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Guess and Test: How to Practice giving LAB Profile® Feedback

There are hundreds of thousands of people around the world who using the LAB Profile®.

They ask the questions and use the Profiles they generate for recruitment, for understanding their teammates who they manage, for better understanding of their customers, and knowing how to position offering to those customers.

While many people have mastered doing a LAB Profile®, one of the people who just finished the
LAB Profile® Online Practitioner Certification Program recently asked me:

“Are there some resources available to learn how to give proper feedback to people on the results that we get? I have some trouble with that.”

Of course, the first thing I did was analyze her question for embedded LAB Profile® Patterns.

  • “Are there some resources available” – That’s an Options Pattern.
  • “To learn how to give proper feedback” –  Toward and Procedures Patterns.
  • “To people on the results we get.” Thing and Person Patterns
  • “I have some trouble with that.” – Internal and Away From Patterns.
I am known for my bizarrely high-level skill at being able to identify the Patterns in the most obscure of places, including inside the sentences people say, and write.

But the issue is, how to identify what is most important to the person communicating with me?

The most important part of her request is “how to give proper feedback.” This is Procedures Language and includes her Criteria (what is the most important for her).

1. The first step is to make sure you are at ease describing the behaviours of each of the LAB Profile® Patterns. To master that, I suggest you practice describing each pattern, as many times or for as long as you need, to become comfortable with that.

For example:

Toward: when you have a Toward pattern you are focused on achieving a goal. If you don’t have a goal, it is hard to get motivated or to get started. And you don’t like having to deal with problems.

2. Then to practice giving feedback, start with the Context where the person has the Pattern and then give the person the description of the pattern.

Example:

When you are at work, you have what is called a Toward pattern. This means you tend to be focused on achieving a goal. If you don’t have a goal, it is hard to get motivated or to get started. And you don’t like having to deal with problems.

3. Make sure you make statements and that you are looking at your client to see how they react. In my experience, it takes a number of times, or a while practicing for this for it to feel more natural. In the beginning, when you may not be so comfortable, have page 12 to 14 of the LAB Profile® Learning Manual (or the LAB Profile® Patterns Description page from Words That Change Minds and The Customer is Bothering Me) to help you with the behavioural descriptions.
4. You can also re-watch the videos in the online program where I am demonstrating giving feedback. Try doing feedback yourself a few times and then watch what I do. (These videos are part of the LAB Profile® Online Practitioner Certification.)

Alternatively, you can listen to the MP3 Understanding & Triggering Motivation where I am doing several demonstrations.

Notice that I have outlined a clear Procedure above, with the exception of the “alternative” in the end of step 4.
When someone wants to learn something, giving them a Procedure to follow makes it much easier than offering them too many options.

If you want to become more proficient in using what I call the Guess and Test LAB Profile® Methodology, and would like to benefit from seeing my demonstrations, here is a special offer:

Here’s a special coupon code to get 50% off on my LAB Profile® Online Program,

The coupon code is “GUESSANDTEST”. Just put this into the shopping cart coupon box.

Click here to get your copy of the LAB Profile® Learning Program.

To get the LAB Profile® Online Practitioner Certification, go to www.labprofileonline.com and scroll to the bottom.

When you are with people, do you take the time to read and listen not only to WHAT people are saying, but HOW they are saying it? Can you pick up their Patterns and feed them back?

I hope this Procedure will help you master the Guess and Test, so that you can be more certain that you identified the Patterns correctly.

Thanks Maria for a great question!

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