Do people in your office sit in the same seat during routine meetings?

We do at the Chamber.

An email from the U.S. Chamber today pointed to this story on Business Week’s website that explores the inner meaning of this phenomenon. There’s even an graphic. Here’s an excerpt:

Things get quite complicated, according to Sharon Livingston, a clinical psychologist and founder of the Livingston Group, a marketing consultancy. Livingston has met with more than 40,000 people in her career at dozens of large companies and has found that people fit into one of seven personality types based on where they sit, which she explains using the nomenclature borrowed from Snow White’s seven dwarves. Those sitting opposite the person leading the meeting tend to be Grumpy or Doc, or a combination of the two, says Livingston. Grumpy is openly argumentative and may be hard to control. Doc is the person who faces off against the leader to show off his or her intelligence.

The person who sits on the leader’s right is Happy—a yes-man. In her Web-based questionnaire that quickly determines one’s dwarf personality, 59% of the 20,000 people who have taken the test fall in the Happy category. “We’ve been trained in American society to be helpful and support the leader,” says Livingston.

Turns out Dr. Livingston also has an online test. I took the test, and it turns out I’m grumpy — can’t argue with that.

Here are the links to Livingston’s complete dwarf descriptions: bashful | dopey | doc | grumpy | happy | sleepy | sneezy