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Intro/Outro (00:08):
This is the happy scientist podcast. Each episode is designed to make you more focused, more productive, and more satisfied in the lab. You can find us online at Bitesizebio.com/happy scientist. Your hosts are Kenneth Vogt, founder of the executive coaching firm Vera Claritas and Dr. Nick Oswald PhD bioscientist and founder of Bitesize Bio.

Nick Oswald (00:39):
Hello and welcome to the happy scientist podcast from Bitesize Bio. If you want to become a happier, healthier, and more productive scientist, you are in the right place. I'm Nick Oswald. The founder of Bitesizebio.com, where we provide bio-science researchers with help for improving their technical skills, soft skills and their wellbeing. And in this podcast, we will be focusing on their wellbeing with me, actually, the driving force of this podcast is Kenneth Vogt. I've worked with Ken for over seven years now with him as my business mentor and colleague, I knew that his expertise could help a lot of researchers. So that's why we decided to start this podcast in these sessions, we'll hear mostly from Ken on principles that will help shape you for a happier and more successful career along the way. I'll pitch in with points from my personal experience as a scientist and from working with Ken. So let's bring into mind himself, Kenneth, how are you.

Kenneth Vogt (01:38):
Doing great. So here we are. In the third and final part of our series, recognizing the core mindsets that control your world. So you said there are six mindsets. We discussed the first four in the last two episodes, and we're gonna wrap up with the final two in this episode. So when we talk about core mindsets or saying is we're all, we all wear many masks and we adapt to changing circumstances, but each of us has an ultimate ever-present core mindset that drives who we are and how we live our lives and how we process information, how we interact with others. Now, improvement is a possibility with focused intention. And then you can take on the strengths of a mindset that is even more powerful than the one you may personally have, and you'll learn how to overcome temptations and neutralize problems that perhaps you've never been able to deal with before.

(02:39):
So there's impetus to understand these mindsets and to see if there's a way for you to grow in, in your own mindset. So a quick recap, we started with our first mindset of people that we called connectors, and we labeled them as purple and they have a group focused and they're kind of tribal in their outlook and their attitude on things. So they don't really have much care for their own self interest. Other than for the group, they figured the group will keep them, keep them in survival mode. So they don't really focus so much on their own personal, their own personal needs. Somebody grows beyond that. They get more personally focused and they become red and we call them independents and independents really care about themselves. And they like to be the center of attention and they definitely care about what's in it for me and faith.

(03:34):
Like every group think the whole world sees things like that. They presume that you are only in it for you. And so knowing that you have, you have some power in how you can deal with them, it makes it makes it easier. When you understand where they're coming from. If someone expands beyond that, they once again, turn to the group and say, what could be better than to be a builder, to be blue, to have structure and controls in the world that protect everyone, which is for my benefit, but then why not benefit of other people too? So they become, they can on the plus side, they become structured on the downside they become bureaucratic a lot of those folks in our world. And there's a necessity for that in our world. The structure of our, of our environments, of, of our laboratories, of our universities, of our companies is, is absolutely requirement.

(04:34):
We, it would be anarchy without it. So there's an understanding why this is beneficial. Again, if someone keeps growing in their mindset, now they start to think more about how these rules can be stifling. These there's a lot of red tape. There's, there's all, all of the stuff that's in the way that, that makes it harder to get things done. And you think if only we could break out of that and they become orange and they get focused on accomplishment and, and you know, just getting things done and creating new things they're not just interested in the status quo, they want to go forward. And so there's a lot of benefits to that outlook because you know, that that's where things get done. The downside of that attitude is it can become a little myopic. That's it, they're concerned mostly about the accomplishment of that they're invested in it and other people may have other interests. And so those are orange folks. Now we deal with a lot of orange people in, in our workday life. We deal with a lot of blue people in our workday life. And there's, there's some red folks around they're hard to avoid, and occasionally we deal with some purple people.

Nick Oswald (05:51):
So, so can you just, you just introduced something different there that you haven't talked about in the last couple of episodes, but I think it's really useful, and that is the upside and the downside of each mindset, you know? So when you go up to the mindset, you gain something, but you also have get a limitation. You also acquired a limitation. I think that's a really useful really useful point actually, because if nothing else, it actually helps to realize that it helps you to realize that you know, that even though you've moved to the next, you know, if you feel you've moved to the next level or you're a level above in quotes someone else, there's still, you know, it's not perfect.

Kenneth Vogt (06:32):
Yeah. Yeah. And that's true. There, there are trade offs and at every step of the way, and it's why people bothered to develop the next mindset it's because at every level we realize their limitations and is there a way to do it better? Is there a way to improve this? And every step of the way is an improvement. Even that first step of being purple, you know, grouping up for survival. That's a great idea. When, when it's just you against the world, it's pretty tough. And, you know, so we can walk through each of these and say, this is, what's good about this. This is what's bad about this, but it's, we gotta be careful as we discussed last week about getting too moralistic about it, you know, it's not a matter of righteousness versus evil, you know, it's not right versus wrong here. It's just matter of this works about this and this part doesn't work so well about this,

Nick Oswald (07:39):
Is that on the the graphic that we have for each stage. Yeah, that's good. Cause I think that really helps to distinguish between. I especially initially find it quite difficult to distinguish between for example, red and orange people. And, but if you have that kind of those different pointers, that can be really helpful. So that will be on the, on the graphic, which is on there, the show notes for this podcast episode,

Kenneth Vogt (08:08):
Right? Sometimes we get, you can look around at the world and just think about, you know, famous people and what color were they? You know, what was this person, what was that person? And you start to see patterns and you start to recognize like, Oh yeah, that, that guy is really red. And that girl's really, you know, you start to see, you start to see it out there in the world. And then you start to realize if you, if you think about that is like, okay, I can do this with movie stars and rock stars. Now I start thinking about people that I know, I think about my family. And I can think about the people in my workplace. I can think about people in my industry and you start to see, ah, this explains a lot about why this person acts and reacts the way they do.

Nick Oswald (08:58):
So I, I think after you talk about the, the, the, the next two mindsets on the, on the continuum, it might be fun to, to go through some people in history and or maybe current prominent people. And let's talk about what mindset you see them categorized as. And then that might give people a handle on how to practically identify people's mindset from their own experience.

Kenneth Vogt (09:25):
Yeah, that's a great idea. And I think that this is one of the things that, that I really want to press here to everything that we're talking about in these podcasts do them. It's, we've all been living this life of taking in knowledge, that's especially true of scientists and especially true of people that have gotten higher degrees taking in knowledge is one thing. But gaining experience is a totally different thing. So I I've structured these things in such a way so that you can not just learn them, but so that you can take them with you and use them. That's why there's only six core mindsets being talked about here. They're mostly six is enough for you to deal with just about everything you deal with in the world. Six is a number you can remember. You can remember what each of these are basically, and you can start applying this right now. You can do it while we're talking, honestly, but you can do it after we're talking for sure.

(10:29):
So let's move on to that next one. So remember we had, we last had somebody who was orange and orange is all about accomplishment and getting things done and cutting through red tape, they got a personal focus, but, but with a good heart, they want to get things done. They want to, they want to move things forward. They want to expand our our world. Well, you take somebody like that and I'll give them a group focus and they become what we call helpers and we'll label them as green, green people. They are the cheerful and happy ones. They are the ones that want to make life better for everyone. So they want to cut red tape not just for themselves. Now they want to see the red tape cut for everybody. They, you know, they, they still appreciate the value of the structure, but they want everybody to have a chance.

(11:22):
They want everybody to, to be able to break out like they've broken out. And these folks are, are not as common in the world as the blue people and the orange people, but we definitely know them. They're, you know, the best bosses are green. The, you know, and maybe you were fortunate enough to have a green boss or maybe, you know, have some green bosses at least within your organization. And they could be people in the industry. And they're definitely a lot of green people in bioscience. You know, as far as as a group, I think their bioscience does better than many other groups in having green people, because they're trying to change the world and they want to do it for the benefit of everybody, not just for the benefit of themselves. So, you know, somebody wanting to develop that new vaccine, that's a very green endeavor.

(12:22):
If somebody can bring a green mindset to that, they can do amazing things. And now I don't, I don't want to take away from the fact that there's, there are just the, again, the structural things that are necessary, nobody's going to develop a new COVID-19 vaccine, who isn't an a bioscientist, this is not something that is going to be done by some teenager tinkering in their garage. You know, this is, this takes the structure. It takes the knowledge and the background and the understanding of the equipment and the history of, of vaccine production and all the rest of that stuff. But it's going to take more than that. It's going to take, it's going to take people that have a greater mindset to be able to do what needs to be done. And it's not just about the, the intellectual part of it, but being willing to give themselves to it, to, to really, to really burn it at both ends, you know, to, to make sure that they aren't stopped by, by practical problems. But they're gonna, they're gonna, it's gonna keep going and keep going and keep going.

Nick Oswald (13:38):
So would you say that it would be an accurate description to see that green is kind of orange with the drive of orange without it being focused on yourself?

Kenneth Vogt (13:49):
Yeah. It's they take it and they go beyond the focus on themselves now. And this is probably an important distinction to make here, too, that, you know, remember red people are focused on themselves and blue people focus more on the group, and it is often blue people focus on a group to the exclusion of the self, which is kind of an artifact of the purple people. Never think about themselves, but by the time you get to green, you don't just think about yourself. You think about yourself and others, as opposed to thinking about others, instead of yourself, you become part of the other because you see, there's not really a separation there that you start to see the benefit for, for, for mankind in what you're doing. And now, now, obviously that can be done with a huge focus, but it isn't necessary.

(14:45):
That has to be that you don't have to be changing the world to be green. You just, what you're is, you're caring about everybody it's going to impact. And whether that's just going to impact your team, or it's going to impact your company or your community, or your family or something local, that's still a green, green mindset. And, and again, you'll see people like that in a world. There are people out there that, that really care about the group, but the group may be small, but you see it and you recognize, you know, that's more than just being blue. And it's certainly more than being purple. This is, this is somebody that's, that's putting more into this and it's, they're not just operating from survival and they're not just operating from a, you know, just a structural requirement. You know, a level I'll call integrity. Integrity is a good thing because, you know, there's a, you know, it means something in physics too, to have physical integrity is something that's going to hold together. Whereas by the time somebody gets to green, there's, there's something more to it than just the physics of it. Now we're talking about the humanity of it, that they're, they're holding it together for the sake of something greater than just the physical connection.

Nick Oswald (16:02):
And so what would be, what would be the downside of being green? What do you lose when you move to green?

Kenneth Vogt (16:09):
Okay. what you, I dunno if I would put it as, as you lose, but what, what you willingly give up is thinking, I only care about my own accomplishment. Now. I care about lots of people having the opportunity for accomplishment, or I don't care only about my own achievement. I, I celebrate achievement wherever it is. I'm not jealous or envious of somebody else's success. I, I rejoice in their success just as if it were my own.

Nick Oswald (16:42):
And so how might like that look, how might that look say from an orange perspective as a negative, it would be that you maybe look less driven or less ambitious.

Kenneth Vogt (16:54):
If they might see it as a zero sum game, that is if you accomplish something and I haven't accomplished something that it was because I couldn't also accomplish all you accomplish. They may see everything as a direct contest where there can only be one winner. So only one can be championed to the orange, but for the green they're like marathon runners that are applauding the other runners also making it across the finish line.

Nick Oswald (17:22):
That's a good analogy. Yeah. Okay. Here's it might seem, it might, I'm just trying to see from how does that look from another perspective that might look a bit weak turn orange person would that be right.

Kenneth Vogt (17:34):
It could. But usually I would say that an orange person, again, will probably is capable of understanding green thinking

Nick Oswald (17:41):
As long as they're the one that's being applauded by the green person.

Kenneth Vogt (17:45):
Well, right. They'll start, they'll see that this is not the same blue with, they'll definitely see blue as weak. This is the person that's just stuck in, in the weeds is how orange person will look at it. Or the green person. They're not going to see him as stuck in the weeds. They're going to be oh why'd. They go back into the weeds. What did they do that for? You know? And, but they can't understand if they, if they make the effort to understand. And so I will call out to those of you who are orange, that when you see green people look more closely recognize what's there because they, these folks will tend to be leaders and people then, and their leaders, because people will follow them. And that's something that an orange person might get frustrated at an orange person. We look at this and saying, I am, I am a leader.

(18:30):
People should be paying attention. Why aren't they following me? Because you're not acting green enough. That's why through.

Nick Oswald (18:36):
Too selfish or to self focused, rather? Yeah,

Kenneth Vogt (18:39):
Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and again, an orange person will realize I'm not selfish. I'm not red. And, and so the, why are people treat me that way? Well, because, you know, especially if, if they are blue or if they are, or purple or red themselves, that the distinction of orange and red will be difficult for them, they won't be able to tell it apart. So whereas that green person there they've made the flip to be in group focused that even people at the lowest echelon can understand. So, you know, these are the advantages of this in every step. You're going to realize that I've been so immersed in either being group focused or being personally focused, that it is time for me to expand out and start thinking the other way for awhile.

(19:27):
Sometimes the thing for you to do is to get more personally focused. Sometimes the thing for you to do is get more group focused. There is no right or wrong about this. It's it's what's next. Well, you do what's next. And you may remember when we talked about human needs and we talked about growth and contribution. And I said that people often who had the, had those focuses would flip from time to time where they, they, their primary was contribution and their secondary was growth. And then all of a sudden they flipped over growth was primary. And, and contribution is only secondary because it's a growth process. So the same thing will happen with this. You will move from personal focus to group focus, depending on where things stand for you. And by the way, there's whatever focus you've gotten right now. There's nothing wrong with it, immerse yourself in it, get good at it.

(20:23):
You know, it's, it's a great opportunity for you. None of these mindsets are inherently harmful. It's just, some are more beneficial than others and do the best that you can, where you are today. And you know, and if you can move up, it's good for you. It's really good for you, but like anything, you know, it's like, you know how it was when you were a freshman in college, well, you used to be a senior in high school. You were the King, and now you've shown up and you're nobody, how did this happen to me? But you didn't go, I don't want to go to college. Cause now I'm gonna have to stop you in a senior. It's like, no, you wanted to go? You wanted to go to that next level and you wanted to gain. And of course you, once you got into it, you learned the mode and you, and you moved up. And for those of you with PhDs, you moved up several times. So it's the same kind of process.

Nick Oswald (21:22):
Yeah. So I think maybe a good time to interject, to say that if this is feeling a bit, all, all, very new that this is, this is quite dense stuff. This is a podcast or the set of podcasts is probably something that if this is of interest to you, it would be worth listening to a few times when looking at looking at the graphic that I keep telling you to go and download at the the show notes page on Bitesizebio.com/podcasts. But this is dense stuff. The idea is of this is to give you an immersion in this model. So you gain a basic understanding of it, and then you can go out and do your own experimentation. So if it's feeling a bit deep, then just give yourself a break. It's quite deep stuff. But deep as in can get a bit complicated going back and forward describing these different these different mindsets. At least I find it quite confusing to begin with just immerse yourself in it. And if you're interested and then and then experiment,

Kenneth Vogt (22:27):
And, you know, you, you got into science probably without any thought about this mattering at all. You didn't think, I didn't know. I was going to have to know about this to be effective in my career as a scientist. Well, sorry. It wasn't in the brochure, but it's necessary and it's, it's worth it. And the fact is, is that many of your colleagues aren't bothering to be good at this.

Nick Oswald (22:53):
Well, that's a really good point, Ken, that I was going to say that is that actually in my experience a mind, the mind is a thing that scientists, a lot of scientists take for granted. And you know, looking after that, looking after their wellbeing, which is why we, why we do these podcasts and talk about this stuff on Bitesize Bio it's quite neglected and people don't experiment on themselves with these different kinds of techniques and different kinds of ideas to try and get better performance out of themselves and a bit different outcomes for better outcomes for themselves. And so, again, as Ken says, it's necessary, it's not a hundred percent necessarily to do this, to be a scientist. There are plenty of scientists who don't do it, but it will. If you apply it, these things, if you learn even one or two of these concepts and apply to start applying in my experience, it makes things a lot better. It makes it a lot easier to get good results.

Kenneth Vogt (23:52):
Sure. And some people leave science over this. Yes. Yep. This is, this is the thing that gets them in the end. And if you really want to have a career in science, we want you to have it too. I want you to not only survive this, but thrive in this and this will help you to do that. So we've got one more, one more level. So imagine now we've got somebody who's great. And they're, they, they care about the community. They care about, you know, about humanity and, and they've cut all the red tape and they've grown on top of the structure and everything is amazing. And now that person turns focus inward again, I'm like, Holy cow, what did they become? Well, we call them a perceiver. That is someone who is yellow, yellow people are enigmatic and rare. They're the most introspective and self aware of all of these mindsets.

(24:54):
And I will bet you you've met a few of them. Some of them might've been your, your professors. Some of them may be industry leaders that, you know, people that are, that, that we regularly want to hear from from the platform that, that just seemed to have a bigger view of the world. They, they just seem to see so much. And what's special about these folks is they're chameleons. That is they can become whatever mindset is necessary for the moment to deal with whoever they're dealing with, whether that's an individual or a group. And so, whereas here, I have been telling you all along, make an effort to understand the other, the other mindsets, somebody who's a perceiver, who's yellow at that mindset. I don't have to tell them that that's their automatic nature. They automatically do that. And these are people that we love to be around.

(25:51):
And there are people we love to work for. And we love to follow that because they just have this, this energy to them. Cause they seem to see so much. So you can see the advantage of that. You know, being able to be, to have full sightedness of everything. It's the ultimate state to be in, but it, it it's, it's a high ambition. It requires a lot. And it requires you to let go of a lot of, lot of selfishness. And it's funny, cause this is a personal, a personal focus. And yet they are entirely unselfish about it because their focus is, I must be great for the benefit of all. And so again, not people you encounter every day, but people, you do, you probably know some. And, and if you are in a, in the realm where you were orange or you are green, it's a, it's a mindset you could aspire to.

(26:55):
It's something you could become. And the fact is there are people out there right now that are, some of them are young. Some of them are new to, to the lab. Some of them have been there for awhile, but nobody's really taken notice of them who have this. They could be this and you never know who's out there that we're talking to that they're going to hear this and go, you know what? I do need to step up to that. I need to be that I can be that. So if you're one of those people, we are here for you. We need you there. It's amazing the innovation that's come out of this industry, but we have not gotten near enough. We need more mankind needs what you do. So that's why I stand on this soap box.

Nick Oswald (27:45):
So it's, again, I'll reiterate from the other angle that this is, this is a model. And these people that you're describing who have already become, who are already yellow in that yellow mindset, they didn't do it on purpose. This is just a natural kind of, one of the natural groupings of psychological groupings that are in the world. And as you're pointing out, there seems to be this, this we can mainly describe six different groupings in this context. And that's what this model is. And so these people haven't decided to become yellow. They just did that. But what by, by illuminating this pattern and allowing people to, you know, with these models and the different colors, so people can easily identify or more easily identify how they are thinking and how other people are thinking. One of the ideas of this model is that you can look up at the next, see where you are and look at the next mindset and kind of get a feeling for how would you do that? How would you step up to that and start to do it? Is that, would that be one of the, one of the possibilities with this model Ken.

Kenneth Vogt (28:58):
Sure. And, and it, it gives you a path so you can see, like you may realize, Hey, I always want to improve myself. And, and a lot of us look at, look at life that way I always want to improve, but sometimes we don't know how so. I don't know how to get any better at this. You know, you play tennis and you play the best tennis game. You can, you're gong, I don't know how to get any better. Well, then you decided to get, get some coaching. And there's the coach right there is to say, well, I can tell you exactly what to do. You need to focus on this. You need to look at that. You need to try this and you go, Oh, if I had only known that I would have done that a long time ago. So that's, that's what we're trying to do here is to give you a, just some handles of things that you can use to help in your own, call it self improvement.

(29:46):
But but understand too, that we want you to just be good at what you are now. You don't there's, you don't have to grow beyond this. You may be at a very fine level already and a very, very useful level already. If you know, if you're blue and it's working - power to you, keep it up, you know, there's, you don't have to become orange. You, in fact, you may look at that and go, it looks a little distasteful. I don't want to be a salesman. I don't want that attitude. I rather be down here in the details and, you know, and dealing with the structure and great, the world needs, people like that. So, and, and we need capable people at that. It's not just, Hey, we need a bunch of worker bees. This is like, no, this is, this is professional work you're doing here. And, and it's gotta be, it's gotta be done by people who are capable of it. Cause you know, we all know what a disaster is when people are not capable and try to do this kind of work. And we don't want that kind of, that kind of thing going on and we don't want to promote it or propagate it.

Nick Oswald (30:51):
It is quite interesting though, that, you know, the progression up of those levels is if you feel like you need, you know, if you feel you need to move, you know, in your mindset, you want to improve yourself then in some ways, and this is very simplifying the situation. But in some ways you just need to look at where you are on that continuum and, and do one of two things. And that is focus more on yourself or focus more on everyone else, depending on where you are. And that starts to move you that, you know, that's one way to start moving in that direction. Does that, does that make sense or is that too simplistic?

Kenneth Vogt (31:25):
That's excellent. That, that, that that's spot on.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
So if you've, if you focus on if you feel, if you are, for example, orange and you feel, you know, you're what, what can I do next? You know? So what, what's the next improvement then? Okay. The next way to improve would be to start applying that ambition you have for yourself, start applying it to other people around you, and then you would start to move into the green mindset and all the benefits that come with that I would guess.

Kenneth Vogt (31:52):
Yeah, that's right. So now another thing when you're not, when you're using this, these core mindset concepts to look at other people, and let me give you a, a story of something that happened with me. I was dealing with a particular person who is a rather well known and well-regarded person in the industry and a company that is well known and well-regarded, and I was very impressed with what they were doing. And my assumption was after looking at this person will more than an assumption. I'd done the assessment here and it's like, he's green, he's definitely green, but we kept having certain problems in dealing with this person that just didn't coincide with green. It didn't make sense to me until one day a colleague of mine said to me, he's not green, he's blue. And like, I, it's just ding all, all everything lined up. Like, of course that's why I'm.

(32:59):
I was, you know, I made the positive assumption cause you know, blue and green and a lot of similarities because anything, any of these mindsets that are two apart, they're, they're similar. And because they're both group focused, right. It's just like confusing orange and red. That Nick talked about earlier when I realized, Oh, I was, I was giving this person the benefit of the doubt for being green when in fact they're blue. And now that, now I realized that every, every difficulty we, I was having with this person wasn't them. It was me because I was treating them like they were green. Whereas if I had been focused, I would have recognized they were blue and I would have treated them different and they would have been a lot happier about it. So this is, this is one of the reasons you want to want to use this stuff.

(33:48):
If you find you're in baffling situations, or I don't understand why I'm not getting through to this person, or I'm not getting along with this person, it seems like I should be able to, and we just don't get it. And I don't know why they don't seem to like me or they don't seem to like my ideas or they're always obstructionist for me why they don't do that to other people. Well, it's probably because you're treating them as if they're of a mindset that they're not, and it could really set you free. And then you realize too, like you're not being nice to somebody to presume there are of a higher mindset than they actually are. Because again, it's not about a higher or lower it's about accuracy. So dial into what people actually are and everything gets smoother.

Nick Oswald (34:35):
And so I just wanted to say that you know, that what you described there but that situation with that person and you kind of figuring, figuring that out again to a newbie, who's still trying to figure out these, that's a kind of a condescending word, newbie. I don't mean that, to someone who's just coming into that into this and looking at it from someone who's, you know, this is coming from someone who's done this recently as in me it's what you just did there, it sounds like, you know, you're doing some, it sounds like a unattainable, sounds difficult to understand how you could even do that. But again, I just encourage people to immerse themselves in this and just try it out. And see and I think it's, it becomes a lot, it's a lot easier than you think once you just get a practical understanding and an instinct for, for how this works. And again, you might look at this and think that, okay, this doesn't work, it doesn't work. I can figure this then that's cool. But most people that we've introduced this to in person, any, we have at least some understanding and find some utility in it, I think. Would you agree with that Ken?

Kenneth Vogt (35:52):
That, that has my across the board experience and with, with company after company, in industry, after industry, I've had people approach this very skeptically at the beginning, like, well, I'll go through it because I have to, but by the time we get done, I've never had anybody saying, well, that was a waste of time. I haven't. And I've often had people saying, you know, when I first started this, I thought, I don't know, this doesn't seem like it'd be worthwhile, but I I've changed my mind. And I've really found some uses for it. Now I wanna, I want to say one of the things, I love what you're saying, Nick, about immerse yourself in this, but I also don't want to scare anybody. It's like, don't feel like, unless I just give myself heart and soul to this, it'll be of no use to me. Yes. If you immerse yourself, it will be of great value.

(36:40):
But if you just play around with it, it'll be a value. So don't be afraid to try it out and try it out. The safe environment. Yeah. You want to look at, okay, what color is grandma? You know? And you start thinking about it and it becomes clear to you like, Oh yeah, grandma. And grandma's definitely blue, you know? And all right, well, how about grandpa? Grandpa's kinda red, you know you'll start to see this and, and you can then like, well, how far can I go? How well do I have to know them? It's like, how about the mailman? How is what color is here? Or the clerk? I just had it at the store, the barista that I see every, every day, what color are they? You'll start to realize, you know, I can, this is useful. Even with strangers, you can, you can look at somebody and have very little interaction and realize, Oh, this person's pretty purple. So let me, let me start dealing with them that way. Or this person's really orange. So it's pretty clear, you know, you'll see stuff, jump out at you. So, you know, give it a chance.

Nick Oswald (37:45):
Yeah. And it's interesting as well what you said about , you know, green people, for example, a lot of leaders are green and so on. Actually, I don't know. This is a compare notes sort of thing is that there's a lot of baristas who are green that I've seen anyway.

Kenneth Vogt (38:02):
Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. We will see that in certain industries and you think why? Why? Well it's because they, they, they don't care to be the orange ambitious. They want to make more of a difference for people. And they like people. So, you know, you can't map this. Like, you know, you just make a good point. You can't really map this to money and you can't map it, you know, the income levels and you can't map it to socio sociological levels either. And you will find green people living on the streets sometimes and you will find purple people in the C suite. You know, it's just, these mindsets are available to anyone. And you know, it's true that the higher up you go, the more likely you are to achieve in the world to be more successful. You know, if you've, if you've listened to this and you think I'm purple, I do want to encourage you to try, please try and grow beyond that. You will do better in life. If you're red, I won't tell you to, because first off, if you're truly red, you won't listen to me. You're red. You're going to do what you want. But at some point you may realize, you know, maybe I should broaden my horizons a bit. And like Nick suggested earlier that a great way to do that is just, if you're in a, if you're in mindset that is group focused, then switch to personal focus. And if you're in one that's personally focused and switch to one that's group focused and, you know, just, just making that change will open your eyes to all kinds of stuff. Yup. Yup. Let's talk about people, let's make some applications.

Nick Oswald (39:43):
You just read my mind.

Kenneth Vogt (39:45):
Yeah. Some famous people and, and, and see where we would put them. So, I mean, there are some, there's a number of number of people on the scene at any given moment. So is there, is there anybody jumping out to you that you want to want to do this with?

Nick Oswald (40:01):
Okay. It doesn't have to be anyone. Anyone kind of current, I suppose. I mean, but see if you took some some leaders for example, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi Margaret Thatcher, for example.

Kenneth Vogt (40:23):
Okay. So if you start with somebody like Gandhi is somebody that I would say is a perfect example of yellow, the truly exceptional human being. He is acutely aware of other people. He was able to, to interact with world leaders and the lowest of the low, you know, the, the people that were living at the lowest echelons of society he could stand up against immense forces and, and did so for decades. So you get an extraordinary human being and evident that he was yellow. So that's, that's one example, Margaret Thatcher. It's an interesting one. Now I'm not, I'm not British I'm American, but she certainly made an impact on the world scene. So you couldn't help, but notice her. And she's an interesting one. You could see characteristics of blue, but she was better than that. She had more to her than that, and wasn't merely about herself.

(41:34):
So she wouldn't have been orange. So green is probably where I would land with her. And what's, what's interesting about that is for some folks who look at that yeah, but she was such a hard, she was hard and conservative. How could you be green? I think green to be a bunch of liberal peoples, not necessarily, it isn't really about liberal versus conservative. It's about your, it's about your focus on the world. And she saw a world that could be made better and she definitely wanted to make it so. And so, you know, she went beyond merely being orange in that regard, which, which is why I would, I would say she would land in green. And who was the third person you chose.

Nick Oswald (42:15):
Oh, Abraham Lincoln.

Kenneth Vogt (42:17):
Yeah. Abraham Lincoln boy. Oh boy. My leaning would be to say he was yellow because of his chameleon characteristic that he could deal with very different people. And in fact, he made it a point to assemble a cabinet of people who were not all of his same political party, because he wanted dissenting views. He wanted to hear it all.

Nick Oswald (42:41):
How refreshing.

Kenneth Vogt (42:41):
That is now, we can look at some other characters like on the current scene, like Donald Trump, Donald Trump's clearly red. He's all about himself. It's, it's all that matters. And by the way, just goes to show, you can be red and be very successful and very powerful and very well liked, you know? So you certainly got a loyal following, you know, so yeah, I don't, again, there's nothing wrong with any of these mindsets in and of themselves and they won't necessarily be a barrier to you, but the fact is you won't see as many red people reach that level of, of power.

Nick Oswald (43:20):
Well, what about this? How about Julius Caesar- purple, that, well, he must be red. Actually the empire was purple and he was red.

Kenneth Vogt (43:28):
Yeah. Yeah, I would, yeah. I would say that then there are such thing as purple leaders though. And I use Montezuma as an example, the, the, the head of the Aztecs, but, you know, they also got crushed out of existence by the Spaniards. So, you know, there was a, there was a certain lack of power in being purple that, that ultimately cost the whole civilization. And it isn't the first civilization that fell because they didn't rise above purple.

Nick Oswald (43:55):
Okay. And, okay, so just sticking with world leaders then, a blue one, Winston Churchill.

Kenneth Vogt (44:02):
Yeah. I think that's a good example of blue. Yeah. Cause he, again, he, he really respected the, well actually, you know what, I, I might have to say he was orange just because of his earlier life. And he was super ambitious and they add up and people generally don't retract in there, but he never did become green. So, but he saw the benefit of blue that's for sure. And he definitely preached blue to everybody else.

Nick Oswald (44:29):
So we have an orange now, how about Barack Obama? Green?

Kenneth Vogt (44:39):
I would say he was orange turning green.

Nick Oswald (44:42):
Okay. Alright.

Kenneth Vogt (44:43):
And that's, that's kind of a good thing to bring up that not everybody makes it all the way in. And I think he had, he had some personal ambition that remained so, and has remained so until this day, and again, I want to be clear, I'm not making any judgements about anybody here that saying that they're right or wrong or good or bad, you know, Idi Amin was red, you know but he got a lot done. So, you know you can take, take other characters like Muhammad Ali is an example of somebody, you know, there's a guy who was orange, turning green. He was really, really, really orange. I mean that ambition on top of ambition, but he was, he was willing to go to prison over not, being open to being drafted, then not going to as he, put it to kill other, other, other colored people. You know, I don't remember exactly how he put it, but he put it in a term like that, you know? And, and you know, what I mean was a boxer, who's a pugilist for for a living, but he was not willing to kill people. And that was a very, you know, a very green position to take, but his ambition remained. So it was his orange just didn't really fit.

Nick Oswald (46:02):
Okay. So I think the only one we haven't found somewhere, we haven't found a prominent blue person. So where, how, where do you go back to find a prominent blue person

Kenneth Vogt (46:11):
A prominent blue person? I think you, you think you will find Well, an example that I, that I've used in the past, and it's a little bit dated as Mitt Romney, you know, he's a, he's a conservative Senator. Or a Republican Senator who has run for president very much on a basis of rule of law and structure and, and, you know, Joe Biden is kind of acting blue these days and that he, you know, he wants to return to, to a familiar structure of respectability for the presidency in his, in his assessment of it.

Nick Oswald (46:54):
Yeah. It's interesting. I'm trying to think of anyone who has actually been president of the USA who is blue.

Kenneth Vogt (47:02):
Let me walk back through a few. Wow.

Nick Oswald (47:07):
Mostly orange?

Kenneth Vogt (47:11):
Yeah, seen a lot of orange.

Nick Oswald (47:14):
Mostly orange at least. Yeah,

Kenneth Vogt (47:16):
Yeah. And a couple of green, you know, like Eisenhower was green Kennedy was green. Yeah. The rest, all the rest in the last hundred years that I could think of for orange, except for our current one. Think about, yeah. If, if we think about other people in the world that are like, like Elon Musk, that is, there's an orange guy, you know, odd and strange but orange as they get. And, and Jeff Bezos, very orange. You can see it. A lot of business leaders will tend toward being orange and the people that are blue, their companies go out of business. So we've seen that the companies that have tried to stay blue and not make it as a result and not just because of recent crises, but you know, like what happened to Woolworth's, what happened to Sears? You know, that they were blue organizations that couldn't exist in an orange world,

Nick Oswald (48:20):
All sorts of things and situations you can map onto this. And, and one other way to look at the, I tend to look at it is that if you go back in history, then, and then come forward through history, then, then everybody tends to rise up that continuum together. You know, there's a, there was a, I guess if you go back to the kind of Roman era, there was a lot like purple was quite an achievement.

Kenneth Vogt (48:46):
Yeah, exactly. Well, that's how the Roman, the Roman empire merely by becoming purple, they took over the world.

Nick Oswald (48:57):
So whatever before that was dominant. And then, and then purple was the improvement. Yeah.

Kenneth Vogt (49:01):
Yeah. So,

Nick Oswald (49:03):
And the, and the improvement being just that they started banding together, but didn't, they didn't place value on individuals being.

Kenneth Vogt (49:12):
Well, individuals were expendable for the sake of the group,

Nick Oswald (49:16):
But purely they banded together that's between made them extremely powerful.

Kenneth Vogt (49:20):
Yeah. And that's the difference between between purple and blue. Blue people are not willing to sacrifice anybody it's that, that, that is, that violates the rules, you know? Although they aren't necessarily concerned about making it easy for any individual. That's what, that's why people turn orange. It's like, you know what, it's about time it got easier for certain.

Nick Oswald (49:43):
That's why I left the army.

Kenneth Vogt (49:48):
Exactly. Yeah. I ha I, I just had a flashback to the the movie about Johnny Cash and Johnny Cash was trying to get a record deal with somebody. And they were saying they didn't, they didn't want to hear any more of the slow gospel tunes. You know, there's plenty of that out there. And, you know, he wanted something more upbeat and any, so you got something against gospel music. Well, no, it's just, it's been done over and over again.

(50:16):
He's like, well, you got anything against the, the air force? He says, no. He says, well, I do, buddy. You know, he, he had some songs of that, a touched, a little more on some nerves. And, you know, this is another thing we can look at a lot of people that are, or movie stars or rock stars, or, you know, performers, many of them were very red. That's why they bothered to rise to that level. And I, I like to use the examples of Garth Brooks in country music. You know, he's been the most successful country music artist ever. And, you know, you sold the most albums of anybody and I forget the number, but it's something outrageous, you know, tens of millions of albums. And I heard an interview with him once and they commented on how he had, you know, achieved more sales than any country act ever.

(51:06):
And without a close second and they asked him, how do you feel about that? He says, well, yeah, okay. Absolutely. 80 million albums, but there are 7 billion people. You do the math. Who was not satisfied? It wasn't enough, you know, so, you know, we'll we'll definitely see this, so this, this is the takeaway I would give to everybody. Now it's like, Hey, just take, have some fun with this. And, and, you know, just go through your family and figure it out, which one, color each of these people and go through the people in, in your work group. And I'm like, what has each of these people? And, and, and then if there are other important people in your world, you know, whether that's maybe the, the president of your university or your, or your company, or some, some thought leader that you really, that really is impacting you figure it out, figure out what color you figure they are.

(52:02):
And every once in a while you check back with yourself, do I still think that, do I still think that Donald Trump is red? Or does he think something else, you know, and every once in a while you will find the, no, that person's not red, they're orange, or like I had mentioned earlier that person's not green, they're blue, but you'll get more clarity. And as you use this, you'll get better at it. And I want to point out, you know, this situation that I'm talking about, I made a mistake about a person, the person who corrected me about it is somebody I taught this to. So there's always more to learn here is much more opportunity. And it wasn't the process wasn't broken in my understanding of the processes isn't broken either. I didn't apply it very well. And I, you know, learning that was really useful to me when I realized I see where I'm at. I see where I made the mistake here. And you won't get that by Nick and I talking in front of you. You can only get that by taking action.

Nick Oswald (53:02):
And I would say, as well as, as a scientist who who's, you know, a bioscientist who has examined this and, and kind of integrated it, my first instinct was to try and really understand the whole thing. And you know, to, to, as in, to go to the, really, where does this come from and where does, you know, and go really deep into where it came from and why it's like this, and why would it be like that psychologically? And then I realized, actually, I don't need to do that. All I need to do is test the model. And if it works for me and my life, and that's all that matters here. So I, in a way, just take this at face value and, and and experiment with it. And, and if it works, if it provides some insight for you, then that's, that's enough. That's what I would suggest.

Kenneth Vogt (53:56):
And I think that that particular philosophy is a really good one. The idea of, of, if you've got something that works, use it, and we're not talking about, this is not a religion we're not talking about. You have to have faith or worse yet credulity. You just like, try it out. If it works for you. Awesome. If it doesn't work for you, throw it away, but we're going to give you enough tools here that work and having a record of working that if something doesn't work for you at first, go around, you may want to look at say is it me or is it the tool, you know? So, but you know, we all have our favorite tools, right? And we have tools that we go to again and again, and we have tools that we avoid. All right, well, you know, maybe it'd be better if we'd learned not to avoid those tools, but you can function that way, but we're going to give you enough tools in this podcast that you can, that you're going to come away with things that you can use. And some episodes that will come along and you go, man, that is right in my zone. That is, that is exactly what I need. And other things you're going to go, Oh, maybe somebody else will like that. But I hope for, for core mindsets that we've made you believers because man, this core mindsets is core for a reason. It really is.

Nick Oswald (55:13):
Yeah. I would say for me, the two, two concepts we've discussed so far the core mindsets and the, and the human needs. I understand the human needs one and it's useful, but this one really helps me on a day to day basis, the core mindset. So, but then it might be the opposite we are own for you. So what, we, there are plenty, more tools where these came from as well.

Kenneth Vogt (55:34):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And if surely, surely you're going to hear something useful. So the next thing that we're going to cover, and we're going to do another three part series and it's going to be on charisma or we're going to call them charisma factors. And again, there's going to be six of them and you may be wondering, what do I need charisma for? Well I promise you, I will make the case for why not only you need charisma, you must have charisma and you must use charisma and that you do have charisma

Nick Oswald (56:04):
Well. That's all I was going to say is that the first instant instinct is I don't have charisma because you have a single definition of charisma, but actually you do, but you maybe just don't know you, you do.

Kenneth Vogt (56:16):
Yep. So we're going to clarify all that for you. And again, this is something, you know, there was no charisma 102 in university, they didn't teach you this stuff. And then you got to the lab and it's not in the training manuals and it's not in the operation book, you know? So we're trying to fill in that third area for you so that you can have a great career and, and really enjoy your time and be very successful and, and benefit the world, doing the things that you're doing.

Nick Oswald (56:51):
Okay. And that just leaves us to see that if you are enjoying this podcast and you haven't done so already, please join us in the Happy Scientist Club, Facebook page, Facebook group, actually that's at Facebook.com/thehappyscientistclub, all one word, and give us a knock there and we will let you in, and we'll be covering all sorts of things in there in more depth and having different, different events and so on for you. So I think that leaves us just to wrap up here. Thanks, Ken for that another great installment. And we'll see you all again. Next time. Take care.

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