The Four Tendencies

by Gretchen Rubin

  The good news is that this Obliger pattern is easily remedied—once an Obliger knows how to do it.

  And how does an Obliger meet an inner expectation? By creating outer accountability. Once Obligers realize that outer accountability is the crucial missing element, the solution is very straightforward and easy to supply.

  For this reason, Obligers are the ones who gain the most from learning about their Tendency. Even more than for Upholders, Questioners, and Rebels, the Four Tendencies framework helps Obligers analyze their behavior and shows them how to make desired changes. (And it also helps people around Obligers understand how to influence them effectively.)

  This matters, because of all the Tendencies, the Obliger Tendency is the largest Tendency, for both men and women.

  Strengths (and Weaknesses)

  The Obliger is the rock of the world. At work, at home, and in life, not only are Obligers the biggest group, they’re the ones whom people count on the most. Obligers show up, they answer the midnight call from the client, they meet their deadlines, they fulfill their responsibilities, they volunteer, they help out (until they stop—see the discussion later on Obliger-rebellion). Whether at work or at home, Obliger is the Tendency that’s most likely to contribute.

  I was preparing to speak at a conference on the Four Tendencies, and although I usually don’t use slides, the conference organizer urged me to include them in my talk.

  “I don’t know how to create slides,” I admitted.

  “Oh, send me the text, and I’ll create them,” the organizer said.

  “Hmmmmm…” I said, clearly conveying my doubts about whether that would actually happen.

  “I’m an Obliger,” he added.

  “Oh,” I answered, “in that case, thank you, can I have them by Friday?”

  “Sure,” he said, and we both laughed.

  Obligers excel at meeting other people’s demands and deadlines. Because of their active sense of obligation to others, they make great leaders, team members, friends, family members. The Obliger is the mainstay of every community. They will often say, “I put my patients/clients/research team/family ahead of myself.”

  Also, it’s appropriate that the term “Obliger” begins with the letter “O,” because just as blood type O is the universal blood type, the O Tendency is the universal partner; Obligers get along most easily with the other three Tendencies.

  When Obligers have the external accountability they need to meet their inner expectations, they don’t experience any sense of limitation or self-frustration—and of course many environments, such as the workplace, tend to supply lots of accountability. When what others expect from Obligers is what they expect from themselves, they have the life they want.

  My mother is a great example of this. She’s an Obliger, but partly by her design and partly probably by chance, she always finds external accountability to meet important aims for herself. For years, she got herself to exercise regularly by walking with a friend who lived next door. She loves to read, and she’s in a book group. Obligers like my mother aren’t frustrated by the difficulty they face in meeting inner expectations—they might never even notice this difficulty—because the fabric of their lives allows them to do so without much fuss.

  Weaknesses (and Strengths)

  For Obligers, no matter how much they may want to meet their inner expectations, if they don’t have some kind of outer accountability, that expectation won’t be met. In the representative sample I studied, more than two-thirds of Obligers answered that they were most likely to be frustrated with themselves because they feel like “I can take time for other people, but I can’t take time for myself.”

  For this reason, Obligers struggle to self-motivate—to work on a Ph.D. thesis or a spec script, to attend networking events, to get their car serviced, even to get a massage. This can be a serious problem. An Obliger who dreams of launching a start-up, or of switching careers midstream, or of giving up fast food may feel very frustrated by his or her inability to follow through on these aims. An Obliger summarized: “Promises made to yourself can be broken. It’s the promises made to others that should never be broken.”

  Obligers depend on outer accountability to meet both their outer and inner expectations; if that accountability is missing, they struggle.

  At the same time, however, if the burden of outer expectations becomes too heavy, Obligers may show “Obliger-rebellion”: they meet, meet, meet an expectation, then suddenly they snap and refuse to meet that expectation any longer. Acts of Obliger-rebellion can be small and symbolic or large and destructive.

  Obligers need outer accountability to meet expectations, but they also need to guard against allowing those expectations to trigger Obliger-rebellion.

  Variations Within the Tendency

  All Obligers respond to external expectations, but they vary tremendously in how and when they respond to them.

  Like the other Tendencies, Obliger overlaps with two Tendencies: with Upholder (both meet outer expectations) and Rebel (both resist inner expectations).

  While it might seem that OBLIGER/Upholders would feel more pressure to meet all expectations, and therefore experience more resentment and burnout, in fact, the opposite is true. Obliger-tipped-to-Upholders tend to have a clearer sense of their own capacities and desires and a greater ability to say no, just as Upholders can say no.

  My sister, Elizabeth, is an OBLIGER/Upholder. She’s an Obliger who readily meets outer expectations and struggles to meet inner expectations; nevertheless, at a certain point, she’s able to say, “Nope, sorry, I can’t do that.” She hates to let people down, but if she knows that she won’t be able to meet an expectation, she can say no without too much trouble. She finds it fairly easy to tell herself, “To say yes to you, I have to say no to someone else, so sorry, can’t do that.” Neither she nor I could remember many examples of her showing Obliger-rebellion. (Though a few do come to mind—for instance, the time she made a special stop at a Walgreens, bought a bag of potato chips, and ate them in the parking lot. “I’d never done anything like that before,” she said. “It felt illegal.”)

  By contrast, OBLIGER/Rebels chafe more under external expectations and feel more resentful about others’ demands. Like Rebels, they often feel pushed around, and they find it hard to count on themselves, and they react against any sense of coercion. Their Obligerness means that they find it hard to say no, but then they’re likely to feel resentful and burned out and therefore more likely to show Obliger-rebellion. They meet expectations, but at a certain point (and they may reach that point very quickly), they snap. Like Rebels, they may dislike living with routines, a set calendar, and structure. As one OBLIGER/Rebel explained:

  I feel huge pressure to comply with other people’s expectations, while seething with resentment internally. I find this particularly exhausting at work—I inwardly rebel every time I get an email asking me to do something or sit down to plan a project, but still feel obliged to get the work done. I know external accountability will help me establish the habits I want, but the idea of creating external accountability systems can make my skin crawl. I hate being told what to do.

  Also, some Obligers describe themselves as “people-pleasers,” but Obligers have a wide range of ideas about what they feel “obliged” to do. Some feel obliged to do a lot; some feel obliged to do very little. Is a person obliged to send handwritten thank-you notes? To stay late when the team’s monthly report is due? To volunteer for the assignment that no one else is willing to tackle? Some Obligers will feel obliged to do it; other Obligers won’t.

  For some Obligers, expectations attach very easily. Like the Obliger who wrote to me, “Gosh, you know you’re an Obliger when your first thought is: ‘Take the Four Tendencies Quiz; you ought to help Gretchen with her research.’ ”

  In fact, for some Obligers, expectations attach so easily that they feel obliged to do things that no one is actually expecting from them. “Everyone expects me to make slides for the
meeting.” (Really?) “It’s totally unacceptable to have dirty dishes in the sink overnight.” (Unacceptable to whom?) “Everyone’s counting on me to organize a conference.” (Are they counting on that? Even if they are, so what?)

  These Obligers may feel enormous pressure to meet external obligations that, ironically, they’ve imposed on themselves. Even though such expectations are self-generated, they nevertheless take their force from the outside. As one Obliger put it:

  As I grow to believe others expect something of me, I’m more likely to do it. Examples: I gathered the trash a few times before garbage day when my husband was late at work, and now it’s become my thing…not because my husband expects it, but because I believe he does. Even though I know that he doesn’t! Same thing with yoga class…I forced myself to go a few times, and now I can’t skip, because I’d disappoint the instructor.

  She’s not doing these activities because she wants to do them; she feels obliged to others, even though they aren’t actually imposing an expectation.

  By contrast, other Obligers feel much less sense of obligation. These Obligers don’t struggle much with the burden of expectations or “people-pleasing.” If no penalty is in place, they don’t worry about meeting an expectation.

  Also, Obligers vary in their energy levels. High-energy Obligers more easily meet expectations, while low-energy Obligers may feel burned out more quickly.

  How Obligers Can Meet Inner Expectations by Creating Outer Accountability

  So what can Obligers do to get themselves to meet an inner expectation? It’s simple and easy—at least in theory.

  To meet inner expectations, Obligers must create structures of outer accountability. They need tools such as supervision, late fees, deadlines, monitoring, and consequences enforced from the outside to keep their promises to themselves. For Obligers, this is the crucial element. Obligers (and the people around Obligers) can’t expect that they’ll be motivated by inner motivation or that they’ll be convinced by consequences; they must have outer accountability.

  Once Obligers recognize their need for outer accountability, they can build it in. One reader explained:

  I’ve struggled with setting good routines for myself, but I’ll often spend a weekend watching my sister’s five kids or my brother’s six kids so the couples can get away for a few days—and every time I snap into this automatic routine for sleep, meals, church. I began to wonder: Why does taking care of these kids make me so much better at habits?

  I’d found the same thing as a young adult. When I was twenty-one, I served an eighteen-month mission for my church (LDS), and a unique aspect of a mission is that you spend 24/7 with a companion. You must remain in eyesight of that companion at all times. We had a strict schedule as missionaries of arising, having personal and companionship study or devotionals, exercising, getting ready, and working from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. I thrived in that atmosphere.

  A companionship was an automatic relationship, and we were expected to do the same thing at the same time together every day, so it was built-in accountability and monitoring.

  There, I had good habits of sleeping, eating, spiritual devotion, exercise, work. But I couldn’t maintain them once I came home. I often wished I could return to having a full-time companion where we were working on the same thing, at the same time, with the same goals.

  Last week I had company, and I was up early, making meals, doing household tasks. My guests left this morning, and I was in my kitchen admiring how clean it was, despite all of my hours of cooking the last few days. Then I made lunch, and I didn’t clean up after myself, and I caught myself thinking, “No one’s here, it’s just me.” So I played a mental game with myself and pretended that some nieces and nephews were coming over later, and that got me to clean the kitchen.

  The secret to success? Obligers must pick the right kind of accountability for them. Obligers vary dramatically in what makes them feel accountable.

  Some Obligers are easily made to feel accountable. An auto-generated email, or an app that highlights an unfinished task on a to-do list, or a buzzing Fitbit, might be enough.

  By contrast, some Obligers feel accountable only to an actual person. As one Obliger wrote: “I told everyone that I’m sugar-free, and it has been easy to avoid it when anyone is around. The only failure I’ve had was one afternoon when I was unexpectedly alone in the house.” For an Upholder, Questioner, or Rebel, it wouldn’t have mattered that no one else was home, but for this Obliger, it was a crucial element of the situation.

  One Obliger analyzed how different methods did and didn’t work for him:

  Knowing that external accountability is key for me, I made the switch from “working out” at home (almost never) to joining QiFlow fitness. Because of demand, my gym asks members to sign up online, and if you cancel less than two hours before a class, you’re charged with a $5 “late cancel” fee. Strangely, it’s less the $5 fee that keeps me from cancelling, but rather that I don’t want an empty space in a class that I should’ve filled.

  In fact, I’ve been struck by the fact that for many Obligers, the prospect of wasting money doesn’t bring a sense of accountability. An Obliger friend told me, “I’ve always wanted to try yoga, and I’ve been trying to get myself to take a class for years. Finally, I actually signed up—and I went one time. It was the $300 yoga class.” Maybe, for some Obligers, money doesn’t provide accountability because it’s their own money; if they’re wasting someone else’s money, they might feel accountable.

  To be sure, some Obligers are able to manufacture a feeling of “external” accountability themselves, by creating external systems—to-do lists, calendar items, reminders on their phone—that provide that sense of external accountability, even though they’re self-generated. From the outside, these Obligers look like Upholders, because they appear to be following an inner expectation. But for the Obliger, the expectation feels imposed from the outside.

  Some imaginative Obligers can even create outer accountability by thinking of themselves in the third person. “I don’t feel a lot of obligation to do things for myself right now,” one Obliger told me, “but I do feel guilty if I don’t meet future-me’s needs. I hate going to the gym, but future-me will wish I’d stuck to my workout schedule—even though current-me hates it.”

  However, most Obligers can’t self-generate outer accountability; they must find true external sources. They need accountability to feel real. As one Obliger put it:

  I respond poorly to “gimmicky” accountability. If someone is holding me accountable as a way of doing me a favor and helping me to achieve a goal, I know I have no real obligation to that person. When I was working on my doctoral dissertation, I had frequent check-ins with my thesis adviser—but never had much progress to show. We both knew I was behind, and my adviser was disappointed, but I knew that my lack of progress didn’t matter to her career. There were no consequences for her, just for me. In the end, the only thing that helped was to find another person in the same program who was struggling with the same procrastination problem. We’d hold each other accountable—and I knew that if I dropped the ball or didn’t show up, then my partner would lose the feeling of accountability and stop working, too.

  Other variations? Some Obligers—particularly introverted Obligers—prefer impersonal forms of accountability, such as an app or a paid coach who communicates by email.

  Also, for some Obligers, accountability works better when it’s positive. Reminders and oversight feel like nagging, and nagging may trigger Obliger-rebellion. These Obligers do much better when accountability takes the form of praise, cheers, and encouragement. One Obliger explained, “When I tell someone to hold me accountable, it’s like my fate rests in their hands. But when I ask for some high-energy high fives, I feel supported and therefore powerful. Cheering also feels less invasive.”

  So here’s the vital question: How do Obligers create accountability?

  Accountability Partner

  Obligers can tea
m up with an accountability partner: a classmate, trainer, personal organizer, coach, health-care worker, teacher, family member, or friend. In one study, people who enrolled in a weight-loss program with an accountability partner maintained their weight loss more successfully than people who joined alone.

  Some Obligers report using their children as their accountability partners. One study found that when a group of children was trained as “change agents,” their mothers lost significantly more weight and got more physical activity than the mothers in a control group.

  Unfortunately, however, informal accountability partners can be unreliable. If that partner loses interest, gets distracted, or doesn’t want to play the enforcer, the Obliger stalls out. An Obliger lamented, “It really frustrates me when my writing buddy admits that she hasn’t been working on her novel, because then I feel like I don’t need to write, either.”

  Sometimes, too, Obligers try to recruit people to act as accountability partners—but those people don’t always cooperate. For instance, Upholders are often reluctant to provide others with accountability. As an Upholder explained:

  I get frustrated with my Obliger husband. He talks about going back to school, finding a new job, etc., but won’t do anything. And I won’t nag him about it, because, darn it, if he wants it, he should just do it. Why wouldn’t he? Even though it would be more likely to happen, and he probably wouldn’t even mind, if I did some selective nagging on the topic.

  Her Obliger husband would probably welcome the external accountability, but she doesn’t want to have to provide it.