Wizardry of Adapting to Communication Preferences

🌟 Become a Communication Wizard! 🌟

🏫Mastering different styles and preferences is key to excelling in your role and building strong relationships with teammates.
📖Understand learning styles (visual, auditory, reading, kinesthetic) to tailor your communication.
⚒️Recognize work styles (independent, cooperative, in-between) to support colleagues effectively.
🧑🏽‍💻Consider work preferences (empathetic, technician, detail-oriented, big picture) to adapt your approach.
🫂Embrace adaptability and excel in your role by understanding and adapting to various preferences.

Communication is more than getting work done; it's about building connections.

🧙🏽‍♂️Level up your communication skills and become a wizard in your new role! ✨

#CommunicationWizard #Adaptability #ProfessionalSkills

Transcript:

 Welcome back Practicing Leaders. Today we're gonna be diving into how do you master your role, and specifically how do we drive into being better at communicating? It's not just about getting your work done, it's also about building strong relationship with your teammates. By doing so, you can excel in communications today, in this this week's podcast.

We'll be exploring the concept of how communication will differ between different styles and preferences, and how do you become a wizard and your new role by mastering these different styles and knowing how to communicate with these different styles. This is The Practicing Leader Podcast. I'm your host, Parul Bhargava, and let's discuss.

Now we're gonna go ahead and dive into different communication styles and preferences by understanding the different communication styles and and preferences. You'll get a better idea of exactly how do you get your message to land by making sure you're structuring your communication to them in a way that is most akin to what they're used to hearing.

Just like some of you're listening to this as a podcast, while others are watching this on YouTube, depending on how you learn, will have an impact on which medium you're going to choose accordingly. How you communicate with your coworkers will also play a part the same way. One axis you can look at is learning styles.

For example, if you're a visual person, You like to, you like looking at graphics, you like looking at flow charts. You like looking at things laid out visually for you, or using video as a way to be able to communicate to you. Similarly, if you have something that is more auditory, this would be someone that likes to listen to information.

They like being taught something. This is something that it will be, you can show up as they will talk about things, but that doesn't sound right to me versus a visual person that I might say I don't see it the same way you do. This where the vocabulary that is chosen actually shows what kind of learning style they tend towards.

Another one to consider is reading. Some people just say, you know what, could you just gimme the manual? I just wanna go read it and be able to figure it out myself. I'm just gonna read it through everything and look at all the documentation and go through everything that that is available. And lastly is kinesthetic.

These are folks that are like, you know what? That's cool and all. Could you just give me, just gimme access. I'm just gonna go play around. I'm gonna go muck around with it and figure out exactly how to do it myself. That way I can understand how it works. Each of these will have different vocabulary that'll be chosen.

Be observant. As you're speaking with your teammates, what language do they choose? That way you can say, you know what, if a person hears. I wanna describe this to you, and they're a visual person. If you're not using a whiteboard or you're not using visuals to be able to describe something to them, you're likely gonna miss the mark.

It'll be a little bit more challenging to get the point across. Now, let's go ahead and jump into work styles. When I think about work styles, and you think about it in terms of how does a person enjoy doing their day-to-day work, and this can be something as simple as someone that wants to be a little bit more independent, somebody that wants to be.

Do a more cooperative method or something that's in between the individual that wants to be a little bit more independent. They prefer to deep dive into a problem. They like to go in and figure out how they're gonna get it done. They go and spend their time going and figuring it out all on their own.

One of the downsides of that approach is that you also don't realize. When to ask for help or when to actually pick your head up to be able to figure out, do I need assistance here? Be able to identify these individuals to figure out how a person is gonna be working that way is gonna be important because that individual is likely not going to do as well in a group setting, and you're not gonna be able to get necessarily immediate results.

Don't worry when they go and go tackle the problem, they'll go off and go solve the problem. They'll come back to you. On the other side is someone that's more cooperative. They prefer to have working sessions. They like to hash things out together as a group. They like working things out and be able to figure things out as a group to able to figure out what exactly is the right way to approach this.

One of the downsides of this approach is sometimes I, for those individuals ideas, don't spring as naturally without the back and forth of a team setting. And these individuals are great at building consensus, great at working with others. They like being able to have that, that conversation regularly, and then they're able to get the job done.

But it's something that they wanna make sure they also have that sufficient social time as well to be able to socialize both the idea as well as to be able to speak with other people as well. And then you've got the one that's right in between, I call the in-betweener. Go figure. You prefer to take those ideas that you've come up with, go to the group, figure out does this idea make sense?

And make sure that you've come up with a good idea or concept before you take it back to your desk. Go work on things. And the thing that can, as a downside to that is, You may not realize how much time is passed between check-ins with your group to be able to identify, have I spent too much time trying to solve this problem on on my own?

This is where each of these preferences or work styles come together. You have to figure out how does each person work and where exactly are you gonna be able to achieve the best results, both from yourself? When you think about what kind of worker are you, as well as when you work with others, what exactly is gonna make them be most productive and how do you support them in doing that?

Next, let's jump into work preferences. This is slightly different than whether you'd like to work. Alone or work in a group. Now, this is about kind of the manner in which you go tackle problems. This could be somebody that's more of em empathetic, somebody that's more of a technician, somebody that actually gets driving into details versus someone that like looking at the big picture.

Each of these has slightly different fo focal points about where they bring their strengths. Let's say that you're an empath or you're empathetic. Your focus tends to be on emotional intelligence, and it does wonders in building relations, improving team morale when and here's the thing. If you see somebody has having an off day, you see it and you give them grace, you see it and you wanna find out, Hey, how can I help you?

How can I assist you in whatever it is? That's it is bothering, bothering you. The counter to that is that you may not realize that that cost of being supportive may actually delay some of your own deliverables, and this is where you have to balance between the need or want to be empathetic to others versus the day-to-day deliverables that you're accountable for Now instead of it.

Empath. Let's say you're a technician. You love to dive into problems and gosh darn it, you'll figure it out. You'll go down to the depths of wherever you need to go to and be able to go solve the problem and you will go figure it out. Now, the counter of that is a place where it becomes a success inhibitor is, You may not realize that one mind does not have all the solutions, and this is the old adage of when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

This is where you need to make sure that you're, you are collecting information about how to best solve problems as ways to make sure that you're only ca not carrying around a hammer. The next one is about whether or not you're detail oriented. Let's say you are, you know, you have to get line things to the nth degree.

You make sure no rock remains unturned. You may not see the perfect becoming the enemy of the good. This is where trying to remind yourself that incremental progress is still progress. And finally, the big picture person, you can see where everything is gonna head. You're gonna see exactly how these large scale things you're trying to do are going to actually be rolled out and how those changes are gonna be put together.

You also may not realize that complexity of the steps it takes to travel miles. One thing I'll say is nobody is just one thing. Nobody only has one communication style and nobody has just one learning style. All of us have preferences about ways that we do things, and all of us need to excel in being able to do all of these things at different times in our careers.

The way you'll be able to excel in your role, I. Will be by how you adapt to each of these preferences, because some days you may need to be super detail oriented while another day you may need to be able deep dive into something very, very technical. Or sometimes you might need to be sometimes big picture and be able to see how are we gonna deliver the big thing next time.

Technical in this context is not, Hey, I need you to go learn about technology. It could be about any sort of domain space whatsoever. It could be about medicine, it could be about physical therapy, it could be about software engineering. It could be about anything. Your ability to adapt to any of these. Is going to allow you to be able to excel in role period as you're talking to your peers, as you're learning more about yourself, about how you work and what your preferences are.

Understanding where you stand and understand where your teammates stand will allow you to build stronger relationships and also allow you to learn how to communicate more effectively with them. This will allow you to be able to deliver your message succinctly and to the point as you learn these different preferences, and as you learn to adapt to each of these.

You yourself will come a communication wizard. If you have any questions about this podcast or any other, you can always feel free to go ahead and drop me a line. You can go ahead and gimme a call at (206) 651-4312 and leave a message. Or alternatively, you can send me an email at [email protected].

I'll go ahead and weave it into whatever conversation we have in the next podcast and make sure that your question gets answered. This has been the Practical Leader Podcast. My name is Parul Bhargava, and I'll talk to you next week.