4 Personality Types of Clients & How to Identify Them | 7 Things Every Elite Trainer Should Know…
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Good. Let’s get this going. Let’s get this party started. All right. Hey, everybody, Michael Hughes here. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Thanks for taking out time, it’s an always an honor to speak and to have the opportunity to share knowledge. Just in case just in case you don’t know who I am a little background about myself, co founder of Gymnazo and Gymnazo Edu. I kind of really knew how I wanted to get into this game just didn’t know we’re going to be ended all back in eighth grade working out loved it love running workouts for my fellow students back in the day. It really gave me confidence that I lacked as a as a as a kid who stuttered all the time, really didn’t want to speak up in class. And it was amazing what fitness gave to me as an out as a means of kind of more confidence in myself. So I knew back in eighth grade, as I was kind of going through this my own personal journey, that I wanted to help other people in movement and share what I’ve what I learned at that point was was wasn’t very much goes to go to PT school. Good thing is I never got in, why do you say that’s a good thing? Well, because I would have been stuck in a clinical setting, and not be here. But I didn’t give up, I made sure that I got a job in a big box gym, found some alternative education that was taught by a bunch of black sheep physical therapist, and I blended that physical therapy knowledge with my performance fitness knowledge. And that is the creation of what Gymnazo is today, and much more of what I’ll share with you. So now we’re in a very large training facility staff of 12 hit seven figures before COVID. And that started to say we I think we should share this knowledge, and honestly loving the job that I do. So brief intro thanks very much. Let’s get into how trainers effectively need to motivate and communicate. Now, we are motivational coaches, but that’s no question. As a trainer, you are a motivational person, you are an inspiring person, you wouldn’t be in this field, if you didn’t do it very well. But every client type, every type of personality is really important to connect with. Because if our programming is sharp, but our ability to communicate and build a connection with our clients is lacking, then the program is only kind of for nothing. And if we don’t build a community of clients, and have a good communication style, then that’s also a missed opportunity. So there’s a coach that I really admire right now. I look up to him every single Friday night, and have been doing so for the past several several weeks, we have this ongoing, this call that we do. He doesn’t know that I’m calling calling him but his name is Ted lasso. And I believe Ted lasso is well are an absolute Rockstar as a coach, because you lead with his EQ if you don’t know who Ted Lasso was checkout apple plus TV, probably the biggest show on there now anyways, he leads with his EQ, his emotional quotient. Does he have some IQ? Well, not very much when it comes to soccer or football football in the in the European sense. But his EQ is unmatched. Each client of ours has a personality or a way of communicating that science has well classified. And we know that there’s a golden rule out there, which if we follow that makes us a good coach. If there’s a platinum rule out there, which is we follow that makes us a great coach. So the golden rule is treat people how you want to be treated, AKA a good coach. But the platinum rule is treat people the way that they want to be treated. And that’s the great coach. And that’s what Ted Lasso does. So well he meets every single athlete where they are not where he wants, not what network he is at that particular point. So let me send a few examples of when my communication style went wrong, and honestly cost me a client that I still wish I kind of had. This client is a was a an ultra marathon runner, high level like Western states level, if you know that is like it is a massive run in Tahoe in California. It’s 100 mile run, they have to do it in less than 24 hours. She wanted more strength for her long runs, and was very set and positive. She needed more strength for those runs. And that was the biggest gap that I needed to fill. But what I saw in her and my communications to her was that her biomechanics were actually limited. And her running was actually quite inefficient relative to what she could do. Even though she could run 100 miles. It was still relatively inefficient. And I treated her and I communicated with her inner restoration. Like let’s dive deep. So I found let’s dive deep and break down the process of the biomechanical limit limitations. And that was my biggest mistake. Why was that because I communicated to her to her in a deep, detailed progression of here’s a good do first, and you got to do this and you go do this. What she really wanted was I want to work out. Now I want to work out hard. And I want to get things going stop talking to me about the details. So in this instance, how can this topic really that I’m talking about help your training business? Well, if you can understand the types of different personalities, and how to communicate with those clients in 30 seconds or less, how much better do you think you can communicate to them so they hear and understand your skill set that the way that they want to be heard, like I lost that claim that I was talking about, they only stick around for for a few months? Or that I knew I could train them for years and years and years? Because my communication was not matching theirs, and it didn’t, just didn’t know it then. So I’m gonna ask for a honestly a volunteer, I liked the application piece in these trainings versus just sitting down or watching some dude on a screen talk. So I would like to have a 32nd conversation with one of you. No joke. 32nd conversation? First person who unmute. Turn your screen on, please. That’d be that’d be awesome. And I want to have a 32nd conversation with it. If you do not mind. Looking for those.
Unknown Speaker
Screen? I’ll do it.
Michael Hughes
Awesome. Brother.
Unknown Speaker
What’s going on?
Michael Hughes
Doing great, beautiful sunny day out there. Gotcha. All right. Um, tell me where you’re from and what you do what you do.
Unknown Speaker
I’m from New York. I work at blank, corporate gym. So, person.
Michael Hughes
Awesome. What do you love about your job?
Unknown Speaker
I helping people I’m getting to helping people get in shape, or just really feel good about themselves. Um, I am, like, I’m learning a lot about training. And so I kind of heard this conversation. So it was definitely good to join this particular session, because it’s really not about like, how you want them, like, like, it’s really about how they want making them feel how they want to feel. So I just, that’s really where I’m at now, like, I’m progressing to get them to feel how they want to feel after they’re with me.
Michael Hughes
And I train them a lot. It makes sense. It makes perfect sense. I got one more question. Describe your favorite meal to me. Um, or a favorite.
Unknown Speaker
Okay, good. I like some some jerk, some jerk sea bass with some red lentil pasta and some kale. And
Michael Hughes
it’s lunchtime here. So I like
Unknown Speaker
I’m hungry. I’m walking around in Chinatown in New York trying to find some food. And I’m not gonna sign that. Like to you right now. All right.
Michael Hughes
Hey, thank you very, very much. Appreciate that. Thank you. Alright. So there’s a few different ways to kind of think about this one. And I’m gonna kind of break this down deeper. Was his conversation with me fast paced? Let’s move let’s get get it get it done. Was it energetic, talkative? Was it like personal touch quiet like me? Let me kind of connect with you. Was it detailed and small little points? And I would say two of them really stood out. Definitely energetic. Definitely a talker definitely enjoyed. He unmuted himself in a public forum communication type, right? Definitely is okay with that. And I appreciated the detail diving into the, even the color of the food. So I would say that you would be an encourager tracker, that would be your communication style. So let me unpack that and go into that and see why would I say those things? And why would I therefore, meet and match to you the same way that you spoke to me? So let’s dive in, dive into this thing. This strategic tool that that we have comes from a well established and referenced personality assessment called Myers Briggs, right? I’m sure you’ve heard of that. If you’ve gone along the psychological kind of community communication styles at all, but they put out 16 different personality types. Be honest, that’s a lot of things to remember. So we boil it down to four different communication types that we see with all of our clients. The first one is a decision maker, this is who has type a abrupt tone wants results. Now, let’s move on group please. They may say please, it’s now the second type is the encourager, who is enthusiastic a talker definitely a squirrel mentality paying attention to the shiny objects and then the client who just maybe in your warm up you need to kind of say Hey, quiet down and download that we got to get going. Then there’s a tracker the third person who was a detailed oriented, let you know about the color of food put essentially reads every route review before they buy something on Amazon wants to know the why behind the exercise like what am I even doing here? They want to know that a lateral lunges 90 degrees in a transverse plane lunges, 135 degrees open rotation, like, Oh, that’s so so so cool. Then the last step is the facilitator. more introverted, more spa voice quiet likes to kind of come alongside super loyal, there’s a person who maybe not will raise their hand up in class, but they certainly have a lot to say, can still crush it in a workout, but they do so quietly, they do so quietly. So those are the four different types. We not only use this for coaching, but for an Our entire team, our front desk excetera, the whole staff. And here’s our rule to follow when we’re trying to implement this tool. Now, here it is, right? There are half as many cues over the phone, as in person, and half of those many cues yet again, in email communication. So we really want to succeed, like the more we can be in person and hear their voice, the better. So how do we spot communication in an email? Well, it’s truly all about the content. So it’s a little bit harder, right? You have to read in in between the lines, the actual words that they’re speaking, are typing in the phone, willing to listen to their tone, and their pace of their voice. So how they talk is really a huge indicator. And then in person, well, it’s a lot more you can have body language that you have even the perfume or cologne that they have. You can see how they touch right? Do they give you a firm handshake? Are they coming around giving you a hug? Like are they a hugger? And their dress style? How what how are they are they muted tones? Are they flashy and and now obviously over the top, but excited about how they present themselves. All those different things give you cues and we’ll cover this a little bit more. But before I kind of want to get it I want to kind of do a bit of a celebrity quiz and put some application to this. So I want you to do a comment actually in the comment box. And I want you to type in A D for decision makers. I’ll remind you E for encouragers s for facilitators or T for trackers. So I’m gonna give you a list of some celebrity names and you let me know what you think they are again d decision makers high talent Baba Baba encouragers talkative facilitators quiet but still kind of have that passion to him. And trackers are detailed people. Okay, you ready? Okay, Christina Yang’s character or the character of Cristina Yang in Grey’s Anatomy. Okay, same group here Captain winters that character from Band of Brothers. And you got to go back a little bit here one of my favorite movies Christopher Lloyd’s character doc and Back to the Future. Who do you think those people are? A D decision maker II facilitator F or T traitor? Come on. What do you think you got there’s no right or I mean there’s right or wrong answers but just toss it in it for me. What do you think you guys got for Cristina Yang from Grey’s Grey’s Anatomy Captain winners for Bannon brothers if you have no idea who these three people are then you got to go blank on that one. Cool Awesome. Cool. Great. Got some answers. I like it. Alright, so we would call Cristina Yang Catherine winters and doc who not bad not bad you guys are on it you guys are on Yeah, we’re gonna go tracker with these detailed oriented people. Captain winners he’s precise he’s on it’s all about speed the tactics got to get in got to get out. Make sure you follow the set principles of war. Christopher Lloyd character and back back to future always caring about the state this this space time continuum, not disrupting it. Keeping all the details dialed in. And from the greys Grey’s Anatomy. I think it’s a well I like to say it’s a pretty easy one with Mr. Yang there. Let’s go back some more though. Okay, so now T’s are gone. So it’s a bit of a multiple choice reducing it What about Tom Hanks his character in Saving Private Ryan? What about now I got kids so else’s character from Frozen else’s the blond haired one What about Robin Williams character and Goodwill Hunting decision maker encourage or facilitator Okay, so I got to see where the break is. Tom Hanks is character Saving Private Ryan he’s the captain. But don’t let that confuse you. else’s character. Good. Let me get a few more in Robin Williams character and goodwill hunting game if you don’t know who those characters is. This is makes it tough. Alright, cool. Tom Hanks his character though He was the captain. Did he ever yell besides and battle when he was in That fight where the two soldiers, American soldiers were going after each other. How do you break up that fight with conversation of a simple question else’s character? She’s the one who’s backed in her room. She’s quiet, she’s reserved. She’s not coming out. She’s just She’s shy about hiding things. And Rob was character in Goodwill Hunting definitely played the soft side spoken therapist side to Matt Damon’s damn embayments. No, it’s not met Matt Damon is Matt Damon’s buddy. And I can’t forget his name. Anyways. So that’s the facilitators type. Okay, now we get down to Options. What about Elon Musk? What about Donald Trump? What about Hillary Clinton? Decision makers, or encouragers, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Taipei’s my way or the highway, or super deep talkers that can’t get away from a microphone. Yeah, nice call. Pretty simple. Pretty, pretty simple on that, right. Decision makers are the easiest to spot. easy to spot and then I have to obviously the lack of options now Jimmy Fallon. I gotta have you I had to go back to frozen again, on his character or else’s sister in frozen. And then Kristen Bell, the actress. You gotta remember what our options RIGHT? Jimmy Fallon late night talk show host. Perfect. You got it. You gotta love chatting in the limelight. Let’s keep on moving popup about chatter, chatter, chatter, perfect. Nice job. Okay, so gives you a bit of a reference, right, a little bit of reference in. And we’re gonna play another kind of drill later on. But okay, so each client of ours is dominant in one of these communication traits, and again, dominant, but while each of them, including us, right, including us, we have the availability scuze, me to tap into all four. Here’s what you think about this. Here’s the example that I use, if I give you a pen, to write your name, you’re definitely going to grab that pen with your dominant hand to write the letters and therefore your name. But you can use your non dominant hand to write your name as well. But you didn’t, or you don’t, because it’s not the easiest or most efficient way for you to write letters out. So if you follow the golden rule with that same mindset, your dominant side, you’re going to only effectively encourage or connect with 25% of your potential clientele, because they will see you in themselves and vice versa. And it’s going to be easier to attraction.
But because training is how you talk, how you move, how you communicate, how you describe exercises, clients also connect with who you are, it’s personable. So it leaves another 75%, or the other three traits that are not your dominant to desire probably a little bit more, you know, they connect with you, but there’s something just not fully grabbing. Or even they may search out a different coach altogether. Because it’s just a miss nothing wrong. It’s something personal, just why you would marry or date someone and not marry or date someone, you just don’t have that energy that connection. So what are you going to effectively and efficiently connect and communicate with the other 75 or 100% of your clients simply by knowing how they wanted to be coached? And in 30 seconds of talking with someone, you’d have a really good idea on how to connect with their personality style, adapt yours to fit them? Is it manipulative? No, you’re just trying to be a good conversationalist, you’re just trying to understand and effectively teach that person the way that they want to be treated. So it’s our goal as a trainer to pass along our knowledge of movement to the masses, so they can internally benefit and thrive in life, right, that’s what we want to do. We want to spread the goodness. So it’s important for us that we can do that with anyone who walks into our facility for any session. So having a system to understand how to repeat this over and over again is a critical part as we believe to being the Elite Trainer that we all want to be. So how do you coach the do’s and don’ts right? How do you get into the details are the weeds, but this is where the multi dimensional movement coach. Mentorship comes into play. So you don’t have to lose clients or upset clients based upon simply conditions. And so that’s how we want to treat people so we they feel taken care of. So here’s here’s a bit of it. We’re launching our next mentorship on October 4. And if you want to feel like you want to master this concept along with everything else we’ve already covered, and we’ll continue to cover in these mini training sessions. Check out join em dmc.com/mcmc options, we’ll throw it in the comment as a link. This course is a deep dive it is a partnership. It is us communicating and open sourcing everything that we’ve done for the last year, we want to make you amazing. We have every other week coaching calls for six months, this is not a short thing. This is a deep dive. That’s 12 Different live coaching calls throughout the entire program, we have an entire dedicated discord group, some of you are in our movement collective, that is just a taste. It’s an appetizer to what the next level is of the Deep Dive. It’s focused, it’s application based, everything we do, we do it just like this. It’s us learning and talking back and forth. So such as someone on a screen chatting, that’s not how how that’s not how we learned typically, as trainers, we learned through kinesthetic movement and trial and error and talking some something through just like your own sessions with your own clients. It’s a partnership. And honestly, as a thank you for being here, especially for this one meeting right here. We’re tossing in a personal 90 minute coaching call VIP, just you and I, we’re going to exactly talk about instead of the group, but us on how we can take this course even better to apply it to your clientele, a situation you’re in, or the depth of the long term goal, which what you want to do this as pre meeting pre meeting questions attached to it, it’s recorded for you to keep forever has an action plan and even a follow up phone phone call 30 minute just to make sure that everything we spoke about is being applied into it. I wanted to leave this one a little bit short today, because there’s a lot of scenarios and deeper dives that we can get into. So I want a lot of q&a q&a, I want an opportunity say Hey, Michael, I got this one client or I have this one scenario or what do you think about this? Or even we can deep dive so you can understand your own personality style? Coming out of this call? Like if you’d be great to say like, oh, wow, I definitely am a tracker more than an encourager. There is a test that goes through this, that we’re going to put in a link in the movement collective discord as another kind of gift in a sense. So are we have a discord for all you guys it’s called the movement collective Discord is an online forum place where we want to keep the communication alive with trainers who think like this, who think Wait a minute, it’s really more about kind of how I think, than what I actually think it’s not the dogma of a certification. It’s the process of problem solving, and to understand the principles that go along with problem solving. So the movement collective discord form is a kind of our attempt to keep the conversation going. And some links are being posted in there. And it’s really, it’s really this, this whole kind of thing to expand the thought process. So if you use the promo code, Elite Trainer in this way, when you go to that link, you will get those those one on one, that one on one call added to it. There’s a few more details with the course that we can dive in into. But let’s also keep it open for the assessment things. So I’m not sure where you’re on my screen, but it’s lunchtime in New York, how spot on or off, was I in terms of my assessment, to say that you’re an encourager, talker, enjoy the limelight, but also love the details of applied to things? Also, I think that was you.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, that was me. Ah, when you broke that, I like it. Yeah, I’m definitely encourager, um, I feel like I’m also somewhat of a facilitator. Um, I try to pay attention to certain details. And I’m not, I’m, yes, I’m enthusiastic right now, more often times, I tend to be quiet, and not really, not really so outspoken. This guy, he’s got me on a good day.
Michael Hughes
I like this. I like this. So. So like I said, we all have a dominant trait. But we have a secondary trait and even a tertiary trait. That makes sense. So the cool thing is about about this whole process, like I am a high encourager, I’m a high facilitator just behind and then I follow up with a little bit of tracker, and then I’m dead bottom decision maker.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Okay. That sounds about that sounds like me. So
Michael Hughes
right on so like to me in this setting, on the minute on the chat it up, but when I go home? Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna keep it I’m gonna keep it chill. So it’s interesting. If there are like I said, we have access to all things. It’s just the here’s the most important part. When we have access to all things, that doesn’t necessarily mean that each one of them is inefficient use of our energy. Like as a trainer, there’s clients that give you energy, no joke, best session of your day, like I can do 20 of those. Yeah, and there’s clients that just kind of Robbia not bad people. It just takes a lot of effort to connect with them. So that’s more than likely the opposing side of your personality communication style. So if you could connect with them and make it a good session, well, that’s a win, they’ll keep coming, they’ll keep coming coming back. But if you’d like five of those in a day, I’d be a tough day. That’d be an extremely draining day. So for us and our coaching styles, we have we have a quite a few facilitators, as coaches as their dominant style encouraged her second, right, encouragers close, but we know that their burnout rate is is is a lower group in a sense group coaching schedule than one on one. So we kind of we can play to it. So if you knew that about yourself, like, gosh, you know, like, man, like one on ones, I thrive, like I can do this all day long. But it’s not necessarily the best path to my business, because it’s only one person per one hour, I need to leverage myself a little bit more, I need to break into some higher volume. But group takes the wind out of my sails. All right, well, what if you just threw in two or three sessions a group in your day? And the rest of the one on ones? Could you still leverage yourself more. So to us, it’s really understanding yourself more you understand yourself more, you understand others, and then be the best coach that they need. They need you to be there for keeps more clients around. They don’t leave just because of those small nuances of, of connection. Like I experienced with myself, I tried to come in facilitator, encourager, and the decision maker client that I had was, like, didn’t want any part of it. She She held out for a few months, but eventually, literally wrote me a very sweet email says, Mike, I just don’t think you’re the right coach for me. I want something that you’re not giving me. And that was kind of like that. Like what like, I know these things, I can none it up my skill set, my knowledge was there. But how it communicated, wasn’t there. So hence, the deep dive into this program into this set of it all to understand again, how we need to be coached. Any questions on this? Does this fly in the face of anything? I said, just because I’m saying it doesn’t make it gospel. But really, it’s all about like said collecting information, dialing it in making sure that we can be the best we can possibly be.
Okay, awesome. Great. So let’s cover it one more time. decision maker, fast paced talker. They, they’re not mean people, but they come across as that like very, they can be abrasive. Again, I’m talking about the dominance of this trait, right? Reagan, we’re all a bit of a of a mix. So the dominance, they’re going to come up like what’s up, hi, firm handshake, you know, like, I know what program I’m going to be in, this is my goals, I’m dialed in, I’m set. The encouragers certainly going to be a chatty Cathy in a sense of so gonna be, there’s gonna be the love the limelight, they’re going to love the question of the day, if you ask a group, they’re going to be the people says, Okay, we need to kind of get back to our program here. Because we’re chatting so so, so much. The facilitator, not necessarily not necessarily shy, but quiet, more reserved. They’re not the people that are gonna be coming into your session door open like trance, and they’re gonna be, they’re gonna check it out, they’re gonna look at what’s what’s going on. If you’re in the facility, if you’re in a larger kind of big box gym, quote, unquote, they’re not going to be the people in front of the mirror, pulling up the bicep, just cranking right in front of the mirror, you know, that’s not that kind of person. They’re gonna be off in the corner, probably more likely crushing it. And they’ve probably been coming in for years, because they’re loyal to a brand, let’s say find some that fits home. They’re in. And then you have the tracker. That’s a person probably with a notepad with the app out, counting the reps, you know, maybe getting a picture of of how the body is changing and moving through in a big box gym, though the people that are going to want to know, like, why am I doing this job? What’s the point of it, like, what muscles Am I getting after. And they kind of wonder that every single time they probably have checked out your own review on LinkedIn, or they read your your profile on the wall, if you’re part of a big box gym, they’ve they’ve hunted in pit they knew they were going to pick you before you even knew that they were a possibility. So to understand those different types of tend to communicate the way that they want to be communicated to. It’s It’s honestly it’s changed our business. It’s changed how I coached I don’t wonder any more whether I’m connecting with someone or not. I meet them where they want to be out. So well, that being that thank you very much for being here. If you have any more questions, please fire them up. Check out the movement collective on Discord. Check out the link for join mcmc.com. It’s a big big chunk this mentorship we are super proud of. It has been changing. It’s changed my life. And it’s not our job to put it out there to say, wait a minute, I think there’s way more to training than what the traditional certifications are teaching us. In fact, there’s way more, there’s way more. And if you change the way that we do our business and how we can really blend performance with the restoration or with the communication, behavioral science skills, with those, like unlimited tweaks of possibilities with any tool that we come in front of, with the systems and operations that make everything sing from a group training standpoint and beyond. Then, then you’re in the right spot. Alright, cheers. Have a great day. Enjoy. We’ll see you next Thursday at this time. Diving into I think we’re getting into five star customer service. So other double check on that one. Jason, appreciate you. Cheers. Rich. Thanks. Thanks for the help. bail. Appreciate it. Awesome. Thank you very much, Louis. Cheers, cheers. And see you guys next time.
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