DIFFERENT CLIENT / AUDIENCE LEARNING ARCHETYPES

Strategic audience analysis is one of my favorite things to do with a client.  Whether you speak, train, sell, coach or consult for a living, we are all placed in the position of “teaching” others our principal message and content.  There was no one-size-fits-all learning style back in grade school, and there certainly is not in the adult word either.  Whether persuasive, sales-oriented, motivational, or purely educational, the same material can be interpreted different ways within a specific audience if we know the basic learning archetypes present in the room.  Here are a few psychographic archetypes to consider when leading, training or motivating others:

BY SKILL LEVEL:
Intense people passionate and happy
Intense people negative and miserable
Shy people secretly ambitious
Shy people invisible wallflowers 
Gifted perfectionists /discouraged perfectionist
Gifted lazy underachiever
Average hard-working/dedicated perfectionist
Average content/lazy
Remedial hard-working responsible
Remedial helpless and hopeless
Lonely seeking attention (class clown)
Lonely sad angry or hostile (discipline problem)
Angry/disturbed coachable/open to mentoring
Angry/disturbed clinical

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS FOR PLACEMENT:
Inspired versus unmotivated
Patient versus discouraged
Relaxed versus overwhelmed and distracted
Seeks constant approval versus seeks invisibility
Wants attention from peers versus avoids attention
Enthusiastic versus low energy
Ambitious versus content/satisfied

What other categories might you add that are relevant to your specific business and industry???