To be clear, archetypes are less useful than the better fleshed-out pictures created through the assessments. They are not precise; they are more like simple caricatures, but they can be useful when it comes to assembling teams. Individual people will always be more complex than the archetypes that describe them, and they may well match up with more than one. For example, the Spacey Artist may or may not also be a Perfectionist or may be a Crusher too. While I won’t go over all of them, I will describe Shapers—the one that best represents me—in some depth.

Shapers are people who can go from visualization to actualization. I wrote a lot about the people I call “shapers” in the first part of this book. I use the word to mean someone who comes up with unique and valuable visions and builds them out beautifully, typically over the doubts of others. Shapers get both the big picture and the details right. To me, it seems that Shaper = Visionary + Practical Thinker + Determined.

I’ve found that shapers tend to share attributes such as intense curiosity and a compulsive need to make sense of things, independent thinking that verges on rebelliousness, a need to dream big and unconventionally, a practicality and determination to push through all obstacles to achieve their goals, and a knowledge of their own and others’ weaknesses and strengths so they can orchestrate teams to achieve them. Perhaps even more importantly, they can hold conflicting thoughts simultaneously and look at them from different angles. They typically love to knock things around with other really smart people and can easily navigate back and forth between the big picture and the granular details, counting both as equally important.

People wired with enough of these ways of thinking that they can operate in the world as shapers are very rare. But they could never succeed without working with others who are more naturally suited for other things and whose ways of thinking and acting are also essential.
