so on. Amazingly,
the „cutting tool‟ survived, and the result was a list of character traits for
each of the seven cognitive styles.
When we examined these personality traits in more detail, we realized
that most of them could be „boiled down‟ into a few fundamental
characteristics. For example, we noticed that the Exhorter person is an
emotional driver who always pushes and prods others. He continually uses
excitement to „exhort‟ people from one task or vision to another. This
single attribute of motivating and pushing kept showing up throughout the
behavior of the Exhorter. Similarly, when we looked at the traits of the
Contributor person, we saw that the idea of value was deeply rooted within
his thinking. This allowed our examination of personality to move beyond
a mere description of „what‟ to a look at „why‟ and „how.‟
When I looked at neuropsychology, I found that the underlying mental
strategies which we had discovered in personality also described the
functions of specific parts of the brain. The location of Exhorter strategy,
A I specifically chose to mention the Teacher and Mercy persons because
neither can see the rest of the house. As the chart indicates, most styles can
see at least some of the other rooms. The styles which have greater
awareness tend to fall into another type of mental „blindness.‟ They can see
the content of other rooms but they are unaware of how those rooms
operate.