The Journey from Normal to Regulator

One of my recent workshop participants, Stuart Mercer of Kyora Landscapes, asked how the name change came about and I thought it would be worthwhile to write a blog about it.

I learned the Humm-Wadsworth in early 1974 at the first sales training workshop every run by Chandler & Macleod. It was a moment of epiphany and I used very successfully in selling and management, particularly in the late 1970s when I combined it with TNT selling system. Eventually I wrote a book, Empathy Selling, published first in 1991. My knowledge of the Normal Component could then be summarised as follows:

1. The Normal Component is primarily a control mechanism, providing rational balance and tempermental equilibrium. People with higher than average Normal are well adjusted and conform to socially acceptable behaviour. It is associated with restraint; very high people on the Normal spectrum are indiscriminate ultra-conservatives.
2. Alone among the seven components the Normal increases with age.
3. The Normal component is also soluble, if you drink alcohol the Normal dissolves and the other strong components in your temperament come to the fore.
4. Normals love to be part of a group and will use references to other people or precedents as support for an argument. They also prefer the use of logic to emotion and will use the word “logical” in their conversation.
5. The first question a high Normal asks when presented with a new proposal is “Who else is using it?” Convincing a Normal require a lot of reference sales.
6. I wanted to associate each of the seven components with a dominant desire and for the Normal I chose the desire for social approval.

During the 1990s I spent two years at Chandler & Macleod developing their training programs and in 1995 Goleman published Emotional Intelligence. Knowing the dominant and weak core emotional drives of your temperament is the important first step in lifting your Emotional Intelligence. However, the second step of learning to control and moderate your core emotional drives (self-management) is probably even more important.

You frequently will see on the web advertisements along the lines of: “Are you good at logic, great at analysis and working out maths problems? Then you’re probably a left-brainer.… Want to get in touch with your intuitive, creative right brain and find a whole other you …?”  In other words, the secret of success is to unleash your creativity.

I take the opposite approach. I think too much of our behaviour is driven by our emotions. The Greeks thought the same. The second great commandment of the Delphic Oracle was “Nothing to excess” or sometimes it is translated as “Everything in moderation.” In my workshops, I tell participants that the secret to self-management is to “Build Your Normal.”

Also during the 1990s there was a focus on what were the basic desires of mankind. It was then that I discovered the desire for order which replaced the desire of social approval.

In 2007 I retired from the venture capital industry after 25 years and decided to develop a third part-time career in pushing the Humm as the secret to lifting your emotional intelligence. I published The Humm Handbook for managers and created a business running workshops, doing EQ coaching and writing some 250 blogs. Over the next nine years the original metal illness list used by Humm & Wadsworth was modified to mania, depression, autism, paranoia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, psychopathy and neuroticism.

It was during this time that I realised the Normal was associated with the Big Five Factor of neuroticism which is also a mental disorder. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody and to experience strong emotions. Individuals who score low in neuroticism are more emotionally stable and less reactive to stress. They tend to be calm, even-tempered, and less likely to feel tense or rattled.

The other big discovery was how the Normal worked in terms of neuroscience. The neuro-physical counterpart of The Normal Component is the default-mode network. In 2001 a paper by Marcus Raichle first described the “default-mode” network.  The default-mode network comprises a centrally located hub of brain activity the links parts of the cerebral network to older parts of the brain such as the limbic system and hippocampus.

In 2005 Robin Cathart-Harris and his team in London started injecting volunteers with psilocybin and LSD and then using a variety of scanning tools to observe what happens in their brain. It turns out the psychedelic drugs did not work by exciting the brain.  In fact it was the complete opposite!! The default-mode network has been described by Cathart-Harris as the “brain’s orchestra conductor”.  It lights up when we are day dreaming or engaged in higher-level “meta-cognitive” processes as self-reflection, memory time travel, or thinking about other people’s thinking.  It has an inhibitory effect of lower level parts of the brain that deal with emotion.  What happens that when a volunteer takes a psychedelic drug the brain scans show the default-mode network shutting down and according to the volunteers it feel like their ego is dissolving. (Alcohol has a similar effect).

The final step in 2016 was the change in name. While working with my JV partner, Bruce Lewolt, in the USA he argued the marketability of the technology would be improved if new names were used to reflect the changes and to avoid confusion we should rename the model the 7MTF standing for the Seven Motivational-Temperament Factors. Thus we made the switch in name from Normal to Regulator.