Knowing yourself means knowing your weaknesses, knowing your emotional boundaries, and knowing your psychological triggers. As a reader, your perceptions and insights that arise from this book will be substantially different depending on if you identify as an individual, as a member of a group, or as a leader of a group. The aim here is to become conscious, both of the influences that exert external pressure on individual identity and the influence an individual can have within a group dynamic toward a specific outcome. Masterminding is manifesting a group dynamic or pattern that sustains the energy of the group, and having access to a method to map out individuals within the group greatly facilitates this work.
It is interesting to note that in most groups, different approaches to understanding the individual's role in the group are so often relegated to one personality typing system or another. Enneagram, Astrological signs, MBTI58--these are all systems which structure individuals within a group along specific, internally-consistent dynamics. While we suspect a group could be structured along the Dewey Decimal Classification, it seems more appropriate to base a discussion on a psychological typing system that is dynamic and responds to network interactions rather than cataloging the specific nodes by mood or temperament.
In chapter four we discussed Timothy Leary's interpersonal circumplex, a personality compass used in group therapy to categorize individuals in relation to each other within a group setting. A group that balances nicely will retain a more specific focus, while one with too many individuals falling to one side of the compass or another will quickly spiral into destruction or leak energy through entropy. The center of this compass can be thought of as the group's purpose, or focus, and the individuals that generate this focus are arranged around the center based on their reactions to the other members of the group. It is fairly easy to adapt this model to the intentional generation of a group mind, as a way to orient individuals to a project when they first become a part of the group, as well as a way to identify problems before they threaten group cohesion.