Building
Relationships Online and Offline. | Speaker | Author | Trainer
Why
do we inevitably support the underdogs in a sporting event, those that are
perceived as really having no chance at all of getting the prize but somehow
made it to the finals?
Because
we can see ourselves.
The
big stars of the game are far removed from our reality and we can’t compete at
their level, but bring in the underdog, and we instantly see something there
that could be us, the weekend warrior, Joe Public, the lucky few to be in the
spot competing where they are now. And because we see ourselves it makes it real
and achievable to us with our “if they can do it, so can I”
attitude.
It
doesn’t stop there though; there are more instances we look for ourselves
subconsciously.
Take
the true story about a CEO whose company had some pretty tough staffing issues.
He took himself and the majority of his team through a behavioral profiling
process and found that each one of the team was an identical profile type to his
own, he had employed 20 people that were all like him! Can you imagine how their
business was running internally, the frustrations involved with no mix of
behavioral styles? Have you ever said during an interview “You remind me a
little of myself when I was younger”? I know I have, and because we see
ourselves we go ahead and employ.
Take
a group photograph with you included in it. Who do you look for first? You. Try
it if you don’t believe me, its really hard not to seek yourself out
first.
James
Blunt sang “You’re Beautiful” which sent many women swooning (me included!). He
made you feel like he was singing directly to you, and you only, you wanted to
be the person he was singing to and so you saw yourself. Am I
right?
Dale
Carnegie encourages us to talk about the other persons interests, to get them
talking about themselves rather than us talking about ourselves. If we spent 10
minutes talking to a stranger having answered only questions about ourselves, we
think the person we have been talking to is interesting, even though we know
nothing about them simply because they encouraged us to
talk about ourselves.
We
are not being selfish when we do this, but somewhere in our subconscious, it
registers. There is something inside us, the way we are wired maybe, that makes
us think about ourselves but not selfishly so. Call it an interest, call it
human nature, call it hog wash, I don’t know I can’t explain it, but its
there.
Linda
Coles is the author of “Learn marketing with social media in 7 days” (Wiley) and is
an author, speaker and trainer on building relationships. You can get a
complimentary sample of
a chapter of her book by registering for her newsletter. Her
book "Start with Hello" is
out in September and is available on pre order from Amazon. She
lives in New Zealand on a fig orchard.
