When you want to deepen rapport and understanding with someone, make an effort to notice the direction that their attention goes during conversation. Do they respond with appropriate head nods and cues to your non-verbal communication in an animated way? Or do they seem to only hear the content of what you are saying with very little expression?
People have sometimes asked us: “Why don’t you offer the MindSonar questionnaire on the web?” or “Why don’t you make MindSonar available directly to the general public?” We have four good reasons for not wanting to do that and for making MindSonar available to trained professionals only.
Better interpretation
First of all, interpreting MindSonar, although it has quite an extensive written report, still works best when a trained professional is helping. A professional understands much better how combinations of different Meta Programs and Graves Drives work. They also have a better understanding of and how certain mindset influences how someone feels and behaves in a certain situation.
Better application
A measurement is useful only to the extent that you can actually do something with it. A trained professional can help people translate insight into action, through advice, coaching and training. The same goes for organizations. Understanding how people think is only valuable in so far as people in the organization can use that understanding to change.
MindSonar and the professional enhance each other
We see MindSonar as part of a formula. A coaching or consulting ‘Powered by MindSonar’, it is much more than just the measurement. The other part – usually a quite important part – is the professional using MindSonar. It is the combination of the fine grained measurement of MindSonar with the passion and expertise of the MindSonar professional that make for a great product.
Preventing data contamination
Yet another reason for not opening MindSonar up directly to the general public, is data contamination. If the measurement were open to just anybody, many people taking it would not be very serious about their answers. They might, for instance, just be trying to see if they could fool the system or they might make it their sport to get an extreme score. By opening up MindSonar to just anybody, we would increase the amount of ‘frivolous data’, degrading the quality of our database.
What motivates you to move ahead? Or, do you prefer to wait and gather information from others before acting? When learning about what motivates us (or others) to take action, it is very helpful to determine the typically unconscious pattern or Meta Program that gets us to move ahead.
As always with Meta Programs, how we move into action will change depending on the situation we are in. Often in more familiar settings we may be more inclined to be proactive given there is a different level of safety. In another context, not knowing how the other people around us may operate, we might be much more reactive.
Proactive vs. ReactiveContinue reading
Introducing the next MindSonar Professional: Koen Lucas. Koen, a Dutch interim manager and trainer, describes how he uses MindSonar to train law enforcement agents. Note especially, that he has developed separate norm profiles for several different kinds of law enforcement agents (city patrols, building inspectors and environmental security agents). For more information on all MindSonar professionals go here: International Registry.
