The introductory lesson to Understanding the Customers was about the first impressions of people through their personality and the body language they are displaying.
"There is never a second chance to make a first impression". First impressions can take up to as little as 17 seconds for someone to make a first impression about you.
A first impression of a person could be created through how they are dressed (visual perception), there character and body language. This helps to create a person's personality? Character and one should never try to change who they are. You should never try to be anyone else but yourself.
Below is the trailer for the movie Blood Diamond which was released in 2006. The trailer below is one of the main reasons I wanted to watch this movie. On first impressions on this trailer I believed it to be an awesome movie worth watching.
On the first lesson Ruth asked us to draw a shape on a piece of paper as big as we wanted it so we could fit in responses for the questions she would ask us. These answers could be written or drawn on the piece of paper. These questions would be about our family and lifestyle. One of the questions was what is your favorite sport? I drew a stickman kicking a ball. Another was how many siblings are there in your family again I chose to draw instead of write, and so I drew two girls and four boys including me (again Stickmen as seen below).
Once all the questions had been answered Ruth collected in our sheets and handed them out to people randomly making sure we didn’t get our own one back. This was to try and get others to figure out whose sheet they had by looking at what they had said or drawn on the sheet of paper and making a comment on the type of people we are. We didn't really know each other two well at the time so it was difficult to make a judgment on each other. However looking at what it was said about me on my sheet, "Quite, Shy and sporty" I believe this to be right on the mark about my personality and the type of person I am.
In the second part of the lecture Ruth had bought in two students we had never met and didn't know anything about. We were told to look at how they were dressed, and how they were standing and use that to establish what kind of people they were. With the first girl (also known as girl A in the lecture) my first thoughts about her was that she was a lively and outgoing person because she was dressed in bright colors and seemed confident. Girl B on the other hand seemed shy and into fashion. This was because she was (according to the girls) wearing fashionable clothes and was up to date with today's styles.
After a few minutes the class was asked to share what they thought of the two girls and surprisingly most of the class had the same thoughts as to the personality of the girls, in the end we found that what we thought of the girls was actually correct.
It’s funny how people’s minds works and how we can create a first impression of someone by the littlest of things like what clothes there wearing or how they've done their hair. We stereotype a person and create an image of them in our heads within a few seconds of seeing them without even knowing a single thing about them.
