Musings on design & other stuff jen's place

There are a number of aspects to effective communication — I mentioned how and when you ask for a promotion in an earlier post — but there are many more dimensions to communicating effectively than just timing and voice. Probably the one aspect of effective communication that I spend the most time talking about with my mentees is understanding your audience: who are they and what is their communication style?

I've found that I use several techniques to learn about communication style and adjust how I communicate, as a result:

• Introvert or Extrovert?
• Other Myers-Briggs letters
• Birth order & family life

If you don't already know if the person is an introvert or extrovert, here are some questions that will help you figure it out: does the person think out loud (E) or prefer to get information in writing so they have time to reflect on it before responding (I)? When you have a meeting with the person, do they frequently have an agenda that they use to guide the discussion (I) or do the wing it (E)? When they do have an agenda, are they comfortable discussing other things (E), or do they prefer to stick to the agenda (I)? Obviously, the line along which we fall as an Extrovert or an Introvert is a continuum, but most people fall to one side or the other as their comfort zone or default style of communication. I'm pretty much on the line between I and E, but when all is said and done, I am definitely an Extrovert, so I consciously adapt my communication style when I need to work with Introverts.

The other Myers-Briggs letters are important, as well. For example, my last letter is a P, which means that I perceive time as flexible or expandable, and as a result, I tend to procrastinate. I'm also more of a thinker than a feeler, which means that I err on the side of logic more often than not. If you're a feeler, then you need to adapt your style to give me data on which to base a decision, not just what you feel.

Another aspect is birth order & family life. I had a boss who came from a family where his father drank and was verbally abusive. As a result, he'd only communicate with people to reprimand them — if you were doing well, he wouldn't say a word to you, so we frequently didn't talk for weeks at a time. A colleague of mine was asking for resources on how to manage up — I had to be honest with her that, as an only child, I'd never had a problem managing up, because my whole childhood had been spent trying to get my parents to interact with me.

Lastly, and I mention this with some reluctance, sometimes birthdays can be helpful in understanding a person's communication style. I'm a Virgo and my life is filled with Pisceans, Sagittarians, and Cancers. Why that happens, I won't guess, but it's a pattern nonetheless.