Does Your Communication Style Handicap
Your Team?
By Dianna Booher

Delayed on a recent trip and sitting in an airline club for a few hours, I overheard this conversation between three thirty-something travelers. Amy, Jeanne, and Bill all arrived at the club together, piled their luggage in the chairs across from me, and began to unpack their laptops.

Bill offers to go out to buy hamburgers for all three. While he’s gone, Amy and Jeanne discuss a customer presentation they’ve evidently just delivered in Chicago. Amy says to Jeanne, “I hate it when he critiques my presentations. He does that all the time. My slides. The structure. I don’t think he’s all that good himself. I thought I did fine today.”

“Yeah, you did great,” Jeanne responds.

Amy leaves to go get a cup of coffee and find a place to charge her cell phone. Bill returns with the hamburgers and joins Jeanne. They unwrap their burgers and start eating. Bill gets interrupted immediately by a cell phone call. When he finishes the conversation, Jeanne asks, “Was that about the job? Have you decided who’s going to get the promotion?”

“Yeah. Steve. I’m going to announce it on Monday. He did a fabulous job today in the meeting. We’re sure to win that contract.”

“Amy doesn’t like it when you critique her on her presentations,” Jeanne says. “She’s intimidated.”

“That’s too bad. She could be so much better—if she got some help with those skills.”

Jeanne nodded agreement and their conversation moved on to other topics before Amy rejoined them.

Sometimes people keep their conversations purposely vague to avoid conflict or hurt feelings. If someone asks, “Hey, how do you like my new office?” you’re not likely to say, “If I had to look at this color paint all day, it’d make me puke.”

Families are no different. They often value polite conversation during a holiday weekend over direct discussion of serious issues. Some couples land in divorce court because neither can discuss straightforward feelings for fear of defensiveness from their spouse. The longing for harmony outweighs the importance of honesty.

To some extent, tact and evasion make civilization and camaraderie possible. But purposeful evasion as a rule, over time—where harmony is valued above honest communication—destroys trust, erodes morale, and lowers productivity in the workplace.

Six Communication Styles That Create Either Paranoia or Productivity

Leaders typically fall into one of six patterns of communicating, and that pattern largely contributes to the communication climate of the whole team. Some styles are far more effective than others.

1. Give and Let Live. Leaders who use this style send out lots of information in all directions to everybody in the organization—regardless of whether it’s tailored, relevant, or applicable to others’ interests or needs. Their mindset: I’ve done my job in sending the information—let them figure out if they want to know what it all means.



2. Sell and Compel. Leaders who use this approach identify a few key themes, sell their point of view, and compel others to see the wisdom of their strategies and buy in to their goals.



3. Align and Redefine. These leaders listen for misunderstandings, continue to correct those who get “out of line,” and redefine their goals.They rally the troops and ask them to “align” around those few core issues.



4. Reply and Deny. For the most part, these leaders play hide and seek and are seldom seen by rank-and-file employees and customers. They listen to the grapevine for questions, concerns, or complaints and then either reply and either confirm or deny rumors.



5. Control and Scold. Leaders who use this approach withhold information in an attempt to control what happens. They scold employees, suppliers, and strategic partners, causing them to behave like dysfunctional family members. People pout, become jealous, backstab, become territorial, lie, tattle, play favorites, argue, withdraw, and generally work against each other.



6. Share and Compare. Leaders with this mindset communicate information and their conclusions drawn about that information: their vision, goals, strategies, and initiatives. They ask for and listen to input from others about before setting all decisions, policies, and plans in stone. Then they keep their ears to the ground for necessary course corrections as new information, better ideas, and varied viewpoints surface. They make us much effort to hear as to be heard, and they encourage other people to talk to each other about best practices.

Any one of the first five styles may limit a leader’s effectiveness and people’s productivity. Take a culture that values harmony above all else, …stir in an ineffective communication style of leaders, … and you have a recipe for dysfunction, desperation, and duplicity. By contrast, direct communication embraces rather than evades the truth, involves clear words, and focuses on the facts. That kind of communication increases productivity while eliminating the paranoia that vexes and perplexes many people.

ARTICLE TAGLINE FOR DIANNA BOOHER
763 words
Author of 42 books (Simon & Schuster/Pocket, Warner, and McGraw-Hill), Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE, delivers keynotes, breakout sessions, and training on communication and life-balance issues. Her latest books: Speak with Confidence®, Your Signature Life®, Your Signature Work®, E-Writing, and Communicate with Confidence®. For more information on Dianna and her programs, visit www.diannabooher.com or contact her firm, Booher Consultants, Inc., at 800-342-6621

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