What's Your Story

I enjoyed reading the following characterization on this blog - http://www.criticalthinking.org/resources/k12/making-ct-intuitive.cfm. These personality types interact in government all the time. It makes for many dramatic stories within government. The question is who is paying attention to the stories.
Naive Nancy does not see much reason to think at all. She takes things as they come. She believes what she hears. She usually goes along with whatever her peers say. She intends no harm but also assumes that no one else is going to harm her. She is a ready victim for more sophisticated manipulators: adults or children. Naive Nancy will make a good student only insofar as thought is not required. She will literally, and thoughtlessly, do what she is told. She doesn’t question or try to understand her own motives. She will make mistakes because she doesn’t know how to listen closely and monitor what she hears for accuracy of interpretation.
Wherever mindless obedience succeeds, she will get by. What is more, much of the time her innocent “helplessness” will enable her to get others to do things for her. Rather than try to think her way through a difficulty, she is learning to say “I can’t do it!” after the first or second try. She is finding out that she can usually get by without much thinking. Her innocent likeability and perpetual “incompetence” is both her strength and her (ultimate) downfall. Her only real thinking skills are in the art of being helpless, in enticing others to do her thinking for her.
Selfish Sam contrasts well with Naive Nancy. Sam values thinking. And the more he does it, the more he values it. But only in a special sense. He thinks to gain advantage, to get what he wants, to successfully put his desires above the rights and needs of others. To put it briefly, Sam is discovering the power of con-artistry. Sam is discovering that you can best get what you want by focusing clearly on your own desires, figuring out what is standing in the way of your interests, and manipulating others into acting in your interest. Selfish Sam is becoming an egocentric problem solver. He defines his problems so as to center them around getting what he wants for himself. Sometimes this means figuring out how to get out of work. But unlike Nancy, Sam is learning the power of figuring things out for himself.
He is also learning how to impress both adults and kids by what he can do. Eventually Sam will come to appreciate the power there is in groups, the advantages one gains by becoming a leader and exercising control over others. He will use his thought to win others to his side, to defeat his “enemies” (whoever he doesn’t like), and extend his power and advantage over others. It isn’t that he doesn’t care at all about others, but rather that he cares only about those who serve him, those who are members of his group. Eventually, Sam could become an effective promoter of a vested interest, an excellent sales person, a politician, or a lawyer … any job that can “successfully” be performed without a well-developed sense of fairmindedness.
Fairminded Fran contrasts well with both Nancy and Sam. Like Sam, Fran is learning the power of thought. She is learning the value of figuring things out for herself. Unlike Nancy, she is not learning the art of “helplessness” because she is experiencing the pleasure and deep satisfaction that comes from successfully figuring things out for herself. She is discovering that she has a mind and can use it to solve problems, protect herself, do difficult jobs, learn complicated things, express herself well, and get along with others. But that is not all she’s learning. She is also learning that other people have minds, other people have desires and needs, other people have rights, and other people have a different way of looking at things. She is learning how to enter into the thinking of others, how to see things from other people’s point of view, how to learn from other people’s perspective. She is beginning to notice the need to protect herself from the “Sam’s” of the world. She is learning to test for herself what people say. She is learning to protect her interests without violating the rights of others.
Fran’s thinking is beginning to develop a richness that Sam’s will never develop (as long as he thinks selfishly), for she is learning how much one can learn from others. Eventually, Fran will gain many insights from the art of thinking within the perspective of others that she is developing. Fran’s early thinking is laying the foundation for later breadth of vision. Fran’s ability to think for herself in a skilled and fairminded way will enable her to pursue any career goal that she later takes on. She will be highly valued by those who value justice and fair play. But she will also be treated with suspicion by the “true believers”, by the people whose first allegiance is to a special group, to “our side”. Those given to group think will come to recognize that you can’t depend on Fran to always support the “right” side (our side). She sometimes agrees with the enemy, the opposition, the “other guys”.
The combinations in the politician/administrator roles of Nancy, Sam and Fran make for endless interactions. The key to this situation is to understand that lack of conflict in local governments doesn’t mean things are being done right. Citizens have an obligation to pay attention to the actions taken by their governments, regardless of the amount of conflict generated or lack thereof. I’m pretty sure that Politician Sam will hunt for and find Administrator Nancy to run a conflict free organization without any attention to justice or fair play.