Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

It is characteristic to the point of being axiomatic that clarks have a drive to self-improve themselves. While one might argue (not without a reasonable chance of being successful) that this ambition is a conceit grounded in a mistaken premise, it is one of the defining characteristics of the Outsider.

That being said, the Wakefield Doctrine is, in no small part, an expression of this need to improve. To be more precise, the Doctrine is an effort to make sense of the world, in service of discovering the deficiency that (presumably) lead to our Outsider status.

We have three worldviews: the Outsider (clarks), the Predator (scotts) and the Herd Member (rogers). The beauty part of the Doctrine is that these worldviews and their respective qualities, abilities, capacities, strengths and vulnerabilities are not limited to one per person. Rather, we are all born with the potential to experience the world as do each of the three. For reasons uncertain, we all, all of us, at a very early age find ourselves in one of these three worldviews. We grow, learn and strategies and styles to contend with the world and the people around us, appropriate to the character of our reality.

This post is about rogers. Or rather, it concerns rogers. We are reaching out to rogers for help in understanding their world. (The Wakefield Doctrine is amazing, in part, because with it’s principles and perspectives we are able to gain an appreciation of how the other two ‘personality types’ are perceiving the world. However, there are limits to ‘how far into the other two worldviews we are able to see’. So when we come across something that doesn’t make any sense in our world but appears to be significant to a person of a different worldview, we’re all, ‘Hold on! That might be something useful to understand.’

…anyway. Trying to keep this under 500 words.

scotts are aggressive. They love to wrestle and they need to establish their ranking among anyone/everyone around them. It’s nothing personal, it’s what a pack member does.

clarks are reflective. They try to figure out what’s going among anyone/everyone around them. It’s nothing personal, it’s what an outsider does.

rogers…. they are emotional, their very reality is grounded in feelings and emotion. They must establish their relationship with everyone around them. It’s totally personal because they are members of the Herd.

So the question for rogers:

scotts wrestle and clarks think and, rogers ‘wheedle and cajole’

A very distinct style of interaction, neither negative nor aggressive, necessarily. However, (here is where the practical value is to be found…hopefully), to wheedle and cajole is the dominant style of interaction among rogers. Seeing how they account for the majority of the population, it ends up being the preeminent style of interaction in business. I’m in business.

I’d like to learn how to ‘wheedle and cajole’

PART 2

As often happens, a comment (by Val) frames the discussion in a way that is conducive not simply for an elaboration of the original thesis, but a branching point.

“You can be intellectually trained to wheedle and cajole. It’s a skill that doesn’t come naturally but “Hey, that’s a nice tie or what is your opinion on.. . . .?”

Says Valerie, in part, in her comment.

Of course, students of the Doctrine are all, “intellectually trained!!’…. but we thought this was about rogers!” (lol). And they would be correct, (in the implication of that distinction) as Val is in her assertion that ‘Wheedling and cajolery’ are behaviors/social strategies that can be learned and taught.

With the Everything Rule* at hand, allow me to digress on the matter of learning the nature of the three predominant worldviews. The Doctrine is fun and useful because you can read the basic description of each of the three personality types and proceed to observe them in the people around you, first time out. In part this is because the description of each of our ‘personality types’ is, in fact, a description of a person’s relationship to the world around them. Fine. There are, however, depths to each of the three personal realities not readily, if at all, available to the person not native to it.

A few years ago I wrote a series of scenaria intended to portray the differences between the three worldviews. (In one of them), I had a young woman by the name of Emily apply for a job as a waitress. She arrived in the middle of the noon rush. Everyone, the owner and the staff were flat-out busy. Emily sat and watched the employees try to keep up. I proposed three things that Emily could do while sitting and waiting. One of them was: get up and clear tables and otherwise help wherever she could.

The rogers among the Readers went berserk. ‘You can’t do that!’ She can’t do that!’ That’s just wrong.’ I noticed two things about the reaction: 1) it was only the rogers who felt that way and B) they were really serious and upset. Naturally, bells were going off in my head. ‘Whats up with that?’ I thought. To make a long illustration short, by talking to rogers I realized that there was ‘an artifact’ in their reality that did not have a counterpart in the world of clarks or scotts, called ‘referential authority’. And, further validating the fun of this here Doctrine here, as soon as it was identified in terms that I could comprehend, the rogers were all, “Well, duh! Of course thats what it is.”

Authority (and power), when invoked by a roger, is always a third party. Be it a clergyman informing the congregation about what God told him to tell them, to a politician invoking the power of the ballot box, to the HR person who finishes the new employee orientation by saying, ‘This book of SOPs? We call it the Bible’. That is referential authority as manifested in the reality of the Herd Members.

So naturally, when I saw something that implied that rogers were accomplishing something that a clark or a scott could not, despite all conditions being the same, I thought, ‘Well, there’s something going on deeper in the world of the rogers than I can see. Lets call it ‘wheedle and cajole’ and see if we can’t infer a deeper understanding.

Hey Val thanks for the Comment… I may have veered off to the left. Will return to the topic soon.

*  We will recall that the Everything Rule states, ‘everyone does everything, at one time or another‘ The three worldviews are not mutually-exclusive personal realities. Originally intended to remind us that there is no such thing as ‘a clark thing’ or ‘thats something that only scotts do’ or even, ‘those rogers are different like that’; rather we say that a thing (or an intention, a thought or an urge, an occupation and a mere dalliance) that exists in one reality will manifest in the other two realities. Differently. As appropriate to the characteristics of the worldview. Example: scotts provide the archetypical cop. They (scotts) have a natural affinity for action (before reflection), a love of speed and loud noises and an almost irresistible urge to chase prey. Plus they are aggressive and confident and ….certain. Not surprisingly they make ‘good’ cops. However, the Everything Rule admonishes us to consider how ‘cop’ manifests in the reality of clarks and rogers. Because there are most certainly rogerian and clarklike policemen and women.