The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

Part 1 gave some examples of typical signature files and part 2 introduced the concept of psycho-social distance between sender and receiver of an email. Part 3 expanded on the concept of psycho-social distance as the "Six Degrees of Separation" and Part 4 introduced my business signature file as a working model going forward. We started analyzing how the research's findings explain what's in my and others' signature files in Part 5 and Part 6 continued that analysis. Part 7 explained that gender plays a role in how signature files are laid out and Part 8 gave clues as to whether the individual at the other end of the email is a team player or not.

Here we learn what people think their strengths are.

I've shared that with several people through the years. Some understand it immediately and others don't seem to ken it regardless of their efforts. Basically people will do things based on what they know they can do.

If they're good mechanics and they hear a rattle in a car the "good mechanic" part of their psyche comes out and they starting thinking "Is that a muffler sound? Is that a transmission sound? Is that a carburetor sound?" and so on. They don't think to look in the backseat, on the floor and at the child's toy rattling now and again. This is an example of going with a strength that also creates a weakness.

You've heard about Maslow's Hammer? If all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail? This is the ultimate statement of a strength as a weakness.

What about a weakness as a strength? If you're presented with a challenge and you know you lack the skills to directly address it (a weakness) then you'll figure out ways to solve it that bypass your lack or skills (thus allowing you to find a strength you didn't know you had).

Much of my training involves repeatedly recognizing strengths and weaknesses, my own and others, and helping people learn alternatives to both. I mention this here because signature files are statements of identity and the use of bold, italics, etc., have rich meanings when used with identity statements.

Here, the next line in the signature file is

Remember that this is a statement the sender is making. Who knows if the receiver will have any idea of what those terms means, the sender is staking them out as being in the sender's province (the dog marking its territory, establishing its dominance). Most likely the sender chose those terms because they had meaning to the sender and the sender hoped they had meaning to the recipients. If not a direct meaning, at least a recognition of meaning.

What is the weakness? All the terms and expressions that the sender could have used but did not. There is no mention of web analytics, business development, teaching, ... . It doesn't matter that the sender might be skilled in these areas or that the sender's company might excel in these areas, all that matters is that the sender included some things and not others.

More to follow...

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Links for this post:

• Online Anthropology blog posts
• Online Identity blog posts
• Online Privacy blog posts
• Online Trust blog posts
• The Using Your "SEND" Glands? arc