THE QUADRANT
To make it easier to learn this material, this technique brings the essential behavioral techniques into a simple, easy to use format.
There are a lot of techniques in this book. At first, they might seem overwhelming. Over the course of 20 years of developing this program for intelligence work, I created something to make it easy to learn and even easier to implement.
When we learn things, they are in our conscious mind first. After repetition, they work their way into our automatic behavior. From learning how to tie your shoes to learning how to read words on a page, it was infuriatingly difficult to begin with. Over time, our brains memorized all the steps involved in each process.
This training will work in your life the same way. Here’s the good news! None of the training you’re about to learn will require you to carve out another piece of your day. The small things you’ll be learning are things that you will apply in conversations you’re already in. You’re already talking to humans, so it’s easy to bring this practice into your life.
If you’ve got a piece of paper handy, draw a plus sign about the size of a post-it note. It should just look like this:
Once this is in place, add the letters as you see them in this quadrant. Each of these abbreviations indicates a piece of your 6mx training:
Df - Digital flexion. Observing digital flexion and extension
Nds - Needs - Adding the abbreviations for the identified human needs
Dec – Decision Map - Identify and note the person’s Decision Map style
Lp - Lip movement - observing for retraction and compression of the lips
In the top left quadrant (Df), you would only need to write an ‘F’ to indicate you observed flexion, or an ‘E’ to indicate you observed extension. The flexion being a negative behavioral indicator, and the extension showing you positive emotions.
If I observed flexion, for example, I would annotate this quadrant with a small ‘F’. Now, my main focus is to identify the cause of this behavior; the context that may have created it. If I was speaking about our no-refund policy and observed immediate digital flexion, I would estimate this to be the cause of the behavior. Now that I am pretty sure I know what caused the behavior, I’ll simply circle the ‘F’. This circle means that I’ve successfully identified the flexion.
Depending on the scenario, you might also be able to write the topics or discussion points that cause the behavior you’re seeing. For this example, let’s only stick with the circles around the letters to show us that we identified the behavior and its cause.
If I saw digital extension, I would write a small ‘E’ and circle it if I was able to identify what the person responded positively to.
Inside the Needs and Decision Map quadrants, I would only need to write a small abbreviation for the person’s needs. For instance, if I observed someone with Significance and Intelligence needs, I would only need to write down that’s abbreviations in the quadrant. I might simply write ‘Si’ and ‘In’.
The same procedure would be in place for the Decision Map. If I identify someone as Deviance, I would only write a small ‘De’ in the quadrant.
The bottom right quadrant being ‘Lip movement’, I would need to annotate when I saw lip compression or object-insertion. Both behaviors are indicative of negative reactions, so it would be especially important for me to identify the cause. If I observed lip compression (withheld opinions), I would write ‘C’. If I observed object insertion, I would write an ‘I’ in the block.
If I know that the person’s lips compressed the moment, I mentioned their spouse, I could circle the ‘C’, knowing that I identified the cause. If I saw object insertion the moment, I mentioned another topic, I would circle the ‘I’.
You may be starting to see a trend here. When we know the cause of a behavior, we can circle it in the quadrant; letting us know we were able to identify it.
HOW THE QUADRANT MAKES YOUR TRAINING EASY
The quadrant was not meant to have only those four things within it. As you became competent in identifying Human Needs, for example, you could remove it from the quadrant altogether and add in another behavior that you will learn to spot over time.
The quadrant helps you to focus only on four or fewer behaviors at any given time. You might decide to remove the Needs from here and place in ‘Shoulders’, by writing an abbreviation such as ‘Sh’.
In the next conversation, you would write your observations here for shoulder movements, such as shrugging behavior and dominant-shoulder-retreat movement. More on all these little abbreviations later.
USING THE QUADRANT IN CONVERSATIONS
Whether you’re taking notes on a physical quadrant, or you’ve decided to do it all in your head, you’ll need to make initial observations.
As a behavior profiler, you’re going to be assessing individuals throughout your day. The initial observation (IO), is important because as we’ve said before, we are looking for change and movement. The change we’re typically looking for is going to be a deviation from what we initially observed.
As you begin a conversation using the quadrant, let’s assume you’re running a quadrant with Lips, Shoulders, Blink Rate, and Needs. As soon as the conversation begins, you would profile the lips for compression behavior and insertion behavior, you would assess the shoulders (raised or relaxed), and make an estimation of the person’s blink rate (normal, fast, or slow). As the conversation progresses, you’re looking for changes to these observations.
If the blink rate (which we abbreviate ‘Br’) is initially normal, and you see it increase in speed, you’d draw a little upward-arrow in the Br quadrant, indicating an increase in blink rate. If you noticed, for example, that this happened the moment you began asking about their previous employer, you’d be able to circle the upward arrow. This would become a valuable data point that you can choose simply not to discuss in the future or ask more questions about later.
The quadrant follows a simple formula:
Since this can all fit onto a small piece of paper, you can use it anywhere. But what do all these abbreviations mean? You’re welcome to use whichever abbreviations you like, but let’s cover how I teach our intelligence people how to use this thing.
QUADRANT ELEMENTS
Let’s go over the recommended use of the quadrant. We will cover the abbreviations you can use, along with how each element is described and used in the quadrant.
Sh - Shoulder Movement
Indicate initial observation using a dash for slightly-raised an up-arrow for raised shoulders, and a down arrow for relaxed shoulders. Use the same characters to express observations of change in shoulder behavior.
Indicate a Sh for a double-sided shoulder shrug, and Ss for single-sided shoulder shrug in conversation.
Circle elements where you were able to identify the cause.
Df - Digital Flexion and Extension
Indicate initial observations using ‘F’ for flexion and ‘E’ for extension.
Indicate ‘F’ and ‘E’ later on to note observations of the movement of flexion or extension
Circle elements where you were able to identify the cause.
Lp - Lip behaviors
Indicate observations when observing lip compression using the letter ‘c’ and object-insertion using an ‘i’.
Circle instances where you were able to identify the cause of the behavior.
Ds - Dominant shoulder
Indicate the dominant shoulder (dominant hand) with either an ‘r’ for right-handed or an ‘l’ for left-handed.
Mark instances of any dominant-shoulder-retreat behavior with an ‘r’.
Circle instances where you were able to identify the cause of the dominant shoulder retreat movement.
Nds - Human Needs Map
Make observations on The Human Needs map and indicate them in the quadrant using an abbreviation such as:
SI - Significance
AP - Approval (Recognition)
AC - Acceptance
IN - Intelligence
PI - Pity
ST - Strength
It’s beneficial to review the fears associated with the person’s needs prior to conversations. This can also be done using online behavior profiling.
Dec - The Decision Map
Make observations on observed Six Pillars behaviors and indicators. Indicate them in the quadrant using an abbreviation such as:
DE - Deviance
NO - NOVELTY
SO - Social
CO - Conformity
NE - Necessity
IN - Investment
These should be reviewed often, as they will govern the buying behavior of your customers and decision-making strategies they will adopt in your conversation.
Br - Blink Rate
Indicate initial observations of blink rate using a hyphen for normal, and up arrow for faster, and a down arrow for slow blink rates.
Note changes using the same characters. If blink rate increases indicate this with an up arrow. If blink rate decreases, use a down arrow.
Circle instances where you were able to identify the cause of behaviors you’ve observed.
Ss - Single-Sided Shrug
To observe only for this behavior, which in many cases, may be all you need, annotate each instance of Single-sided shrugs with an ‘s’.
Circle instances where you were able to identify contextual causes.
Prn - Pronoun Usage
Annotate with quadrant with an ‘s’ for self, ‘t’ for team, and an ‘o’ for others.
Adj- Adjective Usage
Annotate positive adjectives under a small column with ‘p’ and the header, and ‘n’ for negative adjectives as the header. These are also things you can get easily from almost anyone’s online social profiles.
Sns - Sensory Preference
Identify sensory preference words and annotate this quadrant with a ‘v’ for visual, an ‘a’ for audio, and a ‘k’ for kinesthetic.
Bl - Breathing Location
Identify whether someone is breathing into their chest or abdomen initially and make a note of it. Write an ‘a’ for abdominal breathing, and a ‘c’ for chest breathing.
As you notice a shift from chest to abdomen, or abdomen to chest, write the letter abbreviation of the new location. For instance, if someone is relaxed and breathing into their abdomen at the beginning of the conversation, and they shift to breathing into their chest at the mention of a drug test, annotate this quadrant again with a ‘c’.
Circle instances where you were able to identify topics that caused the shift in behavior.
Bar - Barrier Gestures
Make an initial note of the presence or absence of barriers.
As barriers are either placed or removed, annotate them with ‘p’ for barrier-placement, and ‘r’ for barrier removal.