Blink: You're A Chart. He's A Sail.

Malcolm Gladwell in Blink makes a book out of how people create instant impressions of others.

That's great. But what do you do with the information?

My team recently had great success and great fun with the Topsail Personality Profile created by Steve Norcia and Alex Szabo.

In our roles in new product development, we are constantly meeting inventors, licensees, teams of corporate types, sales people -- you know all those who represent a lot of your business transactions.

Our challenge always is how do you quickly decide what someone is like and establish a good relationship. The Topsail Personality Profile let us do that in a blink of an eye.

The personality profile divides people into four types:

• Chart: Low Assertive, High Responsive
• Sail: High Assertive, Low Responsive
• Keel: Low Assertive, Low Responsive
• Signal: High Assertive, High Responsive

These tools let you assess the personalities in order to quickly establish good relationships.

What this means is that

• Sails give you 90 seconds to explain your business results.
• Signals give you 5-10 minutes to establish a personal, social relationship.
• Keels give you 20 minutes to establish a personal, loyal relationship.
• Charts give you 5 minutes to detail your business experience.
  

The indicators are fun even when you apply them to voices on the telephone, e.g. tone of voice, verbal inflections, speech pace and message.

Which is more important after all: good understanding of the facts and great chemistry or good chemistry and a great understanding of the facts.

If you want to play "let's make a deal," I would choose the chemistry first.