Show notes

Communication is one of the most important recipes for a successful business. As an introvert, it is never easy to deal with it, especially if you’ve just come out of your comfort zone. However, if you really want to be successful in your job, you need to learn how to understand your colleagues and business partners and be able to express yourself through an effective communication style.

For this episode, I’d like to give you the four communication categories often used in the business field. Aside from being comfortable, knowing which one of styles is the best for you will help you learn what kind of people you’re best paired with!

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to The Traveling Introvert. Today we’re going to talk about, do you know your boss’s communication style and why this is important. Closely tied with our personality type, your communication style will drive many elements of your career and business, and just relationships in general. How you choose business partners, who you hire, people you work with, and the programs you create. Even marketing materials or like your resume and CV. Depending on who you speak to, communication styles may have many names but regardless of the titles, they all fall into four broad categories.

One of those is analytical. You want numbers and facts to base your decisions on, not emotions or feelings. Personal communicators make you a little bit crazy. And so knowing, think about people you know, and think about if they are those types of people. If they’re analytical and they want numbers and facts, but you’re giving them warm and fuzzies, you’re not giving them what they want or they expect and therefore they might feel that you can’t communicate well. And so you might need to adjust if your boss is an analytical boss and they want numbers and facts, you should give them numbers and facts. It’s very important to think about these things.

And then, the second type of communication style is intuitive. These people see the big picture and often only want to know the outcome, not the details of how to get there. And so for them, speaking to someone who’s a functional communicator makes them lose interest really fast. I’ve definitely worked with clients that are very, very big picture. I just, just get it done, whatever needs to happen, just get it done. But my big, glorious picture has to work. And so again, if your boss is a big picture person, or just someone you work with is a big picture person, you might need to adjust the way you communicate with them to deal with that and to compliment that. It might not be your personal communication style but if you want to move things forward and get things done, you need to communicate with people in a star that they recognize and appreciate.

Then, the third type is the functional. They prefer step-by-step plans and outlines. No detail is too small to be held up to endless examination consideration, and so they’re a little different from analytical and that it does tend to be a blur in the lines between those. But they want step-by-step, so they’re the kind of people that will want checklists and workflows, and that sort of a thing, and they’ll go over it and see how it could be tweaked and how could be made better. So again, when you’re communicating with these types of people, just, just think about that.

And the last one out of the four is personal. They value emotional connections and build them easily by recognizing not only how people think but how they feel. They probably have a very high EQ. And those type of people need to be communicated to it in a certain way as well. So just think about that.

Think about your communication method. Are you analytical, intuitive, functional, or personal? If you’ve ever sat in a meeting that seemed like it will never end while a co-worker took on, and on, and on about the budget for product on a project, chances are you’ve met an analytical communicator. Or maybe you’ve sat down with a partner to hammer out a plan for a new project and to be met with something like, well just create a 15-week coaching program rather than a step-by-step roadmap and milestones that you expected. When you’ve met someone who is intuitive, none of these communication styles are bad. They all can and do make great entrepreneurs, have great careers, small business owners and coaches. But the key is to know yourself, how you communicate and which style will complement your own or how you deal with other people. So it’s just something to think about and keep in mind. And I found that really useful in my work with different people. It also helps me figure out who are good people for me to work with and to partner with for certain things. I can communicate in a way that they want, in a way that makes sense for them.

Thank you for listening. This is Janice from The Career Introvert. Please email me with any questions you have at janice@thecareerintrovert.com

Helping you grow your business and career, in balance with your introversion.