Presidential
Politics & Personality Type
January
2001
Those of you
familiar with SST® know that we apply Carl Jung’s theory of personality types to
the selling process. Rule #1 of SST® is that you don’t need to determine the
personality type of your prospect or client in order improve your communication
effectiveness. You do, however, need to understand one personality type very
well: your own.
With improved
self-understanding we then apply the SST® model to Balance our messages
to be certain they appeal to all types and not just our own. We apply Balance
whenever we are communicating to a group or when we don’t know the message
receiver’s preferences.
Often, however,
people provide huge clues making it quite simple to read their preferences.
When we know the other party’s type we can Shade our communication in
that direction. Incidentally, the word “Shade” was chosen with care to indicate
that we never advocate sending messages exclusively to one preference over
another.
This Celebrity
Profiling column is for the SST® practitioner who would like to continue
to develop his or her SST® skills at reading personality clues by practicing on
celebrities. It models one we use in SST® clinics. Sharper people reading skills
will enable you to identify the communication style of others.
With the
appropriate qualifiers in place for the inaugural Celebrity Profiling
column, let’s get started.
Type and
Politics
The biggest story
of 2000, and perhaps the biggest US political story ever, was the election of
George W. Bush. Recognizing the hazards of politicizing this newsletter, I need
to indicate that anyone named Tilden has to sympathize with the candidate who
wins the popular vote. Former Democratic Governor of my home state of New York
Samuel J. Tilden did in 1876. But, like Al Gore he lost the Electoral College
with votes being contested in four southern states, including Florida of all
places. Republican winner Rutherford B. Hayes went on to be one of the worst
presidents in history. I just hope the analogy will end there. But, this is
about personality and not political preferences.
Back in 1996, Russ
Brooks and I were delivering a SST® workshop on a day that happened to coincide
with the last of the Clinton-Dole debates. When we asked for suggestions for
the Celebrity Profiling exercise Clinton and Dole were naturals. It
should surprise no one that two were as different as possible on all four of
the SST® scales. We typed Clinton as the comfortable and charismatic Extraverted
candidate who appeared to gain energy by interacting with the crowd assembled
for the town meeting format. Bob Dole, on the other hand, appeared stiffer and
awkward with the format that did not allow him private time to think. Both are
characteristics consistent with the Introverted orientation.
Fast forwarding to
election 2000, Extraversion and Introversion again played prominent roles in
how the candidates behaved and were perceived by the voters. Only this time, it
was the Republican Bush who was the Extraverted candidate and Democrat Gore who
was Introverted.
In fact, post
election analysis by political pundits suggests that it was Bush’s capacity to
appear comfortable and at ease with crowd and Gore’s “wooden” appearance that
made the biggest difference in the election outcome.
Gore’s attempts at
being more affable and outgoing appeared forced and unnatural. Indeed, they
were. Only when Gore had the opportunity to think through the content of his
gracious concession speech did he really score with public opinion.
What is sad about
all of this is being an Introverted or Extraverted candidate has nothing to do
with capabilities or performance as a president. Nor do they as a sales person
as PfP partner, Harry Koolen and I addressed in the last SST® newsletter (see
“Introversion and Selling” in archived articles section of www.tildensst.com)
Doesn’t it make you
curious about how often Introverted candidates have beaten their Extraverted
rivals? Or, how often we confuse Extraverted qualities for competency? Is it
because most of us are Extraverted and we are more comfortable with people with
like qualities? I just wonder if old Sam Tilden was the Introverted
candidate. AJT