Better Versatility = Better Relationships
by Tom Roth
In conversations with clients about the impact of the current economic downturn, I keep hearing one concern everyone seems to share: “how can we help our people manage the strain of all the budget cuts, layoffs, and reorganizations?”
Employees are worried about their jobs even while adapting to major changes in their work environment — new reporting relationships, restructured work teams, different job assignments. Even when they understand the necessity for all the changes, the effects can be debilitating — communication gets more difficult, morale sags, and productivity slows.
So what’s the answer? How can companies deal with these problems and maintain productivity and efficiency? If you are a leader concerned about this question, you know you can’t control the external economic conditions. You can, however, do everything possible to help your people cope. A simple place to start is to make sure communications breakdowns aren’t adding to everyone’s stress and getting in the way of trust, teamwork and collaborative effort. As people struggle to adjust to new realities at work, it’s normal for them to experience misunderstandings and increased relationship tension. By becoming more versatile in their interpersonal communications, employees, managers and leaders can better understand differences in communication preferences and create more effective and productive relationships.
Versatility can be learned, practiced and improved over time. It’s based on understanding your own and others’ Social Styles — defined in Wilson Learning’s model in terms of four categories – Analytical, Driver, Expressive and Amiable. Each style is characterized by being either more or less “Tell” or “Ask” oriented and more or less “Task” vs. “People” oriented. People generally feel very comfortable communicating with others who share their style, but can have problems with different styles. If you’ve ever felt impatient, intimidated, or frustrated in a conversation with a colleague, friend or family member, there’s a likelihood that the root problem is a style difference neither of you recognizes.
To improve versatility, managers and employees need to:
- Get feedback from others to understand their own social style. Knowing how you are perceived by others is critical. Study after study shows that most of us have no idea how we are coming across to others.
- Learn to identify the social style of others (e.g., Analyticals, Drivers, Expressives, and Amiables)
- Learn to adapt their own style of communicating to match the preferences of others, putting them at ease, building trust, and allowing both parties to work together to accomplish the tasks at hand.
Have you experienced a communication problem at work caused by different social styles? What happened and what affect did it have on your work performance?
These are our thoughts…What do you think?
Comments (1) •
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10:42 AM
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The perspective you share on the importance of versatility is right on target. Additionally, with the innovation of new technology and rapid pace of organizational realignments, mergers, and acquisitions, managers are finding themselves leading employees virtually from a remote location. In my own work in client organizations, we have seen how this can hinder trust building and have a mushrooming effect on misunderstandings.
Building trust with a remote direct report and encouraging trust among remote team members can be very challenging. At the same time, it is far from impossible. For example, remote managers can use versatility to tailor their communications – written and telephone - to the interpersonal style of the remote employee thereby helping them build trust among virtual team members.
Let me share with you four examples of how a manager might adapt communications to make the remote employee more comfortable with you as a manager:
A) If the employee is analytical and focused on facts, be logical and clear and avoid overuse of emotionally charged words and phrases.
B) If the employee is a driver and focused on bottom line results always lead with a clear purpose for the call. Be prepared to make quick decisions and avoid unnecessary details.
C) If the employee is expressive and very outgoing, look for ways to lead with people-issues, and recognition for outstanding performance. Include personalizing statements, enthusiastic greetings, and feel free to use exclamation points!
D) If the employee is an amiable, loyal, team-player, open communications with a focus on people rather than task issues. Help them feel appreciated. Plan for informal relating before getting to the business task at hand.
These simple ideas for adapting to the interpersonal style will help the manager make the remote employee more comfortable and build trust.
-Carl Eidson