The People Code: It's All About Your Innate Motive

I read this book a long time ago and over the past few years I picked it up again. This book is a party favor in our home for guests who haven’t taken it for awhile or while I work as a hairstylist helping them understand themselves and loved ones more. Ilove Taylor. I’ve never met someone I feel like who understands people like he does. This book was so extremely helpful for my husband and I to understand our ways to communicate with each other. It’s fun now to guess what our friends and family are. And we can sit and talk for hours with friends about this book. I tell everyone I only believe in two books and this is one of them.

I bought this book in the wake of a bad breakup. She was nearly my fiance after we'd conducted a long distance friendship for two years, a long distance relationship for two and a half, and an actual, present relationship for a year and a half before she dumped me on what seemed like a whim.One day soon after, I took one of those personality quizzes on Facebook, "What Color is Your Personality?" Though it wasn't related to this book, my result, Blue, described me almost perfectly. The quiz was surprisingly in depth and accurate.Intrigued, I began to research color-coded personality theory. I quickly found myself researching The People Code.Ladies and gentlemen, this book is indeed one of the first books you need to read before you get married. If you're already married, read it. If you're just trying to figure yourself out, read it. Since purchasing and ravenously consuming it, I have successfully referred it to my parents (who in turn referred it to a large number of their friends), my therapist, and several of my friends.An easy but engaging and compelling read, Hartman successfully boils down the vast complexities of human personality to four core motives. Though every individual possesses a unique personality, their ultimate motive always results in one of or a balance of the four, Power, Intimacy, Peace, and Fun. Though the text presents fairly little external scientific research, the findings presented seem freakishly accurate.The People Code has helped me discover myself anew and comforted me in a very difficult time of my life. Realizing how dysfunctional my previous relationship was (she was a Red, I'm a Blue, a combination that does NOT fare well, usually), letting go, moving on, and growing up has been simplified drastically with this book as my companion. I and my family are closer and have a better understanding of one another. I know better now than ever before who I want to be with in my next and eventually last romantic relationship.Something important to remember is that people are all different and you should not assume that you are your color EXACTLY. This is simply not so. There will always be anomalies and facets that don't adhere to your color, but the majority of you will reflect it regardless. For example, I am very much a Blue, who have great difficulty forgiving and forgetting. However, I am considered to be an extremely forgiving Blue (though I never forget the histories of relationships, good or bad).TL;DR Awesome book, very easy to read, very concise and manageable, will absolutely change your life if you approach it with an open mind!

I do not agree with everything but the test part is really fun to do to your friends.

I became interested in Taylor Hartman's The People Code after it was integrated into the curriculum of one of my Executive MBA classes. I purchased The People Code solely to expand my knowledge on Hartman's sociology theories prior to the MBA course's final exam, although, subsequent to all of the negative feedback the book had received, I was hesitant to spend money on the book at all. I am ultimately very glad that I purchased The People Code, and I have read it cover to cover. Taylor Hartman acknowledges that the complexities of motive and personality cannot be broken into four cohorts; such a contention would have been deemed a casualty of attribution theory by peer reviewers. If you can ignore the unfounded cries of "genetic fallacy" from other Amazon reviews long enough to read, absorb, and synthesize Hartman's assertions, what you will find is a practical infrastructure for approaching interpersonal communication and building meaningful relationships. The insight that how you should best approach a person is a function of their core motivation, and that you can use heuristics to observe that motive through an individual's behavior, is inherently valuable enough to substantiate the cost of Taylor's book a dozen times over.

I am a Registered Nurse and I was working at a hospital as a "quality assurance utilization manager" when a co-worker gave me this book. I was in the 13th year of my career and had always received great annual reviews from supervisors regarding the quality of my work. After working in this new administrative job for a year I got one of the lowest evaluations of my entire working life - after I had put more time, energy and passion into this new job than I had in any of my previous positions!After I read this excellent book (back in 1991) I immediately understood the problem: My boss was a "Red" and "Yellow" personality, driven by power and craving focused attention. My personality is "White" and "Blue" so I seek peace and intimacy. Trust me - it was not a good fit! Thankfully I was able to quit my job and become a full-time parent to my two sweet children.Fast forward seventeen years.....My children are now 21 and 22 years old and attending college. They have been raised on the "Color Code" concepts and it has dramatically improved the quality of their interactions with family, friends, teachers and other acquaintances. My daughter has an intense "blue & yellow" personality (like my husband) and my son is "white and yellow" - which must be the most laid back personality on the planet! I am not exaggerating when I say that I use the concepts in this book every single day.Thank you Taylor Hartman for your most excellent book!

This book helps me understand so many people and relationships in my life. I reference it often! There’s a lot of truth in this dissection of personalities and being a red it just made me feel so validated for all of the red tendencies that made me feel like there was something wrong with me or that I just couldn’t understand why I did things the way I did. This book helped me see my tendencies and how to cope and work around innate personality idiosyncrasies. And oh my gosh has helped a ton in my marriage!

This life certainly is a journey. One made a little easier with helpful insight and tools like this book. Thanks!

I am very happy with the book.Couldn't put it down for 2 hours!I knew it was interesting before I read it as my friend did nothing but sing it's praises! The only thing I can complain about is that it arrived on the very last expected delivery date! I was impatient for it to arrive earlier! But,at least it made it just in time so I cannot say that it was late.I would recommend this book to anyone who may struggle to understand others characters and how to get on with them and also to discover things about yourself.

I would recommend this book is so real what a journey and it hit me how my life has been through its trials and why the colour coding unbelievable it should be read more I will be recommending this to my work colleagues and friends excellent

Expected more from this, the layout is really boring but the context is quite useful

Excellent book with a lot of useful information.