Do you Coccoon?

The skill of skills for anyone is the spotlight is ‘adaptation’ - the ability to respond to your audience and adapt your communication style to accommodate theirs. Generating business and leading your company is easier when you can craft concise and compelling messages adaptable to any personality, handle challenging Q&A sessions, and master the art of active listening. The first step is to identify your own communication style.

The Final Flourish

You've overcome your nerves, you've developed your physical and vocal delivery skills, you've harnessed rhetoric and mastered the art of creating content that achieves your specific objectives. You can finally say you are at a place where you can present your ideas in an articulate and effective manner with conviction…. And then… …you are presented with a ‘difficult’ audience, people who seem to resist your ideas, they ask difficult questions and don't think the way you do.

What went wrong? Well, it could be a mismatch in ‘communication styles.'

It’s important to understand that different people communicate in different ways; some are more emotional and others more analytical, some see the big picture whilst others focus on the details. By identifying your personal communication style and then learning to adapt to other styles you will be able to deal with negative reactions and communicate your ideas to anyone.

Problems can arise when we don't understand that we have a particular communication style, and that it might not be the same as everyone else’s. I witnessed a speaker lose his temper in a Q&A session because he felt belittled by an audience member who was asking what 'the point' of his presentation was. The audience member genuinely seemed to be trying to assimilate the presentation. It turned out that the problem was that the speaker was deep in the detail, but the audience member couldn't understand the detail without knowing the big picture.

The conflict was actually between their communication styles. It is important to understand that there are different communication styles and that sometimes interactions that might seem negative or hostile are actually the result of a communication mismatch.

There are various schemas of proposed communications styles but the one I find most useful is Mark Murphy’s: it identifies four main styles, defined by two binaries. The four styles are; Analytical, Intuitive, Functional, and Personal.

Murphy states that there are 2 main ‘philosophical’ differences between different types of communicators:

How much you communicate with emotion versus data

How much you communicate in a linear versus freeform manner

These communication styles exist on a spectrum, so you are rarely 100% one style. You may also switch between styles depending on the situation.

Analytical

An analytical communicator favours data and hard numbers.

They want quantifiable information and consider emotional statements as vague or irrelevant. Preferring statements such as "this quarter, sales are up 8.2%, and we are going to exceed our projections by 1.4%" rather than "we’re smashing sales this month!"It is important to have specific and comprehensive data when communicating with this communication style. Present the numbers before making your request/suggestion.

Positives: The analytical communicator is good at looking at issues logically without emotional influence. If an analytical communicator is not performing well, showing them data that illustrates the problem will likely be accepted as proof they need to improve that area of their work. (This approach could be crushing to a personal communicator)

Negatives: a lack of emotion can make analytical communicators seem dismissive and create friction with colleagues. The amount of time spent analysing, calculating, and checking details can make them slow to respond, causing problems with time sensitive opportunities.

Intuitive

An intuitive communicator engages with the wider perspective.

This person will not want to work through details in order to progress in a linear fashion to the outcome, instead they will believe that if the bigger picture works, then by implication, small problems will be resolvable. By seeing how everything fits together the intuitive thinker often problem-solves with ease.When you communicate with this person start with overview then detail, "This project will use a new algorithm to target potential customers with more precision!" rather than "First, we will A/B test the new algorithm, then develop three levels of tailored content, then we will deploy the project, then use these metrics to measure our success."

Positives: They quickly understand ideas and the implications of those ideas, and are just as quick to find solutions to possible challenges. They come up with out-of-the-box ideas and enjoy challenging themselves and others.

Negatives: can be impatient and impatience can lead to mistakes. Intuitive thinkers want to skip the boring details but, in the process, they risk missing crucial information. They can be easily aggravated by communicators who need to explain ideas or projects step-by-step, like functional communicators.

Functional

The functional communicator prefers to be walked through the steps of the process to conclusion, thus neatly tying it all together.

They are detail-oriented, good at understanding which processes will be the most helpful to ensure success, and they can be trusted to create functional timelines, allocate tasks, and run projects. Preparation is key when dealing with a functional thinker/communicator; avoid getting caught up with metrics, feelings or the big picture and instead come with the practicalities laid out and ready to inspect."We want you to improve the user manual. Can you write the outline, consult with the developers, hire a technical writer, and edit the finished product." will serve you much better than "The user manual could use some improvement? Can you take care of that?"

Positives: their detail-oriented mind won’t miss any important steps. They have strong focus and an innate understanding of what it will take to accomplish each task.

Negatives: They can get lost in the detail to the extent of not accomplishing the actual goals of the project. They can be seen to be pedantic or problematizers, particularly to the intuitive thinker/communicator.

Personal

The personal communicator prefers to use emotional language and values the human connection.They tend to be diplomatic; helping to solve conflicts and seeking peaceful solutions to inter- and intradepartmental issues.

In presenting to this person don't leave out the emotional component. "I think our customer success team is feeling burnt out, and their success rate is dropping. Please explore this further, and see if they are feeling like they need more support." Rather than "Customer satisfaction scores have dropped 11% and we’re not going to meet our targets. We need to find and fix this problem now."

Positives: A personal communicator will effortlessly build deep bonds within their team. They build cohesion and often step into a problem-solving role when others struggle.

Negatives: an overly emotional approach can be off-putting for others. The binary reason/emotion might lead others to dismiss the emotional person as lacking credibility.

What does this mean for you?

People highly value authenticity in the delivery of presentations and speeches. Authenticity, clarity and conviction can only come from a speaker finding ‘their voice.'

However, as you become more confident in your presenting, you can try adapting your content so that it will suit all communication styles. This means Including some data for the analytical, some vision for the intuitive, some day-to-day practicalities for the functional, and some relevance and motivation for the personal.

Work out how to frame your key ideas for each style:

If you are all about the data then try to think of the ‘story’ the big picture for an ‘Intuitive’ person – often intuitive people are the big bosses, and are more interested in knowing that it will work rather than how it will work.

Try to anticipate what steps of the process might worry a ‘functional’ person: are there tricky areas, or issues left for others to resolve?

Adaption is most important in Q&A sessions or in discursive spaces after the presentation. Often people ask questions hoping you can translate to their communication style. The question itself may indicate the communication style - so try to answer accordingly.

Analytical: “You say the feedback indicates customers prefer A over B, but to what extent?”
Answer: “The survey had a 75% response rate, and 83% of those said…”

Intuitive: “How is this going to help us improve customer satisfaction?”
Answer: “customers value our speed and attentiveness and this is offset by our slightly higher prices”

Functional: “What parts of the process need to change?”
Answer “there are too many steps in ‘this’ process, streamlining it…”

Personal: “How much more work will this generate?”
Answer: “Although there will be more to do initially, we believe that ultimately this change will positively benefit the workforce”  

When you understand that people might not be asking questions to be difficult but rather because they can’t yet see your ideas from their preferred perspective, you are freed to find a way to connect.