Possessing a strong ability to clearly and concisely communicate with your coworkers is essential to success in a market defined by cooperation. Whether you receive a promotion, pay raise, or merely acknowledgements for a hard day’s labor could all depend on how effectively you’re communicating, especially when it comes to interacting with your superiors. Still, many struggle when it comes to understanding just how fundamentally their communication style effects their performance.
Here’s a breakdown of how your communication style effects your performance in life, and how you can tap into your inner charisma to redefine your personal, social, and business lives.
The four communication styles
There are predominately four major communication styles that you and everyone you know adopts on a daily basis. The first communication style, functional communication, is centered around practicality and getting things done. This style of communicator is often immensely detail-oriented to the point where they keep a daily journal or log of their activities, and likely always feel the need to be in-the-know.
Functional styles are incredibly productive, so you’re probably accomplishing a lot at the office, but oftentimes lack flexibility and can be draining to others. Functional types also sometimes accidentally become overbearing, so it’s worth reviewing how to avoid being bossy if this is you. The analytical style of communication is similar to the functional one, but deeply analytical workers are likely to be data-driven number-crunchers.
Those who possess an analytical style of communication love charts, graphs, and data sheets. They’ll often present their findings to their peers or superiors with accompanying information, and think communication centered around facts and data is the most efficient. Analytical communicators are likely excelling in positions where they have to sort through huge swathes of information, but oftentimes struggle to effectively connect with their coworkers.
In an effort to avoid being seen as a literal robot, analytical communicators should take a few lessons from the next type of communication, the personal style.
Finding the best match
To find the best matchup of communication styles, juxtapose the personal style versus the analytical one. Personal communicators are warm, charismatic, and friendly; in short, they’re beloved by most of their peers. Personal communicators, like those working at online lenders in Ohio, understand that warm language and emotional resonance is crucial towards empathetic and effective communication. They sometimes get bogged down in the details, however, meaning they need some help from their analytical and functional counterparts to be truly effective workers.
The final form of communication, the intuitive style, is defined by getting straight to the point. This type of communicator often intuits the smaller details and thus gets straight to the point, jumping right to the heart of the issue in an impatient manner. Effective communication techniques remind us that intuitive communicators are often great for expediting meetings, but oftentimes can be seen as blunt and a pit obsessed with getting right to the juicy details. Nobody relies on one pure style of communication – sometimes, we have to be cold, calculating analytical machines, whereas other times we find it imperative to be personal and more heartfelt. Relying too much on any one style likely adversely impacts your performance at work; if anything, we all need a little bit of every strategy in our arsenal to succeed as effective communicators. Cutting through the noise and delivering vital information in a timely and coherent manner is never easy, but by understanding which style you gravitate more towards you can try to mitigate your weaknesses while bolstering your strengths. Keep committed to honing your communication style, and you’ll see your performance improving in no time.