HS 320 - The Platinum Rule with Tony Alessandra

This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit hartmanmedia.com.

Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family's insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you'll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

It's my pleasure to welcome Tony Alessandra to the show. Dr. Alessandra is street wise but college smart, business person. He has written several books. I've been following him for a long time and he's just got a great perspective on something he calls, that I'd like to start with, called the Platinum Rule. We're all familiar with the Golden Rule. Tony, tell us about the Platinum Rule.

Well, Jason, you know, the golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which basically is treat others the way you want to be treated. And in today's increasingly diverse world, the Platinum rule is do unto others as they would have you do unto them or treat people the way they want to be treated.

Okay, so give us an example of that. I mean, we want to do unto others the right way, as the golden rule would tell us, but we really want to be. I guess this entails being more sensitive to the person and knowing what they want, right?

Absolutely. It's nothing more than being considerate. It's using your eyes and ears to pick up signals from the other person. Jason, are you married? No looking, but you know, a lot of people that are right, sure. And anybody who's married knows, hey, if I'm going to ask my spouse something or you know, to do something or whatever, and then you approach them, you can pick up signals. It's yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to ask, or no, it's not the right time. From a broader perspective, I use the word diversity. You know that old saying, when in.

Rome, do as the Romans, do as the Roman.

That's basically what the Platinum Rule is all about. It's being adaptable. It's your ability and your willingness to change your approach depending on the situation or the person you're dealing with.

It sounds Like Tony, people really need to have some good level of empathy to practice the Platinum Rule then, right?

Well, empathy, relationship skills, and to me, most importantly, just some very good basic observation skills and listening skills. Because if you simply open your eyes and ears, people will show you or tell you how to treat them. Let me give you a quick example. When I moved, I was born and raised in New York City and New Jersey, first 18 years of my life. And when I eventually moved to San Diego, which is a very different regional culture than the greater New York, New Jersey area, would you agree?

Absolutely. People are a lot more mellow in San Diego, right?

Exactly. More mellow, slower paced, you know, more of a manana, you know, attitude. But when I moved here, at first I practiced the Golden Rule. I treated people in San Diego the way I wanted to be treated. In other words, I treated the people in San Diego as if they were New Yorkers. Do you see a potential problem?

Yeah, I see a potential problem, yes.

You know, so I came on too strong, too fast, too aggressive. Even. When I asked people to do things that under any other circumstance they would have willingly done, they dug in their heels. They decided not to do it. And the irony, it wasn't because of what I was asking them to do that caused them to dig in their heels and not do it. It was simply because of how I asked. I just rubbed people the wrong way. And once I learned that concept that, you know, when in Rome or when in San Diego, I started, at least in San Diego, I slowed down, I was more mellow, and I got a lot more accomplished and made a lot more friends, created a lot more allies. But when I go back to New York, I can't act as if I'm in San Diego. I'll get walked over. So the way when I'm in New York, all of those New York behaviors come back. So. And the same is true. I'm talking about it from a geographic point of view, but even from a behavioral point of view, even in San Diego, there are people who are faster paced. There are people who are slower pace. I've got to pick up those signals and either speed up or slow down. There are people who want to schmooze a little with me and socialize a bit before we get down to business. And there are others that are all business. I've got to pick up those signals and react accordingly. That's what the Platinum Rule is about.

Yeah. It really involves having a real sort of sensory acuity and opening your eyes and ears and seeing what the Other person wants, you know, Tony, did the Platinum Rule come out of your background in the assessment tools world? You really talk a lot. And I know you give keynote speeches and so forth where you teach people how to assess the other person and sort of understand their behavioral analysis. Now there's a lot of stuff on this. There's of course Myers Briggs, which is potentially the most famous. Tell us about assessing a person and maybe the different styles of people just generally.

Okay. Well, actually the Platinum Rule came out of my doctoral dissertation in the early to mid-70s, where my dissertation was built around buyer seller similarity and whether that determined the success of the salesperson in making a sale. So that's where it initiated. I started doing assessments, actual paper based assessments where people would fill out the answers to 18 questions and it would tell them what their style was. Where they would either come out as a director, a thinker, a relator, or a socializer. And then in 1996, when I actually had a book come out called the Platinum Rule, that's when I actually went online with the assessment and that online assessment, which was called platinum rule. So platinumrule.com that online assessment led to other people coming to me, other people and companies like Ken Blanchard, the author of the One Minute Manager, and Mark Sanborn, the author of the Fred Factor and Don Hudson, the author of the One Minute Entrepreneur. And it goes on and on. Companies, corporations, where I have created assessments for them at my assessment site, which is assessmentbusinesscenter.com and so that I built the assessment online to try to sell the book and believe it or not, it became its own business. So as you mentioned, not only do I have the Platinum rule assessment, which I mentioned, the four styles, director, thinker, relator and socializer, but I have so many variations. I have social styles, I have disc, which is a very worldwide popular disc, and then our Myers Briggs version, which is called the PTI assessment, the psychological types indicator, where it breaks people into 16 patterns of behavior. But I mean, it goes way beyond that where you can take assessments to determine how, what your emotional intelligence quotient is and your leadership style and your selling skills effectiveness. And it just goes on and on. The assessment business now has become my number one revenue generator. That's how I am building my wealth, is by building businesses.

That actually have value that I can sell. And for me as an entrepreneur, building businesses that generate passive recurring revenue.

Sure, yeah. And that's the key. That's what we all want. And maybe we'll kind of come back to that. A little bit. But tell us about the types if you would. And maybe let me tell you something that just kind of frustrates me, Tony. When I'm working, when I'm doing business, I'm busy and I've got a lot going on, I've got a lot on my mind. I always want to kind of get to the next project and check things off my to do list, if you will. And when someone comes in to see me to sell me a product or a service for my company, it's frustrating for me I guess maybe I'm a director, maybe you can assess me if you like. But you know, it's frustrating that when they want to kind of chit chat and I want to get to the bottom line, man, I want get it done and do the next thing. And it's very frustrating when the person selling to you doesn't sense your style and sense what you need.

Right. I think a lot of salespeople today are simply living, breathing, walking, talking ads. Just like an ad on television, it's the same ad no matter who you are. And too many salespeople, they go out and they pitch the same thing to everybody. Rather than using the power of face to face communication and adapting your solution and your approach based on the person's style. Let me give you a quick CNN summary of each of the four styles and I think your listeners will really appreciate this because they can identify hopefully with one of them. But the director, which sounds like is your file. Their key desire is results. Bottom line. Their motto, I want it done right, I want it done now, or better yet, I want it yesterday. They tend to juggle a lot of things at the same time and do them well. They're great administrators, delegators, they work best under pressure, under deadlines, and they play to win. One of the problems with directors though is they're not very good listeners simply because they don't have the time and they believe they already know the answer.

What'd you say? Just kidding. That's right.

Now, the thinker. The thinker, their key desire is for order, accuracy, precision, perfection. You know, their motto is everything in its place and a place for everything. These are the people who are great planners, problem solvers, organizers. They're great at creating systems. They're highly inventive and of all four styles, arguably the most intellectual. So if you want something done right, give it to a thinker. But if you want it done on time, think again because they tend to procrastinate, getting finished until it's perfect.

Okay, so the thinker is the one who might suffer from the paralysis of analysis.

Exactly, exactly. Perfect example. Now, the relators are third style. Their key desire is for harmony. They're the peacekeepers. They want everything to go smoothly, everybody to get along. They're great listeners, they're team players, they're just easygoing people. But a problem area for them is, is because they try so hard to keep things on an even keel, they tend to go along with things even when they don't want to. They tend to hold feelings or disagreements in because they don't want to rock the boat.

And eventually those things become a problem. They come out eventually or not, it.

Becomes a problem for them. In order to keep the tension low between people, they take on the tension themselves. Some people even describe them as martyrs. And a lot of people take advantage of them, and not necessarily knowingly. It's just that sometimes the relators just open themselves up to being taken advantage of. So that's the relators the last style. So we did Director, thinker, relator, socializer is the more expressive, influencing style. Their key desire is for fun, excitement, applause, visibility, recognition. And they talk a lot about their favorite subject themselves. Okay, I sometimes joke and say, you know, generally speaking, socializers are generally speaking because they have the gift of gab, the power of persuasion. They're very. They think quickly on their feet. They're great brainstormers. Again, incredibly persuasive people, very likable, very sociable. But sometimes they start too much and don't get a finish. They get bored quickly. I guess a way to summarize that is one of their sayings. When all is said and done, more is frequently said than done. So those are the four styles. And you can quickly see that if you're a salesperson or a manager or a teacher, I can go on and on. What you want to do is you cannot present or lead or manage or motivate or educate each of these four styles the same way because they do things differently.

So now that you've gone over the four basic styles, and you know what's interesting when I'm listening to you, Tony, is I see a little bit of myself in all four of those styles. So no one can really be classified as one type or the other completely, can they?

Well, I wouldn't say completely, but every one of us has a dominant pattern. Your dominant pattern may be director, right? Actually, my dominant pattern is director. However, let me tell you that the name of this concept is behavioral styles, not personality. Styles. I know a lot of people cringe when they hear you're asking me to change my personality. No, we're simply asking you to change your behavior. And if that's the case, and we're talking about behavioral styles, what we need to understand is that depending on the situation, depending on the pressures, whatever, you can come across, maybe most of the time, Jason, you come across as a director, but in any given situation, you can be in your socializer style or thinker style or relator style. Now, you may not be in that style that often, but I've got to be prepared to pick up the signals that you send and then treat you based on the style that you're in or the behavior that you're in at that moment in time. And again, if I may, just one example, one of my partners, my partner in the Cyrano Group, Scott Zimmerman, when he calls me up every so often because I have caller id, I know it's him. And I'm in my director mode. Here's how. I'll answer the phone. What do you want? What's up? Yeah, what do you need? And he knows right away I'm in that director style. And here's how he typically responds. Tony, I have one quick thing. Now, how would you like people when they call you to say, jason, I have one quick thing?

I would love that. I would totally appreciate.

Jason, I have one quick thing that's going to make you money. So that's what he does. But every so often, I may be in one of my other modes, and I may answer the phone again, knowing it's him. I may answer the phone saying, tony's Pizzeria. What kind of toppings do you want to shrug a little with me before telling me why he called?

Right. Very good. I think maybe I've got a real split personality problem because I see myself as very much in the director style while at work, but pretty different, much more of a socializer when I'm not working. Do we really change at home and work? Are we that different?

Yeah, you absolutely can. You literally, because of training, habit, past experiences, you can actually be a different or project a different behavioral pattern to different people, regardless of what the situation is.

Okay, so when you project a different behavioral pattern to different people, are you invoking the platinum rule? Are you practicing it?

Well, it depends. Are you doing it on purpose or, you know, without thinking? Many people project different patterns without even thinking about it. And you know, you know as well as I do that this is not something this concept is not taught in school? Unfortunately, no.

I wish it was.

Thank you so much for listening. Be sure to check out hartmanmedia.com for appropriate disclaimers and terms of service. Remember that guest opinions are their own, and if you require specific legal or tax advice or advice in any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.