You land a speaking gig at an organization filled with your ideal clients – you’re so excited. You spend weeks preparing your slides and your talk. You get up there and share your credentials and give a compelling recounting of your professional journey.
Your presentation is filled with facts, figures, and logic that would make a listener’s head spin – and it does. After the talk, countless people approach you to tell you about how great you did. This builds your self esteem, but nobody buys anything. And you don’t get to really help them beyond that 30 minutes.
And, you’re still broke.
You wonder what on earth you did wrong, and you go back to improving the statistics of your talk. You entertain ideas of a different career. And you’re a little pissed off that people just don’t get it.
Your website is set to launch tomorrow, promoting your new offering.
Of course, it was also set to launch last week. And the week before.
The problem is that each time you go to press publish, you see a Facebook post that catches your eye about some research or something someone else is doing that you wish you had thought of, and you go back and give it a once-over. After all, this is your big splash, and you better do it right!
Last time you posted an article someone emailed you about a typo and it almost gave you a heart attack so one more week to get it perfect won’t hurt!
If either of these sound like you, you might have a default tendency to be a “Patty Proven.”
Patty Proven is the profile that represents the second energy state – conflict.
Patty, at first glance, doesn’t seem conflicted. In fact, she may seem like she’s got it going on – together, calm, and under control.
But look beyond the surface and you’ll see that Patty is steeped in fear and has a deep need to be right, or to prove herself.
At least she is certainly driven to avoid being wrong!
Patty’s pervasive filter in life is “You Lose.”
It may or may not be personal, but she’s got a general belief that there is only so much to go around and she better be good enough to “get hers.” It’s a dog-eat-dog world after all, and Patty needs to make sure she finishes ahead to survive in life.
Her worth is based on what she’s achieved, and she notices “what’s wrong” and tends to overlook “what’s right.”
It’s not her fault! But it is her responsibility! Patty likely grew up in a household in which she was berated for mistakes, or only noticed and seen when she achieved. Her world occurs to her as one big conflict she needs to survive. Through this filter, she’ll often attract competitive people or situations that call for her to be defensive.
Here’s how Patty Proven shows up specifically in areas of business.
- Sales: She will want the prospect to buy for HER reason and isn’t all that interested in the prospect’s reason. She’ll likely do a lot of explaining about the process and features of what she is offering, which can cause the prospect to check out.
- Marketing: Her marketing will likely be done “right” from a technical standpoint, but she won’t necessarily connect with her audience. As with the example in the intro to this article, she will communicate proficiently, and maybe even convincingly, but she won’t be vulnerable enough to forge a true connection. It also might take her awhile to actually get it completed!!
- Point of View: Very factual and with a tone that communicates her need to be right. She’ll also attract clients who are looking for her to prove herself constantly.
- Support: Because she is highly critical of herself and others, she can be difficult to support. She feels unappreciated and unsupported. She has trouble delegating because she struggles to be vulnerable and easily goes on the defense, and triggers defensiveness in her team as well.
- Energy: Put together, impressive, detached, defensive, impatient. (Always on to the next thing!)
If you recognize yourself in Patty, here are my recommendations. 1) Practice being wrong. Even if you know a right answer about something, hold your tongue. Resist the urge to be right, at all costs. Notice how it feels. 2) Practice being vulnerable. Send out something without three rounds of editing. Tell a story in your speech that makes you look bad. Give a compliment for no reason. 3) Stay tuned in to this series as we go up the energy spectrum and look for a “Profit Style” that inspires you to show up differently!
The Profit Styles™
This article is about one of a series of profiles that I’ve coined the “Profit Styles™.” They correspond to the different levels of energy to which we have access as human beings. Our thoughts create our feelings and our feelings generate our actions and our results. Our thoughts can resonate at 7 distinct levels (taken from the Energy Leadership Index™ developed by Bruce D. Schneider, and as outlined in the book Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins) that dictate how we observe and respond to business and life. Our default tendency literally impacts us at a cellular level, and we gravitate toward people or situations that reflect our prevailing thought process. We all have access to all 7 levels, and by bringing them to conscious awareness, you have the power to shift to a new level at any given time. Our default levels are always the source of our business results. Always.
To inquire about taking the formal Profit Styles Index assessment, please email Support@AlignandProfit.com!