Communications Tendencies

“We take communication for granted because we do it so frequently, but it’s actually a complex process.” – Joseph Sommerville

At some point in your career you’ve probably taken a psychometric test.

Tests like Myers–Briggs measure personality traits, providing insights into a person's strengths, weaknesses, and potential.

Understanding that everyone thinks and operates in different ways is key to understanding how we can work more effectively in teams and adapt our behaviours to become better partners, colleagues and leaders.

Jon Wortmann and Ethan Becker’s book 'Mastering Communication at Work: How to Lead, Manage, and Influence', outlines some of the key characteristics of how people communicate.

Just like we all have personality traits, we also have distinctive characteristics in the way we naturally communicate, what they call Communications Tendencies.

Communications Tendencies can be measured across a series of traits, each trait has a scale, and each of us will naturally fit somewhere along each scale.

You can print this off to use yourself

The Communications Tendencies

Internal - People who process the details inside their own head before communicating. It can make them slow to respond during active conversations as they will not say something unless they have reached a level of certainty.

External - People who talk as they think, processing and editing as the communicate. Some of the things they say in active conversations may not be what they agree with at the end of the process.

Deductive - The point is made at the start and the rest of the communication provides the background

Inductive - The communications start by setting the background and lead up to the concussion.

Talking and Listening are broken out for these traits, because some people will talk with one style and listen with another (more on that later).

Debater - People who are focused on getting the right answer through lively discussions, which can come across as aggressive.

Pleaser - People want others to be comfortable even if it can be at their own expense. Pleasers may be seen as helpful and kind, but they can have difficulty advocating for themselves.

Literal - Using words in their primary meaning, directly and without embellishment.

Metaphorical - Using words in a non-literal sense, including metaphors and smilies, to create a comparison or vivid image. The meaning is symbolic and can be difficult to interpret.

Sticky-brained - People who work best one linear topic at a time and need time to shift onto new topics.

Improvisational - Multitaskers who enjoy bouncing between topics and find it harder to focus on a single topic.

Delivery Tendencies

Slightly different to the Content Tendencies, these are three simple characteristics of how people convey themselves.

Using the Communications Tendencies Worksheet

These are my Communications Tendencies:

You can see that my tendencies land fairly consistently on one side of the scales.

Have a go at placing your own on the blank version of the sheet.

Remember that these are your natural tendencies, not the things you have learned and developed over time.

Next, try placing the tendencies of someone you find easy to work with.

Here are my tendencies against someone I work alongside and communicate very effectively with:

You can see that there’s a lot of similarities in where our tendencies fall on the scales, with only short distances in between.

We can both communicate well, just by following our tendencies with little additional effort needed.

Finally, have a go at adding the tendencies of someone you find difficult to work with. It could be a colleague, but could also be a client or acquaintance.

Here’s someone who I naturally find difficult to communicate with:

They naturally communicate in very different ways to me.

Their tendencies are almost all at the other side of the scales to mine, and the main thing to notice is how much some of those tendencies differ (the length of the bars).

Things get particularly hard anywhere that our tendencies are on opposite sides of the scale and a long way apart.

When communicating with someone with different tendencies, you need to actively adjust your communications style.

Just looking at this example, the Internal-External mismatch initially caused issues. My relative quietness in group meetings was interpreted as inattention. To adapt, and reduce the potential for conflict, I had to find ways to mirror their style more closely. I needed to talk more in these meetings, and a good solution was to become the person that always ran the agendas. It meant I was talking throughout even though I was still contributing to the meat of the discussion to the same extent.

It also had the benefit of making sure that their tendency towards improvisation did not take the meetings away from the core agenda.

This person is a also good example that Deductive-Inductive talking and listening can vary. They talked Inductively, which led me to believe I needed to communicate with them that way, but they actually listened Deductively, so in trying to adjust my communications style, I was accidentally causing difficulties. The learning here is you can't go too wrong if you always talk Deductively.

Which leads on to...

How to Avoid Tendency Clashes

"Communication is not about speaking what we think. Communication is about ensuring others hear what we mean." - Simon Sinek

Internal - External

This clash can happen frequently, and for both sides, between individuals and sometimes whole groups such as commercial and operational teams.

If you are Internal talking to External communicators:

• Find ways to talk more like preparing talking points ahead of meetings, or running the agenda, so you can match their tendency.
  

• Find ways to frame how much time they have to talk through their ideas if you also need to bring their communication style closer to yours.

If you are External talking to Internal communicators:

• Frequently stop to ask for feedback during middle and at the end of meetings, and allow time for the response.
  

• Add a process of collecting written ideas at the start of a meeting to enable Internal communicators to join the sharing of ideas (like a well-run retrospective meeting).

There can even be issues when Internals talk to Internals (not enough content is discussed), or External to External (too much communication can overwhelm the ability to make good decisions) so managing meetings and agendas around the communications tendencies of the people involved is key.

Deductive - Inductive

Inductive people don’t mind communicating in a Deductive way with the point made early, but Deductive listeners can find listening to long explanations extremely taxing and that’s where the clash can occur. If in doubt, communicate deductively. Meeting agendas are always deductive and always start client meetings this way to avoid a potential clash. You can always adapt later if you realise that the client is an Inductive listener.

Debater - Pleaser

Debaters can overwhelm Pleasers leading to significant misunderstandings. Debate can easily feel like confrontation or conflict to Pleasers, causing them to withdraw from the conversation. It often leaves Pleasers saying ‘yes’ to things that they really don’t agree with so there’s a very real danger of two people walking out of a meeting with completely different ideas on what has been agreed.

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” - George Bernard Shaw

If you are talking to a Pleaser:

• Before you start with the agenda, make room for more informal conversation to establish a more open communication.

  
  

• Don’t just be happy with a ‘yes’, ask follow-up questions to make sure you really understand what they think about the idea.

If you are talking to a Debater:

• Do not fear offending a Debater, so push back and debate. Debaters may seem confrontational, but they are usually focused on getting a decision right, rather than how they get to that answer, and they enjoy the process.

  
  

• If there is a group of Debaters, make sure that they don’t overwhelm the meeting and lose slight of the agenda.

Literal - Metaphorical

A Literal person can ask for something to be done at a certain time only for a Metaphorical person to walk away thinking it was not a priority and the deadline not essential.

A Metaphorical person can ask for something to be done with the Literal person following through exactly and not realising that the request was not a priority, or the timelines could be more flexible than was asked.

For both sides the answer is the same: Always summarise and clarify exactly what was agreed, the timelines involved, who is doing what, and what the priorities were, to avoid misunderstandings.

Sticky-Brained - Improvisational

Sticky brained people should run meeting agendas. If you have a bunch of Improvisational people in a room, there’s a real danger that things will not get resolved.

If you are trying to have a creative session, have time to prepare beforehand or allow time at the beginning for people to write their ideas down, to help the Sticky-Brained people add to the creativity.

Delivery Tendencies

For communications speed, volume and quantity always try to match the style of the other person to avoid overwhelming or being overwhelmed. As all Sales people have learned, mirroring these characteristics really helps improve communications.

An additional tip here is if you really want to draw your attention to something important, use the opposite style to your tendency. A quiet person suddenly talking loudly, or a verbose person being incredibly succinct, will draw a lot more focus to your message.

Adapting and Excelling

Being able to communicate successfully is an essential skill in life and in any business.

"To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others." - Anthony Robbins

Remember that these are only your tendencies.

They are the ways you naturally default to, particularly under stress.

But you can’t stick with your tendencies and expect others to adapt to you or interpret your meanings successfully.

You can only fully control your side of a communication, so the onus is on your to make the changes to enable better communications.

You have to adapt your communications to the tendencies of person you are talking to, so that your message will land better and to avoid clashes.

So always strive to become a better communicator.

Being able to effectively translate and adjust to the way you communicate, is one of the most powerful routes to building trusted relationships and achieving success.

“Communication works for those who work at it.” - John Powell