The key to communicating better with your colleagues and peers is first understanding your own unique communication style.
Understanding how you apply your unique communications skills and choosing to dial up or down different aspects of your communication style to adapt to the situation and the people you meet is key to communicating effectively.
Unfortunately, many people are not aware of their own – let alone of their colleagues and peers communication style. Or – they choose to overlook it and apply a ´one fits all strategy´ which sooner rather than later is going to cause a lot of misunderstandings, tensions and probably also conflicts.
Here are 5 key dimensions to consider to understand your own and others´ unique communications style:
Pic: You X Ventures, unsplash.com
Going into a meeting to discuss an important topic I prefer:
Rate yourself on the scale from 1 to 10 for each dimension
1: Having a clear agenda
10: Being creative and see whatever comes up in the meeting
1: Having time to socialise
10: Getting straight to agenda and try to cover it as quickly as possible
1: Reflecting on the bigger picture before any problem solving
10: Going straight into solving the problem
1: Making sure everyone gets involved in the discussion
10: Just doing whatever works – it doesn’t matter who speaks or not
1: Talking purely about the practical aspects related to a topic
10: Talking mostly on the vision and bigger picture related to a topic
For reflection:
How would you rate yourself on average for each of these dimensions?
What does your scoring say about your unique communication style?
How would you rate members of your team or core group of colleagues and peers on these dimensions?
And finally:
How can you improve your communication by adapting more and better to the the unique communication style of your colleagues and peers?
When differences in teams are not understood, they are often seen as problems which can easily lead to misunderstandings, poor communication and even conflicts.
When you understand each team member´s uniquely different communication styles and preferences, you will learn how to communicate and collaborate better and establish the foundation for designing thriving teams that have a big impact.
That’s why this work is so important. It’s not just about communication effectiveness.
It’s about work and collaboration effectiveness. And leadership effectiveness.
In fact, many leadership researcher and thinkers argue that 80% of leadership is communication.
Therefore, if you are ambitious with your work, understanding your own and your peers unique communication style is probably the most significant step you can take to evolve your leadership and your work.
We hope that these exercises gives you insight to help you understand differences in your team and some steps you can take to adapt to the different styles of your colleagues and peers.
Want to learn more?
Join our line online course ´Communicating better in the team´.
https://coachingpartner.net/cp/event/communicating-better-team/?instance_id=210