Overcoming Communication Challenges

We’ve all been there. You and a co-worker, boss, or client just can’t seem to get on the same page. There are misunderstandings, frustrations, disconnects, and even conflicts. While you seem to be speaking the same language, something is getting lost in translation. Every encounter becomes tentative, and sooner or later, you begin to avoid, or dread, communicating with this person.

There are usually two major reasons for consistent communication issues:

1. The parties have completely different communication patterns

2. The parties have nearly identical communication patterns

People tend to communicate along certain patterns, and don’t tend to shift those patterns over time. Once you’ve established your pattern – and that usually happens by the time you’re three years old – only the most dramatic life-changes will alter your approach.

Do you recognize yourself in one of these?

The Dominant Personality – This person needs a high degree of control over everything around them, including people, information, physical items – you name it. They tend to be brief to the point of being abrupt. “Cut to the chase” would be a phrase you’d expect to hear from them. Details are for other people to worry about. Results are the only thing that matters, people are secondary, and only useful to the extent that they can help the Dominant Personality achieve results.

The Intuitive Personality – Gathering people close is like breathing to this person. Friendly, collegial, influencing, and manipulating all represent how this person might be viewed by others. The relationship is more important than the result, and communication for its own sake is what this person values. Details are also not important to the Intuitive Personality; he’s concerned about how everybody is feeling about the issue.

The Steady Personality – “Don’t rock the boat” is the motto and method for this person. She likes things exactly as they are and always have been. Change of any sort is actively avoided, even sabotaged. This person seeks to please, if only to maintain good order. Try to change something in her environment, and she will fight back.

The Compliance Personality – This person follows the rules to the letter, and knows them better than anyone. He will argue the smallest point, not just because he’s right, but because it’s right. He will value process over people, and will deal in minutia for the shear joy it brings him. Results aren’t so important – how you achieved them is what counts.

One of these personality patterns is probably close to your style in its most exaggerated form. You can probably recognize a client or co-worker somewhere in there, too. What happens when your personality patterns are dissimilar?

The biggest conflicts come between people on opposite ends of the spectrum. The Dominant and Compliant personalities live in two different worlds. The Intuitive and Steady personalities drive each other crazy. Why? Because they communicate about completely different things in completely different ways. They literally don’t “get” what the other person is saying, or are so frustrated with the way they express themselves that they shut off their listening skills.

Think about the Dominant person who wants just the bottom line, while the Compliant person is walking through every last step of the process they used to get there. This is the client who wants to examine every last project that the job candidate has worked on in his entire career before making a decision. Impatience and shutdown quickly occur.

What about when your styles are too similar?

Imagine two intuitive people getting together. There’s infinitely more conversation about how one or the other feels than about the substance at hand. The conversation quickly steers to social and superficial rather than business needs. Again, the detail goes lacking.

When two steady people meet, progress is rare. Maintaining the status quo, while not openly stated, ends up being the result because of reluctance to move forward.

Getting lost in the details is the likely result of two compliant personalities getting together. No progress, few results, and probably an argument or two over method will be the outcome.

How can we overcome these seemingly insurmountable challenges?

1. Recognize. Understand what your own communication style is so that you know how you are perceived by others.

2. Listen. Really listen to not just what the other party is saying, but how they say it. Does a candidate talk most about the great relationships she has with her current co-workers? This may be a clue that you’re working with an Intuitive. Does the client give you only the briefest of summaries of what he’s looking for in a new employee, and hangs up before you can ask a question? Probably working with a Dominant type!

3. Adapt. One of our responsibilities as communicators is to modify to meet the needs of others. We shouldn’t expect them to do the same. That doesn’t mean that they don’t share the responsibility, it just means that they won’t necessarily live up to their end of the bargain.

4. Mirror. To whatever degree is possible and practical, give them what they want and need in communication – it will make both of your lives immensely better.

Overcoming communication challenges is about recognizing the patterns that each of us use, and finding ways to keep the lines open, even when you’re on the opposite ends of the spectrum. The effort will be worthwhile, and the needs of each party will be met when you deliver the message in a way that will be both understood and appreciated.