Cracking the Doer-Dreamer-Feeler Code
Everyone is primarily a doer, dreamer, or feeler.
Everyone is all three, but you’re great in one area, average in another, and weak in the third.
Choose:
Choose your primary lens. Dream, doer, or feeler? There are only two options after that. Suppose you’re a dreamer. You are either a:
- Dreamer-doer-feeler
- Dreamer-feeler-doer
Illustration:
I’m a dreamer-feeler-doer. My primary lens is the future. Doers and feelers expand my leadership. Dreamers energize me.
Dreamers nudge people to try new things and learn as they go. Anyone who has ever worked with me experiences the nudge. To be honest, I can be pushy.
The person at the other end:
I can’t understand the preference for planning over spontaneity or feelings over progress. “Let’s get started and learn as we go.”
Sometimes I partner with Bob Hancox to train coaches. He is a feeler-doer-dreamer. We had an opportunity to train a group of coaches in Europe and the Middle East via video conference. Bob was against it.
Bob said training coaches is done in person. You need to get a feel for the room. “How can they connect with each other?”
Not surprisingly, I moved forward without him. I told the client it was a new technique for me. We launched and built the plane in the air. It worked great.
Since then, Bob started delivering training via video conference. He needed a nudge to try something new. Student assessments are just as high via video conference as they are when everyone is in the room.
Note: Bob frequently ‘nudges’ me. But not like I nudge him. That’s the beauty of listening to the person at the other end of the spectrum.
Timing and context:
- Talk to doers, if you want to finish something.
- Talk to dreamers, if you want to start something.
- Talk to feelers, if you want to build culture.
What is your primary motivation? Doer, dreamer, or feeler?
What characteristics do you see in doers, dreamers, or feelers?
I like this concept a lot, but I was wondering what the best way for determining your own ranking with these? I could take a pretty solid guess, but I wasn’t sure if there was a way to be more through or accurate.
Thanks Dan. Yes, I think we have a gut feel. If you wrote a basic definition of each, what would be essential?
I really like this as a simple approach to understanding difference and relative strengths. I’m a Myers-Briggs coach, which gives a lot more depth and nuance to these kinds of dynamics, but as a rough-and-ready guide, this is a great starting place. Like the other Dan (Davis) points out, it isn’t always easy to figure out the ranking. Some people are a bit more middle-of-the-road on these different strengths. What I always say to MBTI clients, is have a think about when you are at your most stressed, or think back to when you were a less devloped/rounded youngster. What came to the fore most then?
Thanks Dan. I’m glad you brought up Myers-Briggs. This approach isn’t a replacement or a correction. It’s just a simple way to get a feel for people on the team and understand how people work. In addition, I think it helps us relate to others.
Which of the 16 personality types fit into the three categories?
Very good question. I had a group of students I used to use a 4-way tool with- dreamer:doer:thinker:feeler which more-or-less mapped to dominant N,S,T or F functions though this does depend on whether people are extraverting or introverting their function. An internal (introverted) dreamer may give less of the nudge you were talking about, and in a team setting may play one of the other roles more obviously. In my experience and opinion STs are classic doers. NT types are mainly dreamers. SFs mainly feelers and NFs could be dreamers or feelers, but it is a lot more nuanced than that.
Dan Corlett (there are three Dan’s in the first 3 comments!). When you brought up MBTI, I was wondering what the mapping was. Before I saw your answer, I labeled myself a “Dreamer”.As it turns out, I am INTP, which matched what you have seen.
Where do “thinkers” fit in?
analysts – not so much future-oriented dreamers as those who create structure and order, but not necessarily action.
😉☺️ Happy Easter!!!
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And to you, Bob!
hehehe that gave me a good laugh, training new coaches virtually can be a challenge, it really requires a class with top-notch and highly engaged individuals 😉
Great students make teachers look great!
I would consider myself primarily a doer who can morph into dreamer stage at times. My frustration has been and continues to be with one of our best dreamers at work. He is extremely intelligent and knowledgeable on his craft and can dream up the right concepts. He fails at when we request details to take the dream to the doer stage and make it replicatable for others along with detailing any profitability associated with the dream. In fact at times he just throws his hands up and storms out. I like some of your examples in bringing down the conflict and helping to focus those dreamers to give information that can be made by doers into something workable. I would be interested in more examples of how to focus dreamers to task so that us doers (and those feelers) may move the dreams onward to profitable completion.
Interesting conversation today, as always, depends on your leadership role! To be able to harness all the attributes and accomplish tasks by the Doers, started by the Dreamers/Thinkers, pushing and sharing the drive so the doers get the job done. The circle can evolve for total action, so it appears.
Thanks Tim. It’s interesting to think of Doer-Dreamer-Feeler in situational contexts. How do they respond under pressure for example? Thanks for expanding my thinking.
Dan,
My experience with doers under pressure for us they get the job done, we get together as a team, delegate tasks to accomplish the project. Sometimes the most experienced step up with creative ways we don’t see, they have the vision to lay it out, so the doers get it done, the experience delivers dreamer/thinker and doer for everyone to feel the ends in site.
Considering you crank out a post each and every day, you sure seem like a doer to me!
Thanks Kim. Glad you brought this up. All three can be hard workers and all three get things done. I was concerned that readers might get the idea that feelers and dreamers don’t get stuff done.
Believe me, I’m a dreamer. I’m terrible with planning and start too many things. I hate getting locked into things. I’m not as worried about finishing as I am about starting. My doer friends would laugh at the thought that I might be a doer. 🙂
What are you?
I am definitely a dreamer-feeler-doer. I dream up something, get a feel for it and them go do it, if the feels are right. It makes sense, because I am an ENFP.
I believe this concept stretches far beyond than feeler-doer-dreamer and encompasses MBTI and what the Clarity on Fire website suggests. Probably, even more than that.
I am a DiSC guy (High i, with Supporting S or D situationally) – YEAH
I would self-describe myself using your Code as a Dreamer, Feeler, Doer .
I like the simplicity of your three Codes and it would correlate with DiSC very well if you added a “Planner” to cover the DiSC – “C” behavior personality type.
“C’s” are the people that I love to work with – they help me validate against compliance or regulatory constraints and they love to analyze data.
I love any tool that helps increase our level of self-awareness that is simple to use and explain.
Thanks!
Jason Manning
I agree with Jason that separating the Planner out of the Doer category is important. I’ve managed Planners and Doers, and they create, process and implement ideas/tasks differently.
Dan. I’ve done a fair bit of work with styles of all types – and the foundation of this D/F/T seems to be based on two polarities – Introvert/extrovert and Task/People – with Introverted People orientation tagged as “dreamers” and Extroverted People orientation tagged as ‘Feelers”. Extroverted Task orientation would be “Doer” but what category do you place the Introverted Task folk – these are typically accountants, engineers, tech folk – task oriented but reflective so less active that the extroverted task oriented Doers. Your thoughts on how introverted task oriented people fit within the D/T/F framework?
As a coach, I like simple (but not simplistic!) ways to structure thought because they are so helpful in the coaching situation. They’re not complicated enough to distract you from giving your full attention to the coachee. I’ve worked a bit with Drivers, which are useful as a filter on coachees themselves whilst also being useful talking points for coachees who find it difficult to identify with other people (it helps them understand that other people may quite legitimately not be like them!). Of course, none of these Drivers or characteristics are set in stone. In MBTI terms I previously came out as quite an extreme ‘I’, but over the years this has modified to being more or less at the mid-point between ‘I’ and ‘E’. My own thought is that continually stretching one’s comfort zone in specific ways can mean one becomes competent in aspects of interaction one is not necessarily naturally drawn to. I think that happened with me, but I agree with the other comment that often one can ‘revert’ under pressure – that’s when I desperately need to go away and recharge in a quiet place on my own! The bottom line is that if we deep-down accept that everyone is unique and everyone’s contribution is of equal value, then we won’t get too frustrated with other people. We’ll try to see things from their point of view, and whilst we may not agree, or we may do things differently, we can see each other as complementary in teams, and that’s where the creativity or ‘spark’ lies…