What are Communication Styles?

Your workplace communication style is the way you share knowledge, receive ideas, and deal with the behavior and emotions of others in the workplace. While entire organizations have a unique communication style that involves how intelligence and information is shared or kept confidential, the focus in this article is on the tendency of individuals to lean toward particular ways of communicating.

Communication styles are marked by emotional intelligence that exists within individuals in parts of the brain that process layers of incoming information. This processing also includes higher-level decisions about how to respond. Although babies have not developed this higher level of decision-making, adults can learn to fine-tune it. These layers include behavior traits and personality characteristics that blend within one person and set us apart from others. This produces unique ways of communicating that can be identified. The style can be identified if you know what to look for in a person (including the self) while speaking, listening, writing, or displaying non-verbal behaviors. After reading both parts of this article, you will be in a better position to identify your style and that of others that you work with, such as steady customers, clients, teammates, supervisees, or managers. Communication skills presented during first-time encounters can also be improved by applying the information in this column.

Outside the workplace, communication and other behavior traits may vary a bit in two different settings. While tendencies are somewhat constant across environments, any major difference is often a matter of how much of a worker's style s/he chooses to reveal through a combination of values, verbal interactions, body language and other non-verbal cues (such as workplace policies) that affect and sometimes drive effective interactions, learning, decisions, problem-solving, sharing, and collaborating. Although some personality traits, like thrill-seeking or avoiding parties, are automatically displayed subconsciously without deep thought, specific behaviors can be consciously flexed or learned to downplay undesirable style tendencies and play-up desired ones.

How Important is It to Recognize Style Differences?

Research shows that effective and appropriate communication is linked to greater organizational productivity, better organizational health, and increased staff satisfaction. That's why it is important to recognize your own style, the style of your organization, and individual styles that are different than your own. Every individual and all organizations have room for growth in communicating more effectively. It calls for a cycle of observation, listening, feedback, education/training, and change management. Recognizing a particular style may take stepping back from an ongoing communication challenge to pinpoint how style comes into play.

Recognizing communication styles can play a huge role in determining workplace success. Understanding and improving communication style and impact, however, is about more than simply making it easier for person A to interact with person B. It requires a here-and-now decision and commitment to communicate in a quality way in every encounter and with every writing opportunity. It plays an important role in building a trusted individual brand and company brand. For example, the style and consistency of signature lines in email and text messages can help to instill trust and show a professional attitude on the part of the writer and the entire organization.

Identifying your own communication style is the first step in helping to recognize the style of others and the style of the organization. It's more than just a style label that is crucial because people show different preferences for:

Recognizing the nuances and differences in style involves emotional intelligence and an open attitude to learn and understand. That leads to an opportunity to flex our own style to meet the preferences of others and the needs of the organization. To flex a style does not require a change of personality, but an understanding of what is needed in each situation to resolve an issue through knowledge shared and received. More information on how to flex will be presented in Part II of this column. For now, let's look at four common styles of communication.

» Read More