Your Visible Personality

Your Visible Personality

By

Enda Eames
www.4r-ce.com

4R-CE Pty Ltd., 2006-2011 all rights reserved.

Your Visible Personality

Your Visible Personality

The ability to interpret how other people like to be treated during personal, social or business
interactions is generally considered a significant advantage, especially when combined with a
proven approach for reducing communication tensions and stress. Having the knowledge and
skills to identify the signals people give us, and the motivations behind them (both positive and
negative), can help us create an environment for more productive and harmonious
relationships. However, knowledge by itself only alerts us to possible misalignments between
ourselves and the other people we are interacting with. To truly influence a personal, social or
business interaction, we also need a way to translate that knowledge into methods and skills
that contribute to a win-win outcome for the parties involved.
Technology influences on our lives are all pervasive and clearly deliver a lot of benefits, but
technical advantages are now short lived. The Internet has enabled practically anyone to have
some degree of access to a myriad of technologies that deliver an operational advantage or
increased efficiencies. This has resulted in a refocus on effectiveness skills and strategies to
achieve an increase in competitive advantage. The difference may seem a mute point until the
definitions of efficiencies and effectiveness are examined. Effectiveness - the degree to which
objectives are achieved and the extent to which targeted problems are resolved. In contrast to
efficiency, effectiveness is determined without reference to costs and, whereas efficiency
means "doing the thing right," effectiveness means "doing the right thing. The shrinking
potency of efficiency tactics has resulted in business reverting to the pre-Dot.com Bubble view
of the early 2000s that advantage is more significantly influenced by effectively and
strategically managing interpersonal relationships.
Your Visible Personality is an interpersonal relationship management toolkit that focuses on
the areas of behaviour and personality, and how they can be effectively integrated to assist
people to achieve more harmonious relationships, increased business effectiveness, and winwin outcomes.
Your Visible Personality will:

help you observe another persons behaviour from their perspective and priorities;
help you interpret how others perspective differs from your own;
help you adopt a specific strategy to reduce relationship tensions
help you adjust your instinctive response or reactive habits when disagreements occur
help you adapt your usual relationship management approach to match others
help you align with the other persons comfort zone (preferred way of interacting).

By doing the above effective and efficiently, people achieve greater success in negotiation,
counselling, influencing, and other people-to-people situations - with significantly less stress.
When people feel that their priorities and feelings are genuinely understood and respected,
they tend to become more open to considering the different perspective of someone else.
Proactively managing the tensions and stress that can result from conflicting priorities,
different views, or misaligned engagement approaches is a skill that can be learned through
the Your Visible Personality process. However, there is a big difference between knowing
what to do and actually doing it. Authentically empathising with another persons world view,
and adjusting our approaches to align with their perspective, can impose stress on the person
seeking to influence or motivate another to follow a different path than the one they are on.
We have all been in situations where the person we are seeking to persuade or influence
(ethically) has no real motivation to collaborate. Most of the time we just shrug our shoulders
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Your Visible Personality

and walk away, but there are situations especially at work or in close relationships, when we
have to hang in and try to reach a compromise. This can often be very stressful especially
when the compromise results in us being on the receiving end of a you win - I lose result.
Even if we intellectually decide that the other persons view, opinion, or style of interaction is
not intended to hurt us, it can still leave us with a feeling of being compromised or
disrespected - but sometimes having to swallow it is unavoidable. We only voluntarily place
ourselves in a stressful situation if we can see the potential for gain. This punishments and
rewards scenario is an everyday reality for the highly successful salesperson that consistently
puts their I must make the sale agenda on the back burner. They learned that their success
is contingent on a willingness to focus their energy on solving the problem, and translating
how their solution uniquely delivers high value outcomes for that specific customer. This is
called having a you win 1st - I win 2nd mentality. This win-win is easier to achieve if we have
a proven and easy to use map that assists us to understanding and empathise with other
peoples preferred way of interacting, deciding and acting. Essentially anyone who seeks to
influence, persuade or motivate someone else is selling and idea, a value, or a solution.
Sales success in todays rapidly changing and hyper competitive world is in direct proportion
to how we can authentically empathise with our customers task and personal agendas.
However, the salespersons most acute stress is typically the result of managing the
expectations and processes that exist within their company especially when the deal is high
cost and nearing a conclusion. Effectively managing this stress requires empathy for multiple
stakeholder agendas and adjusting our approach to align with the different processes, belief
systems and procedures that are often unreasonable or unrealistic. We all remember
someone who helped us achieve what we perceived to be a great result, or a colleague whose
flexibility and patience was extraordinary. Its highly likely that a key element of their success
was an ability to uncover and empathise with other peoples personal needs or motivations.
They were also probably highly skilled in helping others see how their solution delivered the
best results. In order to achieve both our business and social objectives, we need to better
understand other peoples world view if we are going to influence their decisions or actions.
Your Visible Personality is essentially about improving the skills and approaches that are
used when interacting with other people. It helps us to achieve win-win outcomes through
knowledge, learnable skills, tools, templates and processes that make it easy to identify,
understand, and adjust to other peoples preferred way of living and acting. It incorporates a
major breakthrough in how Personalities and Behaviours are integrated and provides tools
and templates that help people to increase their success during interactions with others.

Observable Behaviour provides a signpost to Personality Type

In order to distil a substantial amount of academic research in the area of sociology and
psychology, a new model was required that makes it easier for a layperson to determine how
another person likes to be interacted with during a business, social or personal encounter.
The Your Visible Personality concept is based on the premise that there is a correlation
between what we can observe in a persons behaviour and what has been recorded about the
different motivations people have - that are ultimately reflected in their personality.

Innerpersonal Relationships
The term Your Visible Personality is a substitute for a string of descriptions of how
behaviour; personality; the conscious; the unconscious; core identity; and the unknown
unknows of the human construct interact and integrate. It is collectively referred to as
Innerpersonal Relationships. This document only addresses the behaviour and personality
aspects of this construct. Your Visible Personality uses two major tools to help us identify,
empathize and adapt to others preferred way of interacting. Social Style to understand
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Your Visible Personality

behaviour what we can see; and the Enneagram to understand personality type the inner
energy or emotional projections that we can feel when we are interacting with other people.

Social Style
Social Style has two dimensions assertiveness and responsiveness (the word
emotiveness is substituted by some practitioners). Assertiveness is defined as: "the degree
to which a person is perceived as attempting to influence the thoughts and actions of others"
(Wenschlag); it can also be explained as the degree to which a person appears to ask
questions or make statements (tell) in interactions with others. Responsiveness is defined as:
"the degree to which a person is perceived as expressing feelings when relating to others"
(Wenschlag); it can also be explained as the degree to which a person reacts reflexively to
influence or stimulation displaying (emoting) or concealing (controlling) emotions during an
interpersonal encounter. Social Style assists an individual to better understand and apply
knowledge relative to their own and others behaviour by building competence in a model of
four styles: Driver, Expressive, Amiable, and Analytical.

Social Style what is it?

Social Style is not the same thing as personality, it refers only to observable behavior
Social Style is not an absolute (i.e. a box). It is, instead, a matter of degree. A style is
plotted on a continuum along X (assertiveness) and Y (responsiveness) axes. A
persons style is located where the X and Y intersection occurs (see diagram below).
Most people behave in a way that will reflect one Style most of the time.
There is no best Style its about versatility (being able to adapt to other styles).
Social Style "isn't a trait or quality not either good or bad (Wenschlag)
There are strengths to certain styles given a situational context or task requirements.

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Your Visible Personality

Social Style why use it?

Understand how others view your behaviour.

Understand why you find some relationships more productive than others.
Develop insight about your behavioural strengths and behavioural weaknesses.
Make reliable assessments about another persons behaviour and needs.
Develop a way of communicating with others that considers their preferences.
Build on your strengths and the strengths of others to develop productive and mutually
beneficial relationships.

The Enneagram
The focus of the Enneagram is to understand the different world views or personality types
we encounter in our daily lives, such that we can gain better insights into how different people
might view the same situation or interaction.

The Enneagram what is it?

9 strategies developed from childhood

o Grouped by 3 ways of being in the world
o Connected to the stress and flow of the individual
o Focuses on motivation that drives behaviour
Heightens awareness of self and others blind spots (i.e. less desirable attributes)
Provides a way to better understand and appreciate self and others world view
Helps us keep present to who we actually are (as opposed to what out ego demands)
Helps us to self-diagnose the cause of non-productive interpersonal relationships
Provides insights into the motivations that cause us to behave in certain situations

The following diagram summarises the nine Enneagram personality types.

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Your Visible Personality

The Enneagram why use it?

The Enneagram is extensively used across virtually all areas of life including education,
therapeutic and counselling settings, spiritual development, and academia. It is not restricted
by gender, race or cultural differences, but in fact can be an enabler to achieve greater levels
of empathy and acceptance in these areas. According to Helen Palmer who advocates the
narrative tradition (i.e. personal stories) way of teaching, The Enneagram enhances, affirms
and augments other psychologies and training methods.... is self-verifiable, lending itself to
scientific psychology. Determining our personality type through the Enneagram does not put
us in a box, but instead helps us see the box from which we view the world, so that we can
step outside of our limited perspective and constraints.

Your Visible Personality - Social Style and Enneagram Integration

The attributes of the Enneagram and how it integrates with Social Style is illustrated in the
following diagram which shows the correlation between the two when the Enneagram
(personality type) attributes are overlaid on the Social Style (behaviour) diagram:

The Enneagram is not a new phenomenon in the area of psychology and has been described
as a reawakening and reformatting of insights about personality that have existed for over two
thousand years. As a framework for understanding how people interact, it is very relevant in
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Your Visible Personality

todays society, whether in a business, social or even a spiritual context. It assists people to
have greater empathy for different perspectives and to make sense of why people behave
differently. It also helps us self-diagnose our blind spots self defeating behaviour that cause
us to get in our own way, and which often results in a lot of interpersonal tension or stress.
Your Visible Personality is intended to help a user to achieve greater communication
effectiveness and reduced interpersonal relationship tension. This is achieved by using the
tools to systematically determine the possible personality types of the individual you are
interacting with. The first step is to observe their assertiveness (ask or tell orientation) and
responsiveness (controlling or displaying emotions) attributes to determine their Social Style
(behaviour). The second step is to determine which Enneagram (personality) types
correspond to that Social Style, and pro-actively adopt a communication strategy that is
aligned with what you perceive is the other persons type. By narrowing down the possibilities,
you can increase the probability of aligning your perspective with theirs and achieve greater
empathy for their motivations and world view. Your Visible Personality is a translation
mechanism between behaviour and personality type. Its key objective is to assist a user to
gain greater empathy, alignment and harmony during interpersonal relationships.

Integrating Social Style and the Enneagram

The symbiotic relationship between Social Style and the Enneagram is illustrated in a
comprehensive table in the Your Visible Personality eBook (click on link to access). This
table is the distillation of key findings that were uncovered during a post-graduate research
project at Lancaster University Business School (UK). It clearly illustrates the validity of the
methods used to support the premise that Observable Behaviour provides a mechanism for
determining a persons Personality Type. The research process included both video and text
questionnaire methods to validate other research by highly respected practitioners.
The table provides a representation of how Social Style and the Enneagram are harmonized
as identified by common phrases to describe attributes of both Social Style and the
Enneagram. There is no intention to imply that the two interlock, on the contrary they
cooperate as circumstances demand, similar to how different sections of an orchestra
cooperate as the music score demands, to produce the best music. This notion of harmony
is at the core of what I refer to as innerpersonal relationships

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Your Visible Personality

Your Visible Personality (Templates)

Your Visible Personality eBook also contains templates ((click on link to access) that are
broken down into a number of areas which provide insights into the preferred mode of
operation for the different Personality Types. The information includes among others:

an overview of each personality type;

distinguishing traits when in normal, under pressure, or secure states;
how they prefer to interact within a team environment
where they fit on the Social Style diagram; and
how they generally behave (body language, tone of voice, and words used), and
strategies to effectively empathise and adapt.

A user would typically familiarize themselves with the attributes of the different Enneagram
types and where they respectively fit on the Social Style diagram. By practicing and
periodically reviewing the templates and supporting texts, users will build and refine their skills
in diagnosing behaviour and personality type over a relatively short period of time.
The following is a summary of the approach to determine someones Enneagram type. The
first objective is to determine an individuals Social Style. Once identified, it is mapped to those
Enneagram types that are aligned with that Social Style. It is not possible to guarantee a
perfect match, so the objective is to narrow down the possible Enneagram types you dealing
with through a process of elimination. If you can determine that the person you are observing
is an Expressive, then it is likely you are dealing with a particular Enneagram type. Skill will
increase by continually observing the degrees of assertiveness and responsiveness during
interactions with people and through building familiarity with type descriptions and nuances.

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Your Visible Personality

The templates within the Your Visible Personality toolkit provides insights into the nine
different Personality Types. They help the user to increase their empathy and success when
dealing or negotiating with others in the different stages of teamwork - Forming, Storming,
Norming, and Performing. The degree to which you empathize with family, friends, or people
at work greatly influences their openness to accept you, your views and way of being.
Understanding and proactively applying the Your Visible Personality skills demonstrates your
positive intent towards other people, and improves the alignment, quality and effectiveness of
your communication and collaboration efforts. The greater your effectiveness at managing the
tensions and stress that occurs when peoples perspective and agendas are misaligned, the
more successful you become in the area of interpersonal relationships.

In Summary
The aim of the Your Visible Personality toolkit is to provide the user with a deep
understanding of how behaviour and personality interact at a laypersons level. It includes
relationship management tools that can help you to be more effective during a communication
or negotiation event. It also has the aim of increasing awareness around the fact that people
can genuinely see a situation differently from you, and have different priorities or world views
that are totally opposite to yours. Using the Your Visible Personality tools can assist you to
achieve greater empathy and self awareness required to proactively manage stressful and
tense encounters with friends, family, work colleagues and customers. It can assist you to
achieve better business, social and personal outcomes, by identifying and minimizing blind
spots (i.e. self-defeating behaviour and perspectives) that can cause stress or conflict in your
day to day activities. It also allows you to analyze anothers behaviour such that you can more
easily get on their wavelength or avoid their blind spots.
With the global marketplace having suffered the equivalent of a cardiac arrest in the past year
due to the financial meltdown, smart business people are changing strategy to put a stronger
focus on how customers like to buy, and less on pushy sales approaches. More empathy and
integrity, and less snake oil, is the approach required today. This requires vendors to put
themselves in the shoes of the customer, to genuinely look at the situation from the
customers perspective, not just their own. Empathy is essential for success in our social and
personal interactions. It is essential during negotiations, but requires a conscious decision to
change any old one size fits all, or self-centred habits that are no longer acceptable to family,
friends to work.
People will only step out of their comfort zone or old habits if there is a good chance they will
get a return on their effort. In business, the reward is usually a wage or salary, a promotion
or even to remain employed. Typically, the successful businessperson has effectively
demonstrated empathy and understanding for a customer or a stakeholder. They have
usually taken the punishment of putting their own agenda on the backburner in order to allow
the other person to win first, thereby gaining a reward (winning a sale, getting management
approval, negotiating a contract, etc.). Those who dont are typically less successful. Staying
in our comfort zone (i.e. applying the same old familiar moves) or taking the risk to move out
of it (i.e. being versatile and adaptable) is a matter of personal choice. If you are finding what
achieved success in the past is no longer working, perhaps you should consider investigating
how the Your Visible Personality eBook might help. Some additional reading on the subject,
and reference points for this paper, include the following books:

The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and Others in Your Life by Helen Palmer.
The ABC of the Enneagram by Eric Salmon.
Bringing out the best in yourself at work by Ginger Lapid-Bogda.
Personality Types by Riso & Hudson
Social Styles and Managing Interpersonal Relationships by Wilson Learning.

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