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I’d like to take a few minutes now to talk to you about one of the essential ingredients
to being successful as a salon owner and that is the whole business of people skills.
When we talk about people, you’ll often hear the expression What kind of character
judge are you? or How good a judge of character are you?
And what I would say is hold that thought, rather than judging people’s character,
I strongly believe that it’s worth taking time to try and understand how different characters
and personalities work. That way you can learn a lot about you and the people around you.
I’m going to share with you now an exercise that I did and learnt many years ago, but
I still use as a valuable exercise with People Skills. When we do that, this is for you and
you alone to start with. When we’ve finished please feel free to use this and use it constructively
with the people you work with.
I’m going to give you three seconds to look at four shapes. After those 3 seconds, once
you’ve chosen your shape don’t tell anybody else, and we’ll go through the exercise.
So here we go. 1, 2, 3, That’s it. You’ve made your choice.
Now I’m going to explain what the experts say about your choice. If, for instance, you
were drawn towards this square shape, the experts suggest that you are the organized,
punctual, reliable people, described as you’ve really got it together.
If you were drawn towards this triangular shape you are the people that are described
as very intelligent, very knowledgeable and described as really know your stuff.
Whereas if you were drawn towards this circular shape, the experts suggest that you are the
sensitive, kind, caring, warm personalities.
And lastly, if you were drawn towards this lightning bolt shape the experts suggest that
you are the creative people. You’re the ones with the vision, the imagination, able
to see the potential in any situation.
Now, before we go any further, what I did is I described each of the four main personality
types which are in everybody. I also described them on a good day. Now we all have bad days.
I’m going to go around each of those four shapes now and describe those too on a bad
day. Here it goes.
Remember reliable, organized, punctual on a good day? On a bad day these people do not
like change. These are routine people. They don’t appreciate you coming in with new
ideas.
Remember intellectual, knowledgeable person on a good day? On a bad day these people can
be quite arrogant and will perhaps use their superior knowledge against other people.
Remember sensitive, kind, caring? On a bad day this person could be an emotional wreck,
laughing one minute and angry the next. Grandma would often say Oh, they wear their heart
on their sleeve. Oh they’re very highly strung.
And lastly, remember creative, visionary person? On a bad day these people are late, disorganized,
they lose stuff. They’re basically here in body, but in mind, who knows?
So bearing that in mind you can see that each of these have their own strengths and weaknesses
and you can also see that you can score yourself, as your own personality.
How organized are you in your business? How knowledgeable are you about that business?
How sensitive are you about your own feelings and the people around you? And how creative
are you?
You can add up your four scores; they must add up to 100% and that makes 100% of you,
today. Yes, your score can change, it can change from day to day and for some people
almost hour by hour, but at least you can get a measure of how your personality type
is made up.
Did you also know the experts say that if you draw a line down the middle you can see
whether you fall on this side, or this side of the shapes, this being the left and this
being the right side of the brain?
These people that fall mostly here on the left were really good at school, because organization
and memory tests work for these people.
Whereas these right hand people they work from the senses. Grandmother would say They
think with their heart and they think with their head. These people did really well after
school and tend to be great in people and team situations.
It’s a great exercise to learn. It will help you learn about yourself and the people
that you work with. But it’s exactly that, an exercise for dealing with people and using
that knowledge to help you to speak their kind of language.
A quick for instance: The left hand people are interested in facts, figures and exact
benefit of the product or service that you are going to offer them. Whereas these people
are interested in the feeling they’re going to get, how fashionable that looks and using
their imagination for feelings and facts.
That’s just a start and you going to see lots more in the book of how we refer to these
different types of people to help you understand the importance of People Skills in your business.