Kathleen Edelman joins Sanger and Shawn to discuss the four temperament styles, so you can gain understanding, avoid miscommunications, and truly hear people.

KEY TOPICS
A root-cause approach to eliminating conflict.
Taking responsibility for your own communication.
Understanding the temperaments to better understand your team.
Using the temperaments to inform your hiring decisions.

WHAT’S MY TEMPERAMENT?
Sanguine (yellow): Speaks the language of people and fun.
Choleric (red): Speaks the language of power and control.
Melancholic (blue): Speaks the language of order and perfection.
Phlegmatic (green): Speaks the language of calm and harmony.

DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THE FULL EPISODE?
Check out the highlight episode, Ep.117 HIGHLIGHT I Improving personal and business relationships by identifying underlying needs, or download it directly using this link.

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CONNECT WITH KATHLEEN EDELMAN
The ColorWorks Group website
Book a Training with Kathleen's Team
I Said This, You Heard That website
Kind Words Are Cool website
I Said This, You Heard That YouTube Channel
Kathleen's Amazon Author Page
Kathleen's LinkedIn
Instagram: @Isaidyouheard
Kathleen's Facebook
I Said This, You Heard That Facebook

Kathleen Edelman is a leading author, speaker, and communications specialist whose journey began with her graduation from Powers High School in 1979. Armed with her Powers education, she went on to study at Western Michigan University and the University of Michigan – Flint before moving to California. She married her husband Brad and lived out west for seven years, taking on work as a real estate appraiser and salesperson as they started their lives together. Throughout her career journey, Kathleen always had a guiding passion. From the time she was a child, she had been troubled by miscommunication. Why do so many people seem to talk past each other when they have discussions or arguments? Why do people say things they don’t mean? Above all, she wondered why people would say unkind things to each other when it wasn’t necessary – especially because, in her view, it was never necessary. She always wanted to help people become better communicators, but it wasn’t until she and Brad, her husband, moved to Maryland in 1991 that her passion found direction. During the long car ride from coast to coast, she listened to the work of Florence Littauer, an author of temperament-based books. Littauer’s theories sparked an odyssey for Kathleen that, in some ways, is still ongoing today. Kathleen realized that the keys to kind and productive communication are empathy and mutual understanding. Everyone naturally speaks and hears all language from their own individual innate wirings. This means that something said by one person can be interpreted in a completely unique way by another. This gap – the space between what is said and what is heard – is often the root of conflict in marriages, business relationships, and friendships. She found the solution to this miscommunication in her study of the four temperaments – melancholy, phlegmatic, choleric, and sanguine. The temperaments are a method for classifying individuals based on their natural tendencies, needs, strengths, weaknesses, and innate needs. Each temperament has a different set of these – for example, melancholy individuals thrive on space and silence, whereas sanguines need acceptance and approval to feel fulfilled. Kathleen discovered that understanding the temperaments is vital to healthy communication. First, when someone understands their own temperament, they are better equipped to understand their emotional, spiritual, and social needs. Filling these needs and effectively communicating them to others can help a person operate in their strengths rather than in their weaknesses. Furthermore, understanding the innate wiring of another person allows one to “speak their language.” For example, even if you say the exact same words to a choleric and a phlegmatic,they’ll each probably hear something completely different. Kathleen found that teaching people to communicate intentionally in this way is often the key to saving relationships. Knowing the innate needs of others allows us to love them better. Her study was always motivated by her strong faith – specifically, all of her work on communication centers upon the directive passed down by Christ through Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:29: “Do not let any unwholesome words come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up, according to their needs, so that it may benefit those who listen.” Because of her spiritual focus, she partnered with North Point Ministries to spread the message of healthy, temperament-based communication as widely as possible. She has written a workbook, recorded several free videos, and released a six-week bible study called “I Said This, You Heard That” aimed at developing communication skills by educating people about the four temperaments through the framework of Ephesians 4:29 (if you are curious, you can check out her work on her website at isaidyouheard.study). Kathleen regularly travels around the country speaking about and providing training on temperaments and empathetic communication – in total, her work has already impacted millions of relationships worldwide. Currently, Kathleen lives in Georgia with her husband Brad. The two live about an hour north of Atlanta, and enjoy spending time with friends and family, enjoying the lake or working on projects around the house. She has two children, Avery and Brice, who also live in Georgia. Avery, her daughter, graduated from the University of Georgia in 2019 and works as a graphic designer. Brice, her son, started a coding education company after receiving his degree from Georgia Tech in 2020. Kathleen published her second book in 2021 called “A Grown-Up’s Guide To Kids’ Wiring,” which teaches better communication skills to anyone in the life of a child or teenager: parents, grandparents, coaches, counselors, aunt, uncles, neighbors, etc! Kathleen continues to speak and teach across the country, as well as meet oe-on-one with people for personal coaching. The demand for Kathleen and her content has been so high that she has expanded her team to include a small group of women who speak and teach on her behalf, when needed. She has one thing that she’d like to say to every single person reading this: “The words you use are the words you choose; remember, kind words are cool!”