In 1974 I attended my first personal development training course. It was called the Awareness and Communication Workshop and on that course, I was introduced to the concept of the Social Styles, also known as the Behavioural Perception Matrix. This is a way of understanding differing human behaviour by categorising everyone we meet into one of four personality styles.
The idea of this matric was first introduced in ancient Greece by Hippocrates who spoke of four temperaments or fundamental personality types. Sanguine (pleasure-seeking and sociable), Choleric (ambitious and leader-like), Melancholic (analytical and literal), and Phlegmatic (relaxed and thoughtful).
Carl Jung expanded this work from those early ideas, and psychologists over the years have further explored and developed the theories. The best known of these are the DISC Model, Myers Briggs and Wilson Learning, although many others have worked on developing tools to enable physiological profiling.
I have studied numerous versions of this approach and even included it in my first book, Sell Your Way to Success in 1993. So I jumped at the opportunity recently to chat with Vicky O’Farrell about this and other behavioural topics on her "It Starts with You" Podcast.
Where I used Social Styles as a means of developing better relationships with prospective customers in the sales process,e Vicky has specialised in helping organisations understand and develop the use of personality profiling to help understand people better. Vicky describes herself as the Queen of Behaviours and In her new and entertaining podcast, explores personality and behaviour with her guests.
We talked a lot about personality profiling but also did a deep dive into the issues I have observed in using this approach in sales and marketing, and also my observations from a gender perspective where I have seen marked differences between the behaviour of men and women.
0 Comments