How To Fascinate Knowing Your Advantages

These days, advertisers have a whopping five to eight seconds to fascinate and entice a consumer to make a purchase, according to an INC. article on marketing trends, and Sally Hogshead, author, speaker and founder of Fascinate, Inc., says it’s no different when it comes to you and how you impress an interviewer, new client or room filled with team members.

In her latest book, How the World Sees You: Discover Your Highest Value Through the Science of Fascination, Hogshead says that by knowing how we naturally fascinate – how the world sees us at our best – we can make the most of those crucial first few seconds to draw our audience in and then keep them captivated – helping us land the job, or make the sale, and find greater success in the world.

Path of Discovery

Hogshead is the consummate guide when it comes to helping up the fascination factor. During her career as an award-winning advertising executive, Hogshead’s stock-in-trade was building fascinating brands for clients such as Nike, Godiva, Coca Cola and BMW. From there, she started her own company, Fascinate, Inc., where it’s been her mission to pull back the curtain on what causes people to be fascinated and fascinating.

Since starting her company, Hogshead has commissioned extensive research with participants from throughout the business world, and immersed herself in the study of neurology, linguistics, and biological anthropology in order to better understand the art and science of fascination.

The Seven Advantages

As a result of her research, Hogshead has isolated seven distinct communication styles – inborn traits with which a person naturally fascinates – that she refers to as Advantages. Hogshead says each of us has our own Advantages, which she likens to languages we already know, that fall somewhere within these seven styles:

1. Power – The language of confidence.

2. Passion – The language of relationships.

3. Mystique – The language of listening.

4. Prestige – The language of excellence.

5. Alert – The language of details.

6. Innovation – The language of creativity.

7. Trust – The language of stability.

You can learn your strongest Advantages, and get an in-depth description of each, by taking Hogshead’s Fascination Advantage Assessment – an online personality assessment available for purchase via www.howtofascinate.com to get your Fascination Advantage Report.

When you take the test, along with your Fascination Advantages, you’ll learn your personality Archetype – a summary of how you shine and add value as well as the situations where you don’t – to complete your Fascination Advantage Portrait. I typed as “The Maestro” and appreciated the detailed report that gave me suggestions about how to play to my strengths and apply these in my career.

Best Advantages Forward

Hogshead emphasizes throughout her book that being fascinating is not about un-doing anything about yourself, but about becoming more of who you already are. “It’s learning how you add value to the world – knowing how you’re naturally suited to win so you can do more of it on purpose,” Hogshead explains. “When you know the qualities with which you naturally lead, you can make the most of them in your work and relationships.”