Bushy Eyebrows
The eyebrows. I’ll never forget the big, bushy grey eyebrows.
Juan and I had somehow ended up in the middle of an unintentional staring contest. The conversation came to an unnatural resting place right after he’d said:
"Rob, I think you're going to go bankrupt."
And then, he just stared at me.
Rather than jumping in with a response, I held my tongue. It took everything I had, but I started to count in my head:
… one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand…
And, I just stared right back at him.
See, I had a good read on Juan’s personality and had him pegged as a pretty strong Introvert after observing some of his personality type clues. I knew this meant there was a decent chance that he had more to say, but only if I created space for him to continue.
…four one-thousand, five one-thousand, six one-thousand…
Out of the corner of my eye, I remember seeing my right hand reach out for one of those tasty rolls they serve at Legal Seafood in Boston. I noticed the more-than-slight tremble in my fingers. I remember that I felt my body physically start sweating at the four one-thousand mark.
But, I kept staring at those eyebrows and held my voice in check.
I’d worked too hard to set up this meeting to be thrown off the bucking bronco now. My wife and I had just started our business a few months earlier, and every prospective client could be the difference between success and having to head back to the law firm world with my tail tucked between my legs. Certainly, that’s what a LOT of people thought was likely to happen. How could I have let that whole successful career go, and instead try to sell big companies on the topic of personality type? C’mon Rob, did you REALLY think it was going to work?
Part of the sweat wasn’t just the discomfort of an Extravert (me) working hard to create space for Juan. Part of it was the pressure I felt to make this whole new, unconventional career path work. We needed Juan and a dozen other client conversations to say yes to prove that we had something valuable that people wanted. We’d leveraged our network to get access to Juan, who had gone to the same college my wife and I had attended. There weren’t a lot of those kinds of connections for us to convert.
…seven one-thousand, eight one-thousand, nine one-thousand…
I don’t know what was going through Juan’s mind. I don’t know if he was seeing the sweat form on my brow, if he saw the tremble in my hand, if he noticed that I’d stopped breathing. But, I do know that when my count reached ten one-thousand, he opened his mouth and continued his thought as if nothing had ever happened:
“…unless of course, you focus your efforts on pharmaceutical companies, and…”
His words barely registered.
I sucked in a loooong breath of air as quietly as I could through pursed lips and felt the corner of my mouth curl up into the faintest hint of a smile. I’d hung in there. I’d waited him out. I’d never be able to forget those eyebrows, burned into my eyes as they were over the seeming hours I spent staring at them.
Welcome to the game. The game of Influence – of spotting the observable personality type clues of others … and then using that information to craft an approach most likely to build rapport, connection, and ultimately convey information in ways the other person is most likely to hear, understand and relate to.
But, even knowing what I knew, it took everything I had to implement the technique. And yet, it clearly worked: Juan had opened up to me and was speaking in a free-flowing and natural way. I’d not filled the awkward silence with nervous chatter. I’d respected his style and the reward was him feeling at ease and sharing insights and ideas with me far beyond what I originally expected.
Personality Type Clues: The Introvert Pause
Since then, I’ve sat in silence with my Introverts thousands of times and have always been rewarded. Introverts ALWAYS have more to say, if you leave room in the conversation for them to do it their way.
The TypeCoach Approach: Reading Personality Type Clues
If you would like to learn the other techniques we teach, I’ve taken the insights from the last 20 years of training salespeople and others who need to influence those around them and have shared them in this series of articles. The articles each build on one another, so I recommend reading them in order.
- The 2-48 Hour Rule
- How vs. Why
- Relationships vs. Logic
- The Closing Spectrum
- Traditionalists
- Experiencers
- Conceptualizers
- Idealists
- Scenarios – Test Your Skills
You also might be interested in the TypeCoach Influence Program, where you can learn about personality type clues from a TypeCoach certified master coach.
For those of you wondering what happened with Juan, we did indeed build a successful partnership with his leadership team. A week or two after we signed, they sold the company and we never worked together. Ah, the joys of the entrepreneurial journey.
