Examining Varying Communication Preferences
Communication is a critical component of everything we do in the workplace. Whether you are collaborating with teams, delegating to coworkers, or sharing reports and progress, effective communication has a profound influence on the culture and productivity of your organization.
There are varying communication preferences within any workplace, and knowing your own, as well as the preference of your co-workers, can improve interpersonal skills, build trust, and promote teamwork. Let’s take a closer look at three important components of effective communication and how understanding communication preferences within the organization will build stronger relationships.
What are 3 Important Components of Effective Communication?
Team members in an organization must rely on each other and be able to hold each other accountable. The culture of any company will ultimately impact its bottom line. Effective communication reduces confusion, provides direction, and decreases any conflict. Three important components of effective communication in a successful organization are adaptation, connection, and alignment.
Adaptation
The business environment is constantly changing and often feels like a constant struggle. It is crucial to be able to adapt and deal with workplace changes in a positive manner. Adaptability allows individuals to demonstrate teamwork. Teams are made up of people with different personalities, as well as skills and experiences. This makes it crucial to be open to new and different ideas, and provide support when priorities shift.
Connection
Individuals must be connected in order to thrive in the workplace. Connection keeps people engaged in their work and gives them a sense of belonging. Staying connected allows for the exchange of ideas, the building of relationships, and the strengthening of the organization. It is crucial to productivity and efficiency in the workplace. Connectedness keeps everyone in the organization aligned with the company’s values and mission. They care about the company’s success.
Alignment
Organizational alignment allows its members to work together to achieve common goals. It is a powerful way to promote a positive company culture. An aligned workplace means that the how and why things are done in an organization are aligned, or highly attuned, with what needs to get done from a strategy perspective. When an organization achieves alignment, everyone becomes interdependent and operates with a unified and harmonious mindset.
What is a Communication Preference?
Effective communication that incorporates these valuable components of adaptation, connection, and alignment streamlines productivity in the workplace. Employees are happier and feel supported. This keeps deadlines met and workers focused on their workload. When everyone feels comfortable voicing their opinions and ideas, everyone feels valued and teamwork is evident.
In order to optimize communication in the organization, business professionals must recognize that there are varying communication preferences in the workplace. Understanding the characteristics and tendencies of different communication preferences can help us to effectively interact with someone who has a different preference. Effective communicators have the ability to understand which preference is best for a given situation and adjust their communication accordingly.
It is important for individuals to be honest with themselves about how they communicate. A self-assessment can be the first step to embracing the necessary change. Misunderstandings and miscommunications are a natural part of human interactions, however, gaining a better understanding of how you communicate allows open, productive, and professional conversations to take place.
Examining Communication Preferences with Inter Face Methods
Inter Face Methods™ is a tool to enhance communications with anyone in your network. Individuals learn to better communicate with and influence others. When using the tool with others, improves our ability to connect and collaborate. Inter Face Methods Learning eXcelerator™ provides a quick, easy compelling experience to enhance inclusion, collaboration, influence, and productivity. It offers participants the ability to learn about each other’s communication methods while teaching strategies to adapt, influence, and include. The result is team connectivity that builds the ability to solve problems together and increase productivity. Inclusion is enhanced when everyone on the team is able to hear each other’s voices, build communication skills, increase retention, and build more collaborative solutions.
The process starts with a 15-minute online survey. Then a personalized Communication Preferences Report is provided. When participating in the team connectivity process, the members gain access to the Interactive Learning Hub which provides self-guided skills development content that includes exercises, videos, and Leader’s Facilitation Guides within 8 compelling modules. The Inter Face Method™ tool provides behavioral feedback to participants about their preferred communication method, how to spot the method preferred by someone they work with, and how to adapt to other methods. Most importantly, they learn the skills to put aside the judgment and embrace the difference through awareness, empathy, and connectivity, laying a powerful groundwork for inclusion. The Learning Hub has online development modules designed to independently deepen the effectiveness of their ability to build relationships, engage in work and enhance connectivity across their teams.
Each individual’s comprehensive feedback report offers behavioral feedback and adaptive strategies for three methods: working, thinking, and influencing.
Method of Working: Changing Leaf or Evergreen
The Changing Leaf method of working is big-picture, visionary, strategic, and outcome focused. The Evergreen method of working is detail-focused, process-oriented, and execution-focused. Both are needed in day-to-day work. When our method of working is different, we all bring the necessary skills to the challenge at hand, enabling better solutions. If we embrace the differences, we expand the team’s ability to develop solutions together. The Team eXcelerator™ offers tangible strategies for the adaptation of methods.
Method of Thinking: Tree or Forest
The tree method of thinking is to internally process things before speaking about them once the idea is formed. The Forest method of thinking is to externally process things out loud with others from the beginning and to form the idea. Both offer strengths to a team when figuring out a problem together, but sometimes the difference can keep us from really trying to have everyone involved in the collaboration. The Team eXcelerator™ enables full collaboration across different methods of thinking about challenges.
Method of Influencing: DIrect or Cautious
The Direct method of influencing is forthcoming and to the point. The Cautious method of influencing is diplomatic and well-worded. This is the most important method to adapt to package the message in the words that will be best received by the person to whom the message is directed. The Team eXcelerator™ enables great communication, influence, and collaboration across teams, enabling each team member to contribute effectively
Inter Face Method™ is different from other tools. It provides behavioral feedback and enables the adaptation of behavior for greater connectivity. It is designed to complement the other tools your organization may already be using to build on your efforts, provide continuity and enable teams to achieve a higher level of performance.
EDGES™ strives to change lives, transform companies, and impact society in ways that produce a commitment to remove bias and ensure inclusion, dignity, and respect. They are business professionals, not life-long consultants. They have all held real jobs with responsibility for delivering business results, managing large-scale strategy and wide-scope change, while shaping culture to be more aligned with the organization’s goals. They tailor their proven tools, processes, and intellectual capacity to meet any organization’s unique needs, leaving them with a successful model for success.
EDGES™ ultimate goal is to provide individuals and organizations the tools needed to create a workplace environment rich in adaptation, connection, and alignment. We believe your team should be better as a result of working with us. If you are ready to strengthen communication in your organization or would like more information about the Inter Face Method™ tool, go to interfacemethods.com.