By Ignite Excellence

As described in the Council’s Sector Study, realizing efficiencies often requires individuals to change their approaches to sharing information. Implementation of this kind of change increases in difficulty when people are not fully “bought in.” Buy-in to any message stems directly from an individual’s beliefs and motivations. (See the September newsletter for how individual perceptions are largely shaped by our personal past experiences.) How well an individual receives particular information may depend on how ready he or she is for the message. You can increase this “readiness” by understanding different styles of communication and tailoring messages appropriately.

Good Things Come in Fours

Numerous researchers have developed theories that classify people by their different communication styles. You may have run across thinking that categorizes people as, for example, different kinds of colours, animals or birds. Each of these concepts has its own unique features and interpretations, but all are based on the following assumptions:

• At work, an individual will focus more on either the task at hand or his or her relationships with others (Thinking vs. Feeling);
• An individual will also have a tendency to either control a situation or let the situation unfold on its own (Controlling vs. Easygoing);
• The natural reaction for an individual is to focus on one of the above combinations, and that focus will be consistent over time.

Four combinations of characteristics stem from these assumptions:

1. Thinking/Controlling: A person with this orientation is known in one model as a Driver. Stereotypically, Drivers are focused on results and make quick decisions. “Get to the point” and “don’t waste my time” are their common messages.
2. Thinking/Easygoing: This person has an Analytical communication style and focuses more on the details of a situation than on the results. The Analytical person needs time to make a decision, because he wants to be sure that all options have been explored.
3. Feeling/Controlling: This combination creates the Expressive communication style. Such people tend to shun the details in favour of the “big picture” or future possibilities. Their communication style is strong, like that of Drivers, but less directed.
4. Feeling/Easygoing: This last combination produces the Amiable communicator, a very friendly person who has a difficult time being assertive. These people are most concerned with their relationships with those around them and tend to value trust more strongly than the other types do.

Strong Caveat: It’s dangerous to assume that people are as easy to figure out as this, but we do all tend toward one group. There are some important communication needs to consider in order to tailor a message to each of these groups.

Attention, Please!

We have all delivered a message that didn’t seem to arrive, whether the listener had a glazed look and followed up with, “What were you saying?” or remained silent, giving a false impression of comprehension. Distractions loom everywhere, and many are beyond our control. We cannot, for example, control the emotional distraction experienced by the employee who has come to work after having a fight with his spouse, but we can tailor a message so that it is well received by each of our communication types. A listener who is communicated to in a style other than his “preferred” method will become distracted by questions that come to mind during the interaction.

Imagine a foreman telling employees that the company is implementing a new process to decrease work in progress. Based on their preferred communication styles, different employees will have mental slips like this:

• A Driver will think, “How does this affect me?”
• The Analytical person will ponder, “Did they think to include an analysis of X because that is sure to affect the outcome in some interesting way?”
• The Expressive will be saying, “Wow, how will this affect our operations in the West? And in Asia? Should we be rolling this out across the organization?”
• The Amiable person is concerned with: “Why is he being so direct? Is he mad at me?”

Left unanswered, concerns such as these, which stem from varied communication needs, will reduce the ability of the receiver to actually hear the message. Controlling the “beginning” of the communication, as shown below, can eliminate these potential distractions:

• Driver version: “I want to tell you about the new system we are implementing to decrease work in progress.”
• Analytical version: “As you know, reducing work in progress is something that we have been looking at for a while. We’ve looked at a number of different approaches, and think we’ve come up with a change to the system that will give us the results we need. Let me tell you about it.”
• Expressive version: “Consistent with our overriding goal to create a best-of-breed operation, we are implementing a system to reduce work in progress. It is very exciting; here is what it involves.”
• Amiable: “How was your weekend?”

Note: Amiables do need a certain amount of small talk to be ready for a message. This can certainly be deferred if there isn’t time by saying, “I would really like to hear about your ski trip, but we will have to do that later. I need to let you know about a new process…”

Again, we can only control so much in communicating with and influencing others. One of the things that we can proactively change is how we prepare another person for a message based on their communication style. This demands gaining an appreciation of how they engage with others, and adapting to the needs of their dominant communication style. Any change that we can make in our approach can increase the effectiveness of information sharing, which can help deliver competitive advantage through the supply chain.