Drama Queens, Raging Bulls, Submissive Spaniels, Petty Pickers - What Are They and Which One Are You?

8 March 2010, 12:23PM
Sandy Geyer

The impact of personality in communication cannot be ignored.

It is extremely helpful to develop a technique that will give you a quick understanding of what your communicating partner sees as important; what his or her `hot buttons’ are, so that you can understand what drives their behavior and what they will value as a `win-win’ outcome. To do this you need to:
• Deepen your awareness of the communication styles of those around you
• Understand the logic and drivers behind communication styles.


Personality theory suggests that an individual’s behaviour can more often than not be predictable based on his or her personal strengths and aversions.
People are like thermostats; they are constantly seeking to reach a state of equilibrium or comfort. As soon as another person enters the picture, tension is produced, and each one must re-establish his balance and comfort zone. The challenge for each of us is to determine the adequate amount of tension and stress that will provide the proper balance.

Better communication can be achieved in our personal and professional relationships when we understand the other person and treat them the way they want to be treated.
There are traditionally four `modes’ of behaviour and each of us will exhibit these four to a greater or lesser degree depending on our own make up.

I have worked with behavioural science with tremendous success in many organizations, including my own. Communication training goes a long way towards reducing conflict and staff turnover and enhancing personal confidence, performance and job satisfaction. This kind of training can be greatly underrated though. Many of us believe that because we learned to speak at any early age that we are natural communicators. We are not. You only have to look at the number of separations and divorces in our communities to see evidence of our poor communication skills.

The good news is that communication is a skill that can be learned. It simply comes down to learning the basics. When I profile staff within organisations to align team members, the same question comes up again and again. “Can we profile my partner too?” Once someone understands their own profile they become fascinated with their partner’s as they learn the significance of the 4 behavioural dimensions and how easy they are to understand. Understanding individual differences is the first step to respecting those differences and working with them in place of against them. We are seldom attracted to people who are exactly like us and we therefore have no point of reference from which to understand them and communicate accordingly. Being able to be yourself in a professional and personal relationship is a wonderful thing and having a personal profile assessment can help you to achieve that.
 

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