Making friends is easy for some people—not for me. I may be an extrovert but there are many people with whom I struggle to make conversation. I’m talking about interactions that, no matter how much the other person and I share in common, feel forced, are punctuated by awkward silences, or are just plain uncomfortable. Sound familiar?
Turns out our inability to jive with certain people may be out of our control, a function of incongruent personalities, attitudes, education, and/or past experiences. After all, it is the unique combination of these factors that make us who we are and that determine our biases. Each person can bring you a new perspective. You can improve your chances of getting along with them by understanding where it comes from and learning how they think.
The first step is understanding a person’s personality type, the most popular method of which is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test. While it is appropriate and commonplace to use the Myers-Briggs in a work setting, it’s too expensive, too lengthy and overall impractical for making friends in a social setting. (Can you imagine pulling it out at happy hour? I didn’t think so.) Enter psycho-geometrics.
Psycho-geometrics is another—a quicker, simpler—analytical approach to narrowing down people’s decision-making, communication styles, and other traits based on their selection of one of five geometric shapes. My mentor Eric introduced me to the concept a few weeks ago and I can’t stop using it. (Ask anyone who’s met me recently. It’s become my most precious, potentially overused, “party trick”.)
Think fast! Do you prefer a box, a circle, a rectangle, a triangle or a squiggle? Write the first one that came to mind in the comments below. Once you’ve done that, check out this cheat sheet to each of the five shapes and what they represent. Did the characteristics listed for your shape hit home? What about the positive traits? The negative traits?
I picked the circle and, except for the claim that I am indecisive, its description was spot on. It has also been pretty accurate in categorizing my friends and colleagues. Most surprisingly, 100-percent of the engineers I know have picked the box (because “it’s so perfect,” claims my mechanical engineer sister Lucy).
It is important to remember that psycho-geometrics doesn’t paint a full picture of a person. I have my new friend Daniel and his skepticism about labels to thank for that reminder. He’s right—if you read through all the shapes, you’re bound to find traits in the ones you didn’t pick with which you can also identify. You should therefore only rely on psycho-geometrics loosely when making assumptions about others.
That said, asking a stranger to pick a shape is an excellent ice breaker. For me, it has opened the door to in-depth conversations at networking events, happy hours, and parties that I could only dream of having before. Most of these conversations have led to newfound friendships, proving no matter how you use it, psycho-geometrics is a great tool for making friends.
And now, for your quote of the day:
“You have to get along with people, but you also have to recognize that the strength of a team is different people with different perspectives and different personalities.” —Steve Case
Hi, I'm Margarita. 