Keep Profiles of Important People
Profiles help you keep track of what makes your colleagues and coworkers happy and productive.
Summer was over, and Grandma Cuddles had welcomed a new batch of little children to her daycare center. After ceremoniously replacing all the old little tykes’ file folder labels with ones for the new group, she was ready to begin the intake process.Â
Grandma Cuddles cares a lot about helping her young charges become productive members of society. Very, very productive. Behind the daycare center is an adorable vegetable garden, with tomatoes growing on tall, strong sticks, and carrots planted in neat little rows for her students to tend.
She’s noticed that some children are better with the carrots, while others are better with the stick. When it’s chore time, she matches jobs to the strengths of the worker. Carrot children work with carrots, and stick children work with sticks. Unfortunately, Grandma Cuddles often forgets which are which, and there’s nothing quite like watching a carrot child suddenly get hit with a job involving sticks. So many tots have come through the daycare center that they all start to look alike—and not just because of the “special Cuddles treatments.”
Google and Facebook have enough information about each and every one of us to turn them into their mindless slaves. Fortunately, they don’t use the information they’ve collected for vast psychological manipulation (at least, not as far as we know). Since the name of the game is psychological profiling for success, you can and should do it too.
Really Get to Know The Important People in Your Life
People are different, and you have to handle different people differently. Start to build a profile on the significant people in your life. Track how best to communicate with them in different situations. And don’t just rely on memory! Write down your notes about each boss, team member, loved one, or blackmail victim in a separate file in your reference system. I put each person’s profile in a note on my smartphone, named PROFILE person’s name. Then when I’m going to meet with someone, their profile takes only seconds to bring up. The important part, of course, is making sure you have a profile that covers a person’s most important attributes.Â
Include the Love/Appreciation Languages
Include each person’s Love and Appreciation Languages. As covered in my past episodes, people recognize appreciation in different ways. If you want to reward someone for a job well done, do it in the language that they best understand.
When little “Urchin” (Grandma’s affectionate nickname for one of her students) finishes the daily quota of metal sculpture, suitable for proud display on mummy or daddy’s Bentley, Grandma just looks in Urchin’s file for the right appreciation language. “Words of Affirmation!” Grandma’s favorite! “How wonderful it is that you put in all this fine effort. I’m very proud of you!” For an appreciation language of “Gifts,” Grandma might have given little Urchin a carrot as a sweet, motivating gift.Â
Include Apology Languages
Of course, not everything in life is sunshine and lollipops. Sometimes we make mistakes, and when we do, we want to apologize so the other person can really take it in. Apologizing the wrong way will just make someone we’ve wronged even angrier.Â
Apologizing the wrong way will just make someone we’ve wronged even angrier.Â
Urchin’s apology language is Regret. Apologies to Urchin must come with heartfelt feeling of regret. When Grandma is picking tomatoes, and the tomato growing rod slips, knocking Urchin to the ground, it’s easy to patch up the boo-boo as long as Grandma says, “I’m so sorry. I feel awful!!” in a convincing tone of voice. Fortunately for Grandma, little tots are easily convinced.
Keep Track of Strengths and Skills
If you’re a manager who has to help match up people with jobs, an important part of a profile is someone’s strengths and skills. You can use a skill list to match people to jobs, and also to identify skills that are missing, so you know where the opportunities lie for someone’s personal development.
Little Urchin may have great problem-solving abilities. Or the ability to project manage an implementation. Or charm the customers who buys the produce from the garden. Or even the manual dexterity to pluck 50 percent more than the allotted quota of tomatoes from the vine without a single bruise!Â
All of this goes into the profile in two lists: strengths and skills. Problem-solving and charm are strengths. Project management and six-sigma tomato picking are skills. When an irate customer triggers the need for good customer service, Little Urchin can be put front and center to use that charm to placate the customer—all while providing a first line of defense if the customer gets abusive.Â
Note Their Learning Style
When you’re responsible for coaching someone to develop skills, also make note of their learning style. It only makes sense to help all your co-workers develop new skills. Like the skills that it takes to do your job. So you can give them parts of your job as “learning experiences,” saving yourself work while giving them the personal development experience of a lifetime!
Some people need to understand things conceptually. Others need specific examples. Urchin learns best from structured, hands-on activity. Cuddles jots those down in the profile, and knows to keep the little squatter busy with learning activities like Metal Shop and kitchen activities like Gourmet Blowfish Preparation. These are a good match for Urchin’s learning style. Grandma would never think of asking Urchin to learn supply chain management; it lacks the structured routine and hands-on elements that make Urchin so very, very valuable in the manufacturing facility.Â
We work in a diverse world. We’re emotional, we’re rational, we’re conceptual learners, we’re concrete. We’re doers, we’re thinkers, we have strengths, and weaknesses. By keeping profiles on the important people in your life, you can be deliberate about your interaction, and make sure that you both get the most out of your relationship. Whether you’re supervising underpaid workers in a manufacturing facility, marketing to innocent and naive consumers who believe they have free will in the marketplace, building a power base to take over the world, running a day-care center, or all of these at once, remembering and using each person’s psychological profile can help you keep everything under control. Whose control? Yours.
Use profiles to make sure everyone is working less, doing more, and living a great life.Â
I’m Stever Robbins. I run webinars and other programs to help people be Extraordinarily Productive, and build extraordinary careers. If you want to know more, visit SteverRobbins.com.
Work Less, Do More, and Have a Great Life!