How to Increase your EQ: The 7MTF Model of Temperament

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman was first published in 1995.  The book, which promoted the concept that Emotional Intelligence (EQ) was more important than natural intelligence (IQ) in determining success in life, sold 5 million copies in the first five years of publication.

While Goleman was correct in his premise about the importance of Emotional Intelligence, he was unable to describe a theory of core emotions – how to recognise them in yourself and in others.

Goleman also identified the importance of Emotional Intelligence in his book but he did not provide an explanation of how to increase it.

When I read Emotional Intelligence for the first time in 1996 I realised that I had the answer to Goleman’s conundrum based on the Humm-Wadsworth.  Since then I have developed the 7MTF model based on the Humm-Wadsworth which was formally released in 2016.

The Humm-Wadsworth model of temperament is a scientific model for understanding people’s underlying emotions. It is not based on `pop psychology’ or a 2-4-6 or 8 box ‘personality type’ matrix approach, but on a psychological framework used by the professional industrial psychologist in assessing personality. The framework recognises that in any situation people behave according to their motivations, feelings, attitudes and drives, rather than on passion or logic alone, and that the most accurate way of describing people in those terms is as a combination of these drives.

The Humm-Wadsworth framework has been used by professional psychologists for many years in Australia and the United States, throughout all levels of management, to assess people in terms of their ability to perform different jobs in different work environments. In Australia alone, an estimated 400,000 people have participated in this framework, and world-wide participation would be close to two million.

In 1959 the Australian firm of Organisational Psychologists Chandler & Macleod purchased the copyright to the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale test. Over one million Australians sat the Humm-Wadsworth personality assessment and this was followed up with over 100,000 interviews.  Gradually the psychologists at Chandler & Macleod began to develop a set of heuristics about the people they were interviewing.  In particular they developed a set of six clues to gain some understanding of the dominant core emotions in person’s temperament.

1. The way the individual talks;
2. The organisation the individual works for;
3. The individual’s position in the organisation;
4. The individual’s dress;
5. The individual’s office or working environment;
6. The first meeting with an individual: are you kept waiting and how soon do move to using first names.

We have detailed these clues in one of our free White Papers, you can download it here.