Personal Communication Style and How You Can Make It Work for You
Your ability to communicate impacts on every aspect of your job search. You must communicate effectively if you want to be hired-you must be precisely understood by your audience, i.e., the person who interviews you, a potential manager or a C.E.O.
Unfortunately, three times out of four, you'll fail to do your best selling job, to convince the person with whom you're speaking, because you aren't communicating in a manner familiar to them. You'll fail to apply the communication golden rule: "Thou shall communicate with others in the manner through which they best understand." To apply this rule, you must determine their communication style, then deliver your communication to match the style that they understand best.
Communication Styles
People communicate in a vast array of styles. You may not be fully cognizant of these differences because your department or industry was peopled with clones who communicated in much the same way as you.
As a boss, that was your prerogative. You may have preconceptions and prejudices about people who communicate differently. You may distrust people who are glib and facile. You may have had a long-term feud with salespeople or marketing people whom you felt were careless of facts or didn't pay enough attention to details. Or conversely, you may dislike people whom you feel are too concerned with detail and have difficulty communicating the big picture.
No one is going to try to revamp your own personal communication style. That's impossible anyway, since your basic style was probably set before you started school, as was the style of everyone with whom you will come in contact.
To avoid miscommunication, however, you must first understand how you communicate and the way in which your communication style reflects your personality. Next, learn about other styles and how to spot them. Then you will be able to identify potential employers' communication styles so that you can estimate the best way to approach them. Discover better ways to use your communication strengths and to modify those behaviors that can lead to problems with people communicating through other styles. Learn how to sell yourself in ways that are accept able to others and yet compatible with your feelings about yourself. In a nutshell: Don't try to make yourself over. You can't. You have no choice but to retain your own basic communication style. But you can learn how to modify your presentation to match the preferred style of others.
Background of Communications Styles
A number of years ago, Dr. William Marston, a psychologist at Columbia University, studied "normal" behavior in people. He developed a system of identifying behaviors and related communications styles which is especially appropriate for older executives. By studying the way normal people reacted in all kinds of situations, Dr. Marston concluded that two sets of factors interact to determine behavior. The first is related to the environment: people will respond differently in what they perceive to be a favorable environment than they would in an unfavorable environment (and being unemployed is decidedly an unfavorable environment). The second factor is the "style" of reacting in a given environment. People can react in only two ways. They can be active or passive.
The environment can be represented as a continuum, from extremely unfavorable to highly favorable. People's reactions can also be represented as a continuum from highly active to extremely passive.
When these two factors are combined, four basic communications styles result. You can be: active in an unfavorable environment; active in a favorable environment; passive in a favorable environment; or passive in an unfavorable environment.
Basic Behaviors
The upper-left quadrant environment is unfavorable or antagonistic, and the people who perceive themselves to be in that environment are active, Individuals who behave this way work to overcome unfavorable conditions-to win. Their intent is to dominate. This behavior can be referred to as "High D" (for "dominate").
The upper-right quadrant environment is favorable, and some people are active in that environment as well. Their behavior is outgoing, persuasive, gregarious. They love to communicate. They're glib and facile with words. They convince and persuade. Their intent is to "influence," so their behaviors are characterized as "High I."
The lower-right quadrant environment favorable, but the people in this quadrant tend to be passive. They're friendly, but in a low-key way. They prefer to sit back, work quietly but steadily, and provide support. They like to be thought of as steady and reliable-and they communicate in this way. Their intent is to be supportive, and this behavior is, accordingly, called "High S", High S behaviors are "people" oriented, but in a less aggressive way than the High I.
The lower left-hand quadrant is an unfavorable environment in which people choose to respond passively. These people follow the rules and do things right because it keeps them out of trouble. They're very careful about what they say; they're concerned about facts and details. They comply with what is expected of them. This style of behavior is referred to as "High C" behavior, and the intent is to comply.
But you may say, "I behave differently at different times. I can see myself at times in each of those quadrants." Yes, that's true. Everyone has an interesting and different mix of behaviors from all four quadrants. Your ability to use the behaviors of a particular style may be high in one quadrant and very low in another. But for a short period of time, you could behave in the manner characteristic of any quadrant if you find yourself communicating with someone exhibiting the behaviors related to that style.
In any given situation, you will react according to the way you perceive the environment. If you perceive that the environment is unfavorable or antagonistic, and you are generally active in an unfavorable environment, you'll exhibit the characteristics of High D behavior and communicate very aggressively. You may antagonize. If you tend to react passively, though, you may be so low key and unassertive that you fail to make any impression at all. And it is always important to remember that while you're reacting, other people are also reacting and communicating according to their perceptions of the environment.
As an unemployed person, you may fail to present yourself at your best because you may perceive that you are in an unfavorable environment, and communicate accordingly. But what if an interviewer perceives that the same set of cues is a favorable environment? Your communication approach will be pitched to the wrong environment and may come across either as too harsh or as over-cautious, and turn the interviewer off.
Spend enough time observing the interview situation to make a preliminary judgment about the interviewer's view of the environment and the style in which he or she is communicating. Then, you can match your presentation to that style. Most of the time, you will be right. But should you have misjudged, you can always shift your style later.
