Category: People & Relationships

We’re constantly interacting with other people. No matter what the activity, work or play. It’s a part of life, and how well we interact often determines our success in many areas.
You may have noticed that people interact in very different ways with very different purposes. Some people love to socialize at parties while others will avoid such social situations at any cost. In contrast, others like to work cooperatively to make things happen but don’t understand how people can enjoy wasting so much time socializing.
Interaction between people can be broken down simply in three distinct ways:
* Transactions, or interactions designed to make agreements and trades
* Operations, or interactions focused on doing and accomplishing
* Resources, or interactions focused on facilitating yourself or others.
You do all three on a regular basis, but you have a distinct order in your preference for some types of interactions over others. Your preference strongly influences the kinds of skills and behavioral roles you’ve become good at.
You demonstrate your preference by naturally gravitating towards activities associated with one category over the other two.
If Transactions is your favorite, you might be that person who loves social gatherings because they offer so many opportunities for bargaining, convincing, settling arguments, mentoring, selling, networking, and persuading others.
If Operations is your thing, your interactions probably revolve around getting things accomplished, planning, organizing, delegating, trouble shooting, and managing/overseeing.
Finally, if you have a preference for Resource interactions you may find yourself spending a lot of time researching, teaching, counseling, sharing, advising, coaching, defining strategies, and connecting people with each other.
The degree of preference for each category varies from person to person, but there is always an ordered preference. What’s important to remember is that your natural preference isn’t right or wrong, it’s just yours!
Take 10 minutes and reflect on the three preferences for interaction categories. Think of some specific examples in your own experience.
* Which one do you feel most comfortable doing?
* Which one do you feel least comfortable doing?
* Can you think of some examples?
Identifying these preferences will help you understand yourself, the things you do, and the things you avoid in a different light. What’s especially important in this process is distinguishing between those skills that fit you naturally versus those where you had to work hard to acquire that drag on your emotional, psychological and physical well-being. Examining the various interaction categories will also stretch your understanding of other people and their different points of view, which is key to improving communication and building stronger relationships.
About the Author:
Lynda-Ross Vega: A partner at Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd., Lynda-Ross specializes in helping entrepreneurs and coaches build dynamite teams and systems that WORK. She is co-author of Vega Role Facilities Theory, a revolutionary psychological assessment system that teaches people how to unleash their deepest potentials for success. For free information on how to succeed as an entrepreneur or coach, create a thriving business and build your bottom line doing more of what you love, visit www.VRFT.com

I often encounter entrepreneurs who see themselves as soloists, single individuals boldly taking risks to create new and imaginative products or solving problems in unique and unusual ways by themselves. Successful entrepreneurs know that in order to discover untapped markets, to develop new solutions, and bring a product to market requires a team of people who can add their unique talent and skill to the mix.
Many entrepreneurs try to do it all, and this is a recipe for failure. No matter how gifted, skilled, and talented an entrepreneur is there are still things that are required for a successful business that others do better than they do.
I live with the Vega Role Facilities Theory day in and day out and have for over thirty years. You could say that I have become so familiar with the theory and the power of its concepts to transform people’s lives that I wrongly assume that everyone else experiences what I do.
Still, it continues to surprise me when after I have delivered and interpreted inventory results someone says “This is very interesting, so what do I do with this information?” I could go on for pages, but let me focus my comments today on one area – entrepreneurs and team building.
VRFT is a powerful tool to help people see what they are skilled at doing and what things they do best. More importantly for this discussion, VRFT is uniquely positioned to provide the reciprocal information as well. By this I mean those things that a particular individual does not do well. In the case of an entrepreneur, this information may well be the crucial difference between success and failure. So when an entrepreneur says to me, “I already know this about myself. So what?” The answer is “Have you used this knowledge to build your team?”
Let me give you some hypothetical examples: An entrepreneur has the idea for a product but not the skills to manufacture it. Without someone with production skills, employee or contractor, the idea is only that – an idea. An entrepreneur has a network of influential people, contacts, and marketing but not the organizational or operational skills to manage the day-to-day operations of a business. Without the right person to organize and manage the business plan, entrepreneur’s schedule, and finances the end results is likely to be chaos. Or maybe an entrepreneur has a fantastic new idea but no strategy or plans to bring it to fruition. They need someone whose skill is providing advice, long-term strategy, and short-term tactics.
Without someone to fill these critical roles an entrepreneur’s business may stumble along, but it will not take off the way the entrepreneur envisions. VRFT not only provides the information the entrepreneur needs to understand their own skills and talents, but also the information necessary to know what skills and talents are needed to compliment the entrepreneur, how to position current team members’ talent to fill the gaps they are best suited for, and how to evaluate prospective team members to determine if the talent they bring fills the needs the team has. All this from a simple but powerful assessment.
About the Author:
Gary Jordan, Ph.D., has over 27 years of experience in clinical psychology, behavioral assessment, individual development, and coaching. He earned his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology – Berkeley. He’s the co-founder of Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd., a consulting firm that specializes in helping people discover their true skills and talents. www.vrft.com.

When people think of playing a role they usually imagine taking a part in a stage production or starring in a blockbuster movie. For most of us, though, those kind of roles are the stuff of fantasy.
But every day, you actually play all kinds of social roles in your relationships with others. A “social role” is the part played by a person in a given social context, including typical or expected patterns of behavior.
For example, as part of a family you’re a father or mother, sister or brother, son or daughter, cousin, etc. You’re a friend, mentor or role model to someone, or if you have a career you maybe an employee, or boss, or both.
Some social roles, like wife and husband or employee and boss, are determined by the relationship you have to others in your life.
But there are other social roles you play that are often not as obvious to you or even to those around you. These roles are usually ones you’ve chosen, based on your personality profile and they play an important part in determining how much you’re enjoying life. Simply put, while you can play many different social roles, you have a natural predisposition for some over others.
For example many people can learn to sell, but not all are naturally gifted at being a salesperson. Some people find that managing people comes easily and is very rewarding, while others have no idea how to oversee and direct other people’s work.
Success in any role requires a knack for the skills that support that role, and an understanding of the social expectations around it. Just because you’re attracted to a particular role doesn’t mean you automatically have the needed skills or possess that behavioral style.
It’s entirely possible to choose a social role for which you have little or no natural skills (think Joan Crawford in “Mommy Dearest”). When this is the case, it’s often because the role has been presented as something that’s expected, that you should do to please someone important to you or that you need to do to “get ahead.”
Personal growth always involves change. Sometimes it means changing the roles we play, other times it’s a change in how we play a role. But it always begins with a conscious understanding of who we are and the roles we play on a daily basis.
Discovering how well your natural skill sets support the roles you play is an important step to attaining Success For Life. This knowledge allows you to have the all important element of choice.
Carry a small notebook with you for the next 3-5 days and make a note of every role you play in your own and someone else’s life.
Once you have your list, catagorize the roles into ones you enjoy and do well, and ones you don’t take pleasure in. Decide what actions to take to either let go of the unpleasant roles or what behaviors you can adopt to increase your enjoyment of them.
About the Author:
Gary Jordan, Ph.D., has over 27 years of experience in clinical psychology, behavioral assessment, individual development, and coaching. He earned his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology – Berkeley. He’s the co-founder of Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd., a consulting firm that specializes in helping people discover their true skills and talents. www.vrft.com