How to Find—and Use—Your “Emotional Magnet” to Improve Your Relationships

What is your “emotional magnet?” In her book Emotional Magnetism: How to Communicate to Ignite Connection in Your Relationships, my friend (and fellow Canadian!) Sandy Gerber shares how everyone has an emotional magnet, or a factor that motivates and impacts their interactions with others. She breaks them into four categories, with the acronym SAVE:

S: Safety
A: Achievement
V: Value
E: Experience

Your emotional magnet can have an impact on everything in your personal and professional relationships, from how you interact with others in casual conversations to how you react in a time of conflict or stress. Your emotional magnet can even highlight your biases and “communication blocks,” or issues that keep you from having productive, creative conversations.

How To Find Your Emotional Magnet

To find your own SAVE communicator, you can take Sandy’s online quiz, which can be found on her website here. This free, easy-to-take quiz will give you unique insights about your SAVE emotional magnet and how it influences your reactions and needs.

What Comes Next?

Once you’ve discovered your emotional magnet, the real work can begin! After reading Sandy’s book and taking her quiz for myself, I had her as a guest on my Mindfulness Manufacturing podcast to talk more about how we can all use our emotional magnets to grow our mindset, nurture our relationships, and improve our everyday interactions.

Understanding Others. In your everyday interactions, you’re going to encounter people who see the world differently than you do. This means you might have to shift your mindset to find the best way to communicate with them. For example, if you know someone’s motivator is safety, you might consider approaching your conversations with them in a way that makes them feel comfortable and supported. It can be difficult to shift your mindset, especially in a moment of tension or disagreement, but try to approach all interactions with empathy, intention, and curiosity.
Be Open. Once you know your communication style, embrace it! Be open about your motivators, needs, and even your biases and blocks. By acknowledging your own reactions and needs, you can process your own emotions and find the best ways to move forward. Don’t be afraid to take a pause or some time to evaluate, especially if you take Sandy’s quiz and find yourself surprised by the results, like I was.
Share What You Need. In both your personal relationships and in the workplace, express what you need. Be open with everyone around you about what you need, and you’ll find yourself creating healthier, more rewarding interactions.

Learn More on the Podcast

To learn more about Sandy Gerber and hear more of her insights on how to use SAVE communicator motivators to improve your relationships and communications, listen to her episode of the Mindfulness Manufacturing podcast here.

At Manufacturing Greatness, Trevor Blondeel works with manufacturers to connect the top to the shop floor. If you’re ready to improve your own organization, contact Trevor to learn how Manufacturing Greatness can help you build stronger leaders and develop a dynamic, high-performing workplace.

Mindfulness Manufacturing

Our show is about providing listeners with real stories that come from a place of experience, transparency, and authenticity. Most importantly it’s about what we learn from these stories and applying Mindfulness in our everyday work and personal lives.
Our intention is to create an environment where people can learn through open honest discussions on how we apply Mindfulness. Although our experiences and stories come from time in a manufacturing environment hence the title “Mindfulness Manufacturing”, we still see our discussions and topics relatable to any organization or profession.

When a mistake occurs on the plant floor, your mind might jump to one question: who caused this issue, and should I write them up for their mistake? But there’s a more productive approach you could be taking—and in this episode of Mindfulness Manufacturing, guest Dr. Jake Mazulewicz breaks it all down!

With a background as a firefighter, EMT, and military paratrooper, Jake knows the challenges of high-hazard industries, and works with organizations to reduce errors and create safer, more reliable workplace environments. In this episode, Jake shares why you can’t procedularize everything, including the way you handle errors and accidents, and offers great insights and stories about how to use connection and curiosity to improve safety, address errors, and strengthen your organization.

3:35 – Procedures and policies are the work that is imagined, and on the floor is how the work actually gets done

4:19 – The work as-done is almost always radically different than the work as-imagined

5:20 – Even when you have standards and people show up wanting to do a good job, you can still see issues that need to be addressed

6:44 – There will always be areas that absolutely need to have procedures in place

8:02 – There are also adaptive jobs, which leans less into procedures and more intro troubleshooting and tacit human knowledge

10:56 – In an ideal environment, both mechanistic and adaptive models are used and respected and needed

12:11 – There are four levels, ranging from strict procedurals to looser guidelines that show what to do, but not how to do it

15:36 – Tacit knowledge gets shared through conversations

16:22 – A way to share important information is to have frontline experts record videos sharing their insights to problems, especially those that are not covered in procedures

19:44 – Through conversation and connection, more knowledge is shared

21:58 – Debriefing also plays a central role

23:45 – If you have strong discipline, you’ll find more freedom

25:31 – In most situations, errors are signals, not defects

27:07 – When an error occurs, be curious and find the deeper cause of the problem

Connect with Jake Mazulewicz

Find him on Linkedin

Visit his website