How often do your eyes glaze over when someone you work with starts speaking to you? Do you struggle to understand what their message is? Or do you ask them to get to the point or alternatively, to provide data to justify their position? Are you speaking in your “Style” or theirs?
For thousands of years, scholars have tried to tease out the differences in personality styles, or temperaments to improve understanding of themselves and others. You may have been through many personality assessments and after a few days, you may have forgotten the value of using them in your conversations.
If so, here is a short cheat sheet:
If you are impatient, driven by results and like your information in bullet points, help your staff – tell them you want it short and sweet.
If you like to be inspired and inspiring, tell your staff to start with the big picture result, no details please until they give you the bottom line.
If you need to get connected with the person before the data, tell your staff to start with 2 minutes on how they are before you get down to business.
If you must see the data to construct the answer, tell them to give you the data first, and go from there.
Let’s go one step further and turn this around to your team – what style are you speaking with them? Yours or theirs? Oh yes, they have adapted to your style in many ways or you would have fired them by now. If you have a complete team of people just like you, please don’t be offended when I say that you are in deep trouble. You need a team that sees in all directions or you won’t keep up with that changing world outside.
This week, ask your direct reports how they want to get communication from you and then work on doing just that. Harder for you, yes, but the better results will be sweet!
Illustration courtesy of www.businessballs.com