Being Kind is your business super-power.
How do you Be Kind in Business? By applying the MAGIC formula:
Moving
Attuning
Giving
Inspiring
Connecting
It applies to:
Yourself
Your clients
Your team
Your prospects
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Attuning to your clients is all about understanding them, and then modifying how you serve them as a result.
There are three steps to attuning:
Look and Listen
First, you have to look and listen. Observe your client, ask them questions, find out about them and their situation. Spend some time on this; ask the follow-up questions. Note both what they answer and how they answer. Do any questions make them excited, any make them uncomfortable?
Understand
Next, you need to understand what you have found out.
- Who are they? Get a take on your client’s personality. Maybe a tool such as DiSC , MBTI or the Enneagram would be helpful here? You won’t be able to do a full analysis, but you should get some interesting pointers and insights. This will help you to work out how much to affirm and encourage, balanced against how much you can challenge them without frightening them.
- Where are they? You have to understand their situation. What are their problems? Could you help them solve them? Can you see the issue from another angle and reframe it? Or maybe you can see that their perceived problem is not the real problem in the first place? Perhaps the answer they think they want is not actually the answer that they need?
- What makes them tick? This is probably the most essential aspect in understanding your client. What are their core values, what is important to them? They may well be different to yours, but you need to understand them so that you do not slip up and offend them, or appear to be driving them in a direction which seems wrong to them.
Modify
Finally, once you have understood your client, you can work out how best to serve them. You can decide how you will modify both the style of your presentation and the content of what you provide. In other words, what you say and how you say it.
- What?
Think about the most appropriate content for the person or audience in question. - How?
What is the best way to present it? Will they respond best to didactic teaching or participation, to words or pictures, to visual or audio? Or maybe a mixture? And what tone and language will work best? Formal or informal? Lively and bouncy or more restrained?
Tricks and Schtick
When I’m performing magic, the way I perform the tricks will vary depending on my audience. Often I may use the same tricks but presented very differently. For example, I have a rope trick that I perform at both children’s parties and corporate drinks receptions: same mechanics, very different presentations. And, of course, there are also some tricks which only work in kids’ parties and some that only work in corporate settings.
It is the same when applying my MAGIC formula to help teams and individuals to improve their working relationships. I present it in a slightly different way to a nonprofit manager’s audience than I will, to the leadership of a bank. It’s the same fundamental material, but with a slightly different approach.
How can you modify your offering to those you serve to make it a better fit for each one?
Think about how you can attune to your clients.
Remember:
Observe, Understand, and then Modify.
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—Download my free eBook “Be Kind to Yourself” and learn how to:
- Adapt to new ways of working
- Harness the power of habits
- Optimise the use of space in your home
- Use clothes to boost productivity
- Focus on what matters
- Plan for the future amidst uncertainty
