Your Identity Zones

Your Identity Zones

Who Am I? Who Are You?

How Do We Get Along?

Mark A. Williams

Capital Books, Inc., 2004

At work or play, use the "Identity Zones" in your life to determine what pushes your buttons, what inflames tensions with others, when compromise is possible, and when it isn't. Learn to minimize the risks of costly "blowouts" and maximize the potential for meaningful connections.

In this ground-breaking new book, Williams divides identity into two broad categories–affiliations (age, race, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, marital status, for example) and values (like honesty, integrity, generosity, patriotism, individual freedom). And, he presents "Identity Zones" as a way of measuring how strongly we feel about given affiliations and values and how we might act when challenged.

The Identity Zones measure:

Temperature: From hot to warm to cold–how sensitive are you about this part of your identity?

Circle of Inclusion: From closed to selective to open–how much does it influence your choice of friends and lovers, where you live, what you join?

Commitment: From activist to engaged to passive–how willing are you to work to "change hearts and minds?"

Strategy: From transformational to reformist to conformist–are you more likely to "get radical" and battle the issues, or work within the system?

Power: From high to medium to low–how empowered do you feel?

"Your Identity Zones is our guide for the new global village and workplace. This book will be as useful to a wide range of professionals and people-watchers as Gail Sheehy's Passages, John Naisbitt's Megatrends, and any of Alvin Toffler's works."

–John Zogby, President and CEO, Zogby International

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For more than 20 years, Mark A. Williams has been improving human interactions and organizational effectiveness for such clients and AT&T, UNISYS, Avon, American Express, Marriott International, Microsoft, Sara Lee, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Agency for International Development, and Harvard Medical School. He is the founding partner of MarkusWorks, a research and consulting firm focused on human identity issues, and a partner with John Zogby in the Zogby/Williams Institute for the Study of Human Identity. Mark Williams is the author of the The 10 Lenses: Your Guide to Living & Working in a Multicultural World (Capital, 2001).