Background
How is an Action Profile® and a Decision Pattern created?#
From all the research that has been done it would appear that our unique Pattern of Decision-making is “fixed” once we are past 20 years of age. The Action Profile® System identifies a number of core and natural personal processes when making decisions and communicating. Once understood it allows the use of those natural Decision Motivations to best effect to achieve that elusive commitment and buy-in from everyone involved.
The Action Profile® is created in the following sequence.
- At an ordinary 1.5 – 2 hour interview, detailed observations are taken whilst the whole event is filmed.
- The digital video without sound is viewed and analysed; where non-verbal cues are complex the video will be slowed to allow notation of the complexity of some individuals' Integrated Movement patterns.
It is possible to observe, time and time again, that the use of a certain movement dimension invariably accompanies the expression or activation of a certain action motivation. ("Top Team Planning" Pamela Ramsden, P.94)
The Relationship between the Movement Pattern and the Action Profile®#
If you thump the table in order to squash a fly – that is an instrumental use of the body.
If you thump the table to emphasise a point about which you feel strongly, that is an expressional use of the body.
It is in this sphere that the PGM (Posture-Gesture Merging) type of movement is particularly relevant. If in thumping the table to express conviction, you are able to activate the movement quality of increasing pressure, or firmness, in a PGM movement (or total bodily expression) then the movement expression is part of your psychological state of conviction, and not separate from it. You don’t just “know” in a cold intellectual way, you also “feel” convinced. The movement expression is part of that “feeling”.