Addendum on People

From: Handbook of Intercultural Interaction, Volume 2 / Digression from Topic 7: Psychological Foundations of Personnel Policy.

People can differ in their character as well.

[…] Based on a thoughtful comparison between the results of activity and the behaviors that lead to those results, an army-style typology has emerged. In it, people are distinguished by their ability or inability to perform certain functions within collective activity:

Executors: can only do tasks themselves. They cannot have even a single subordinate, since they are incapable of organizing anyone else’s work.

Deputies: can perform tasks themselves but are also capable of organizing subordinates to solve tasks assigned to them. However, they are unable to independently assess a situation and its prospects, or to set tasks for themselves and their subordinates on that basis.

Commanders (unitary leaders): can act as executors or deputies, but in addition, they can independently evaluate the situation and its likely developments, and set their own tasks on their own initiative so as to support the actions of commanders at their own and lower levels, while also preventing errors by their superiors. This is the chief quality of a true commander. Their principal trait is precisely the ability to foresee and prevent the mistakes of higher leadership, regardless of circumstances.

Problematic individuals: do not fit into the system of business communication in any of the above capacities. They may be incapable of fulfilling any of the roles of executor, deputy, commander or may assume roles inappropriate to the situation or their assigned duties.

However, the problematic are not some kind of defective psychotype, but rather a group of psychotypes whose bearers do not fit a particular system of collective organization. In another system, some of these problematic individuals might fit perfectly well, while the executors, deputies, and commanders who fit the previous system could, in whole or in part, become problematic within the new one. Yet of course, among the problematic there are also various fools who, by virtue of their stupidity, irresponsibility, and lack of self-control, are incapable of functioning in any system whatsoever.

Even the problematic ones are not homogeneous. Among them is a subgroup that may be called the holy fools. Regardless of their knowledge or professional mastery and sometimes even in spite of these, they possess a mystical ability to unerringly point a finger at the sky: identifying real mistakes of leaders and subordinates including in personnel policy, holes in projects, and much else that could bring projects to ruin. Moreover, holy fools are capable of seemingly absurd actions that, upon later investigation of events and circumstances, turn out to have had a decisive influence in achieving the desired outcome or in preventing serious or catastrophic mishaps.