(Note:
This is Chapter 1 from
The Art of Profiling
Reading People Right the First Time
By DAN KOREM
International Focus Press, 1997.
Text layout format has been modified
for use on the Internet.)
CHAPTER 1
Profiling:
A Powerful Tool
Imagine within just a few
minutes of interaction being able to
accurately predict how someone is
likely to:
· Communicate
· Perform on the job
· Make decisions
These are three of the
most valuable pieces of information
most people would like to learn about
others in almost any professional
environment. Assessing this kind of
valuable information about someone is
called profiling. Profiling is the
ability to assess a comprehensive
amount of information about a
person’s personality.
The term profiling is
used in various professions to
identify many kinds of information.
In law enforcement, a criminal
profile might identify how and when a
felon is likely to commit his next
crime. In newspapers and magazines,
reporters do background profiles as a
part of feature stories in which they
detail a person’s past history.
In this book, the term
profiling is used to specify a
person’s comprehensive profile,
which identifies how a person prefers
to communicate, perform on the job,
and make decisions.
The ability to use a
reliable profiling system should be
in everyone’s professional
toolbox. With refined profiling
skills, we can more effectively:
· Teach and educate
· Manage teams
· Sell and close
· Sharpen communication
skills
· Consult with clients
· Conduct interviews
· Prepare and deliver
presentations
· Hire and develop personnel
· Diffuse confrontations
· Negotiate
In our personal
lives, profiling can help us:
· Sensitively respond to and
meet the needs of spouses, friends,
and others
· Reduce conflict
· Understand those whom we
love and care about
· Nurture and discipline our
children to help them reach their
potential
With two to three months
of practice, you too will be able to
profile most people within just a few
minutes of interaction. In fact, you
will learn how to assess a profile
without ever meeting someone.
For those who travel
abroad or work with culturally
diverse groups, you will learn how to
profile people from a different
culture, even if you cannot speak
their language.
And, just by answering
two questions about a person, you
will learn how to quickly profile the
Random Actor—one of the most
dangerous types of deceivers—and
what to do if you have to engage this
person. This is especially valuable
for managers, teachers, law
enforcement officers, and others as
many dangerous individuals, such as
perpetrators of workplace violence
and cult leaders, are often Random
Actors. The ability to profile this
person quickly is considered an
important breakthrough by many of
these concerned professionals in the
US and Europe.
The profiling concepts
taught in this text, which comprise
the Korem Profiling System, have been
carefully developed over a period of
six years. Based upon sound science,
the system is constructed so that it
provides a comprehensive amount of
data for those who do not have the
advantage of a behavioral science
background. All that is required is a
willingness to practice the system.
Previous attempts to
provide a profiling system for
nonbehavioral science professionals
typically supplied a limited amount
of information—just a few short
descriptors—for each profile.
Not enough information was supplied
to make them useful across a broad
spectrum of applications and
professional environments. The Korem
Profiling System not only provides a
comprehensive amount of data, but
proficiency can be developed and
applied by virtually anyone.
VERSATILE
WITH MANY APPLICATIONS
If you
interact with others, profiling
skills are a vital necessity in our
global marketplace where speed in
decision-making is paramount. The
Korem Profiling System was
constructed so that an entire
organization could put it to use.
Human resource personnel to sales
management to auditors can all use
the same profiling system to meet
their unique and individual needs.
In the past, profiling
skills were only acquired by those
with a unique professional need, such
as FBI agents, who track serial
killers or terrorists, or human
resource managers, who make hiring
and personnel development decisions.
Profiling, however, can benefit
anyone.
Most people, though,
never develop profiling skills
because they lack a simple and direct
system. Even in the human resource
arena, most professionals do not have
a system for profiling people on the
spot without the use of a written
personality test. (When I surveyed
attendees at one of the largest human
resource conferences in the US, over
91% indicated that they did not have
a system for profiling others without
the use of a written test.)
For some, developing
profiling skills seems too
"fuzzy" to be easily
learned. Be assured that, even if you
are someone who has a tough time
reading others, with practice, the
system presented in this book will
enable you to increase your current
people-reading skills by at least
25%—and by as much as
50–100% in just twelve weeks.
If you are blessed with
keen intuitive insight, you may ask:
Why do I need to learn to profile? I
can already read people pretty
effectively.
Here are three
questions to consider:
1. Can you teach others
in your organization how to develop
the same refined skill so that they
will have systematic accuracy?
2. Do you know with
precision how to quantifiably sharpen
and increase your intuitive sense of
others?
3. When you misread
someone, can you identify precisely
what you misread so that you do not
repeat the same mistake?
If you
answered with a negative to two of
the three questions, you have your
answer: You need a dependable
profiling system.
Here are some
typical applications for a wide range
of professional responsibilities in
which profiling is an indispensable
tool.
Human
Resource Management
Hiring—Profiling
without the use of a written
self-assessment test provides an
excellent check on written
self-assessment tests. (Chapter 13
describes a helpful method for
reducing the screening process for
applicants.)
Team Management—Aid
those with diverse personalities and
needs to interact effectively with
one another while at the same time
reducing unstated biases against
specific personality
types—"those who are
different from us." This enables
team players to broaden the range of
personality types with whom they can
effectively cooperate.
Personnel Development—Identify
those in an organization best
equipped to take on new
responsibilities.
Educators
and Counselors
Instruction—Teachers,
pastors, medical professionals, and
social workers can quickly identify
an individual’s or a
group’s needs so that curriculum
achieves maximum comprehension and
retention.
Identify Allies—Teachers,
counselors, and probation officers
who interact with at-risk youths can
better assess whether a specific
parent, guardian, or caregiver will
effectively assist in the
disciplining and nurturing of a
youth.
Avoid and Diffuse
Conflict—Recognize how you
are perceived so that you can quickly
adapt to difficult environments.
Executive
Needs
Negotiations—Predict
and adapt to the communication and
decision-making styles of those
across the table.
Senior Level
Interactions—Efficiently
work with a hard-to-read or difficult
partner/colleague.
Visionary and
Bottom-line Expectations—Tailor
the promotion of one’s vision
and bottom-line expectations to those
with different profiles, increasing
productivity (a skill often attained
by leading athletic coaches, but
often neglected by corporate
decision-makers).
Law
Enforcement and Security
Confrontations—Quickly
identify how to confront different
personality types and diffuse
potential threats.
Investigations—Better
predict criminal strategies and
obtain information during interviews.
Sales
and Communicators
Closes—Determine
whether a person makes decisions
confidently or out of fear, and how
to sell and bring closure to
interactions with either type of
individual.
Sharpen Presentations—Predict
when one should present more or fewer
options to a client or audience.
Office
Management
Reduce Cancellations—Appointment
secretaries can better predict who is
and is not likely to keep
appointments (Chapter 7).
Temporary Help—Quickly
identify strengths and weaknesses to
optimize performance.
Customer Relations—Quickly
modify one’s language to reduce
customer dissatisfaction.
Interviewing
Skills
Confrontational
Interviews—Auditors, law
enforcement, and security can work
quickly and effectively when data
must be collected in a
confrontational environment without
inciting hostile retaliation.
Nonconfrontational
Fact-gathering—Auditors,
journalists, financial analysts, and
doctoral students can increase the
precision and scope of information
gathered during interviews.
Medical
Personnel
Structured Follow-up—Identify
patients who need more or less
structure and guidance to adhere to
follow-up recommendations, such as
remembering when to take medications,
following rehabilitation regimens,
etc. (Chapter 7).
Personal
Use
Social Contacts—Shorten
the time required to establish
relationships.
Respecting One’s
Spouse—Understand and more
effectively communicate with your
spouse and adapt to his or her
weaknesses and strengths.
Child Rearing—Direct
and instruct children based upon
their unique personalities.
These are just a few of
the many practical applications in
which the Korem Profiling System has
been put to effective use. What
follows are some actual cases in
which profiling was the difference
between success and failure. (Each
case will be expanded later in the
text. Because this text is designed
for an international audience, the
male pronoun will be applied when
appropriate as this is the accepted
convention, although examples will
employ both male and female gender.)
Case #1—An
outside consultant is working with a
creative work group in the audit
industry. Every time the consultant
makes a proposal that the staff wants
to initiate, the group’s manager
throws up illogical roadblocks that
nearly derail the project. What
course of action did the consultant
take to save the project?
Case #2—Frank
and his staff are pursuing a
lucrative contract with XYZ Inc., a
Fortune 1000 company. However, Frank
encounters an unusual challenge. The
CFO of XYZ requests an exploratory
meeting with his staff beforehand. He
tells Frank, though, that under no
conditions can any of Frank’s
staff make contact with anyone at XYZ
before the first meeting. Then, the
day of the meeting, the CFO slams the
boardroom door shut and screams at
his subordinates, while Frank and his
staff stand outside the door within
earshot of the CFO’s loud barks.
What action did Frank take, based
upon the CFO’s actions, that
increased his company’s chances
of securing a future contract?
Case #3—In
Zurich, Switzerland, several doctors
use the Korem Profiling System to
identify more accurately those
patients who require more or less
regimen for follow-up to treatments,
taking medicine, etc. What did the
doctors and their nurses profile in
each patient that enabled them to
uniquely meet the needs of each
patient ?
Case #4—The
leader of a cult-like group, who has
a criminal record including
kidnapping and robbery, knows that
police are likely to arrest him on a
stolen guns charge. He has threatened
to kill others and himself if he is
apprehended, reminiscent of Jim Jones
and David Koresh. There is only one
opportunity to engage this individual
tactically so that a bloody siege
does not take place. What key element
was addressed during the
confrontation which enabled this
dangerous individual to be
successfully apprehended and a
confession obtained?
THE
PROFILER’S EQUIPMENT:
A COMPASS AND A MAP
When people say that they
want to be able to profile others to
interact and solve problems
successfully, they are really asking
for two useful pieces of information.
First, they want to
identify someone’s profile, such
as how a person is likely to
communicate and perform and make
decisions in a given situation.
Second, they want to know what to do
with this information; that is, they
want to know how to operate with each
specific profile.
The Korem Profiling
System will provide you with a
compass and a map that will help you
accomplish both of these tasks.
The Compass—A
compass points a backpacker in the
direction that he should hike. The
Korem Profiling System provides you
with four questions that will be your
profiling compass. After you answer
these four questions about someone,
you will know his/her profile. You
won’t ask someone these four
questions, rather you will answer
these questions in your own mind. And
these questions are not complicated.
Anyone can answer them without
specialized training.
They are as simple as:
"Does this person typically
control or express his emotions when
he communicates?" For example,
Queen Elizabeth is a person who
typically controls her emotions when
she communicates, while actor/comic
Robin Williams expresses his emotions
when he communicates. With a little
bit of practice, you will be able to
read which way most people
tilt—even those who are hard to
read. Once you have answered these
four questions, you will know a
person’s COMPREHENSIVE PROFILE.
How much information will
the COMPREHENSIVE PROFILE provide?
Just take a quick look at
pages 155 and 156 which details the
profile of a person who is called a
Sergeant/Manager. This is how much
information can be assessed by just
answering these four
questions—and without ignoring
proven scientific techniques,
engaging in inaccurate stereotyping,
or simply relying on reading
"body language."
The Map—When
backpacking, you not only need to
know which direction to hike, but you
also need to know the best route to
take toward your final destination.
You need a reliable map that helps
you gauge distances and points out
natural obstacles to avoid, such as
swamps and impassable gorges. When
profiling, you need a map that will
identify the typical strengths,
weaknesses, and tendencies of each
person’s profile. Your profiling
map is the COMPREHENSIVE PROFILE. All
sixteen profiles are provided in
Chapter 11 and include strengths,
shortcomings, and interaction
suggestions such as how to sell and
present ideas/products or how to
diffuse a confrontation. Graphically,
the relationship between your
profiling compass and map is shown
below.
TALK
VERSUS THE WALK
In addition to providing
you with a map and a compass, the
Korem Profiling System breaks down
each profile into two parts: (1) a
person’s talk—how he
prefers to communicate; (2) a
person’s walk—how he
prefers to perform in a given
situation and make decisions.
All of us have been
fooled by the salesman who can sell
us a dream, but when called upon to
act and make the dream a reality, he
operates out of fear and doesn’t
deliver. His talk looks and sounds
great, but his walk is something
completely different. It is the talk
part of his profile that misleads us.
Similarly, it is easy to be fooled by
someone whose talk is shy and
retiring, but when called upon to
perform, his walk is ironclad,
predictable, and dependable.
Unless you can separately
profile a person’s talk from his
walk you will ineffectively operate
with people. The Korem Profiling
System will always differentiate for
you a person’s talk from his
walk so that you can make wise
decisions.
PROFILE
INFORMATION PROVIDED:
THREE CHOICES
You will have three
choices of how much information you
can access with the Korem Profiling
System. They are:
Snapshot Read—A
short two-line description, useful in
many short-term, noncritical
interactions. Proficiency is
attainable in about 4–6 weeks.
Fine-tuned Read—Here
you will be able to identify specific
positive and negative actions, which
is useful in most critical long-term
interactions. Proficiency is
attainable in about 6–8 weeks.
Comprehensive
Profile—As previously noted, a
full sheet of data is provided that
includes general strengths,
weaknesses, tendencies, and
suggestions for interaction. It is
useful for long- and short-term
interactions. Proficiency is
attainable in about 8–10 weeks.
SELF-ASSESSMENT
TESTS AND ON-THE-SPOT PROFILING
One way to read and
profile people more accurately than
just using our gut instinct is to use
a written personality self-assessment
test. Organizations often use these
tests when hiring personnel. They are
called self-assessment tests because
an individual answers, to the best of
his ability, a battery of anywhere
from twenty to over two hundred
questions.
These scientifically
developed profiles are usually quite
reliable, provided they are
administered and interpreted by a
qualified professional. Some of the
best known are: 16PF, the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory,
the California Psychological
Inventory, the Meyers-Briggs Type
Indicator, the Guilford-Zimmerman
Temperament Scale, the Edwards
Personality Profile Scale, and the DF
Opinion Survey. Some of these tests
are not available to the general
public, which decreases the
likelihood that most untrained
professionals will find an accurate,
easy-to-use testing system that
provides a comprehensive amount of
data.
And written tests
have limitations.
First, in order to obtain
an accurate profile using a written
test you must depend upon a person
truthfully answering the test
questions. Some people, however, have
learned how to deliberately distort
their answers in order to match a
desired profile, rendering a test
invalid.
Second, if a person is
going through a life-changing
circumstance, his traits may be
exaggerated or concealed due to
uncharacteristic stress. Because of
the dramatic increase in social
deterioration over the past thirty
years, more people are going through
life-changing events, which can
translate into decreased test
accuracy.
For example, one might be
able to identify how a person is
operating on the day of a test, but
when a person’s crisis passes,
his actual profile can emerge—a
profile that may not be suited for a
specific work responsibility. In
light of this instability factor, a
perceived need has developed amongst
human resource managers for an
on-the-spot profiling system that can
be used as a check on written tests.
For these reasons, a
profiling system that does not rely
upon a written test is an invaluable
tool. By using the Korem Profiling
System, you won’t have to depend
on someone accurately answering test
questions in order to obtain an
accurate profile.
For those who do use
written tests when hiring or
developing personnel, the Korem
Profiling System can be an effective
check on self-assessment tests. The
combination of using both written
tests (quantitative information) and
interviews or observations
(qualitative information) will only
help increase the reliability of
one’s decisions. For those who
have acquired behavioral interviewing
techniques and strategies, the Korem
Profiling System provides a stable
and comprehensive platform from which
to apply these useful tools.
PROFILING
WHEN TESTS ARE NOT APPROPRIATE
Finally, there is one
obvious limitation that written tests
present: They aren’t appropriate
in most professional interactions.
You can’t ask competitors,
purchasing agents, students,
upper-level managers, or others to
just fill one out.
Can you imagine starting
a meeting by requesting: "Mr.
Johnson, before we negotiate this
contract, I want you to fill out this
test truthfully so that I will have
an accurate bead on your personality
type." Or, "Ms. Dean, we
haven’t met, so before we start
this audit evaluation, would you mind
filling out this test so that I can
identify your profile?" Asking
someone to take a written test in
most professional and personal
situations would be interpreted as
assaultive and insensitive.
While written tests are
valuable in the right context, they
are like a train in their ability to
deliver useful information.
Trains can effectively
carry cargo and people from one
location to another. But trains are
dependent upon a track. They
can’t go where track isn’t
laid. Trains can deliver goods to a
city, but they can’t drop cargo
off at someone’s doorstep. Also,
trains have to follow schedules.
Engineers can’t transport goods
at any time they want or collisions
would result.
Like trains, written
tests can be powerfully used, but
their use is limited. You can’t
just use them anytime you want.
Written tests are best administered
in situations such as hiring and
personnel development. But there are
many more daily needs for accurate
profiling, which is why there has
been a perceived need in most
professional environments for a
reliable impromptu, on-the-spot
profiling system.
The Korem Profiling
System fulfills this need.
It is like a car or
truck, which can deliver goods or
people to any specific location and
at any time.
You control when and
where you want to profile someone.
You don’t have to ask for
permission or rely upon truthful
answers to test questions.
You simply answer four
questions in your mind about the
person you want to profile. Once you
have completed the lessons in the
following chapters, you will be able
to profile most people at anytime you
want and on your schedule.
HOW
THE SYSTEM WAS DEVELOPED
During the early and
mid-1980s, as an independent
investigative journalist, I
investigated a number of individuals
and groups that posed a criminal
threat. They ranged from youth gangs
to cults to sophisticated con
artists. I preferred to focus on
long-term issues, rather than the
latest scam.
Often, I would find
myself in a critical situation,
needing guidance and reassurance that
I was profiling each person or group
with pinpoint accuracy. In many
situations if I had taken
inappropriate action because of a
misread, I would have put myself or
others in harm’s way. In fact,
several times law enforcement
followed my lead because of the
unique nature of the individuals or
groups I was investigating. The two
people I most relied upon for
guidance were Hugh Aynesworth and
Margaret Singer, Ph.D. They were my
profiling mentors.
In 1981, Hugh, a
five-time Pulitzer Prize nominee,
agreed to help me with my first
investigative documentary. He had
just finished coauthoring The Only
Living Witness, in which he detailed
how serial killer Ted Bundy murdered
over thirty women. It was one of the
first confessions of a serial killer
and his interview tapes are archived
at the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences
Unit.
Hugh helped me
investigate a cult-like individual,
James Hydrick from Salt Lake City,
who had the same background profile
as Waco cult leader David Koresh.
Like Koresh, Hydrick was from an
abusive home, was obsessed with
weapons, threatened to kill others
and himself, embraced a contrived
religious dogma, and was a pedophile.
The investigation culminated in the
only known confession of a cult-like
leader. Hydrick detailed how he
deceived millions of people into
believing that he had powers and how
others wanted to use him to control
people. During the eighteen-month
investigation, Hugh helped me refine
my interviewing skills.
Three years later,
Margaret Singer, internationally
respected for her knowledge of
sociopathic behavior, thought reform
techniques, and interviewing skills,
continued where Hugh left off,
further shaping my concepts of
profiling. If I could only place one
call to one person in a potentially
life-threatening situation, Margaret
would get the call. She has never
failed to provide concise, reliable,
and easily digested guidance.
During one harrowing
investigation in a small logging town
in upstate Washington in 1987, my
film crew, feeling the pressure,
fled. They were spooked by threats
made by a couple of former Vietnam
vets who had a history of
instability. (I didn’t have time
to prescreen the crew as I hired them
with only one day’s notice.)
Alone, I called Margaret for advice
on how to engage the volatile and
unstable group. With razor precision,
she helped me tailor each interview
question so that it would uniquely
relate to both the scoundrels, the
victims, and the heroes that I
interviewed. After hiring a new crew,
not only did we successfully film the
story without incident, but as
important, no one was hurt after the
interviews—when volatile
individuals had time to mull over
what I had asked. Margaret’s
profiling insight was what provided
me with the tools that enabled me to
help others safely.
During these years in the
early to mid-1980s, my perspective
toward profiling skills was shaped by
the unique demands of investigative
journalism. Profiling needs during
investigations are very different
than profiling needs when hiring
personnel. During an investigation
you have to do as much profiling as
possible from a distance, before
meeting someone, relying upon the
observations of others, your own
unobtrusive observations, past
history, and so on. The better
prepared you are, the greater the
chance of illuminating a dangerous
issue.
Traditional profiling
applications, such as hiring and
development of personnel, however,
can be approached with unwritten,
accepted rules: Someone agrees to
submit his work history, come in for
an interview, take a self-assessment
test, and answer questions during an
interview. There is an expected
exchange of information so that the
employer can make effective hiring
decisions. There is also an
expectation that a certain amount of
"people reading" will
naturally take place by both the
candidate and the interviewer.
When talking to victims
of crimes, however, it’s best to
assess their profiles before meeting
for an interview, so that questions
can be sensitively asked. Or, when
this isn’t possible, you do your
best to profile people on the spot.
When investigating
criminals, profiling before beginning
an investigation or attempting an
interview is essential. Having
knowledge of a criminal’s
profile only increases the safety
factor for the journalist and for
those who might be harmed by the
criminal. This means selectively
relying upon people’s
observations of a criminal’s
past history and how he handled
specific situations in the past.
Obtaining this information is
essential because most criminals will
not voluntarily divulge needed
information.
Taken together, these
kinds of diverse needs—both
investigative as well as hiring
dependable staff—helped shape my
concepts about how to profile people
accurately, whether on the spot or
before meeting someone.
Then, in the late 1980s,
I was challenged by several members
of the Young Presidents Organization
to develop a system for profiling
people in the corporate arena, a
system that would extend beyond just
truth detection and potential
criminal behavior. This led to
consultation through the early 1990s
with a number of behavioral science
experts. I examined many different
behavioral gauges commonly used to
read and profile others. It was from
four well-accepted gauges that the
core of the Korem Profiling System
was developed in 1992—a system
which could be used to profile people
on the spot or before interaction
takes place.
From 1992 to 1995 the
system was refined and taught to
virtually every kind of professional
work group in the US and Europe,
including human resource, audit,
sales, law enforcement, and
educators. Transferability issues
were refined to insure that anyone
could learn and use the system. Then,
in January of 1995, I presented the
system to over ninety of the leading
police psychologists from the US and
Europe at the invitation of the
FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit to
flesh out any structural flaws. None
were found. The system is
structurally, culturally, and
instructionally sound.
WHAT
TO EXPECT
You will need to invest
about an hour or two a week for about
the next twelve weeks to complete a
number of assignments. It usually
takes about four to eight weeks,
depending upon your background,
before you will begin to feel
comfortable with your newly developed
profiling skills—a small
investment to develop a critical
lifetime skill. (In a workshop
environment this can be shortened to
one day, moving the average
participant from 25% accuracy at the
beginning of the day to about 75% at
the end. The teaching process,
however, is rather sophisticated,
employing interactive technology.
Participants are shown carefully
selected video clips of real people
in real situations, and they enter
what they believe is each
person’s profile on their
interactive response pad. Responses
are then instantly tabulated by a
computer and the results are
projected onto a screen so that each
person can see how they are doing in
comparison to the rest of the class.
Although solely using this text takes
a little bit longer, you can learn to
profile just as effectively by
following the suggested assignments
within the time guidelines
suggested.)
The instructional
process, which is uncomplicated and
direct, is as follows:
1. You will learn
how to answer and use the four
questions—the compass—that
reveal a person’s profile
(Chapters 3, 4, and 7).
2. You will learn
how to combine the four questions so
that you can identify the sixteen
different comprehensive
profiles—your map—which
provides detailed suggestions for
using each profile (Chapter 11).
3. You will
complete about a dozen and a half
exercises, each requiring between
thirty minutes and two hours, over
the next several weeks.
4. Helpful tips are
provided in Chapters 6, 10, 13, and
14 to insure that your reads are
accurate, avoiding common mistakes.
When specific ideas are noted that
will be explained in a later chapter,
the chapter is noted for easy
reference. Important concepts covered
in previous chapters will, when
needed, also include the chapter in
which it was first presented.
5. Additional
concepts are detailed throughout the
text, including:
