How can you use the Social Style model to improve your interpersonal effectiveness?

When you build your relationships with customers, partners or colleagues, it's important to both actively listen and adapt your communication to the person you are interacting with. It may include expressing empathy and reactions that will reflect your sincere interest in their story. Sometimes it's the non-verbal communication that is more critical for creating a productive connection rather than the things you say.

The Social Style model suggests that understanding your own social style and recognizing the styles of others can lead to more effective communication and improved relationships. By adapting your communication approach to match or complement the style of the person you are interacting with, you can enhance mutual understanding and reduce conflicts.

As a recruiter, I definitely fall into the Expressive Style with high assertiveness and high responsiveness. Unfortunately, I also have the weaknesses of someone in the Amiable Style where I appear to be overly accommodating. In speaking with my mentor, we have come up with some ways to leverage my strengths and address potential weaknesses. 1. Embrace my strengths 2. Balance my assertiveness 3. Address any over-accommodations 4. Communication Skills 5. Adaptability 6. Feedback and Self-Reflection If anyone is like me and interested in a more detailed version, feel free to message me!

Different forms of the social styles questionnaire are readily available on the web. Just type "social styles questionnaire" and you can find them. I recommend taking the test yourself to see how you score. Then consider whether it rings true for you. If not, ask others to score you. In general, though, I have found most people immediately recognize their style.

The biggest challenge is to recognize that your style of interaction is not universal. Saying, "If it were me, I would...." is nonstarter, because that person is not you. The question is how can you put yourself into another person's reality to understand their frame. Try asking someone with whom you frequently are at odds with to explain what they are thinking and imagining. Truly inquire as deeply as you can. You can learn behavioral techniques such as increasing assertiveness (or if you are amiable), or slowing down your talking (if you are an expressive). Yet, those may carry you only so far. Learning to understand the world from the frame of someone different from yourself will give you more bang for the buck.

The social styles questionnaire is powerful because it interrupts our beliefs about how people should think or believe. Most of us think others should be more like us. The social styles questionnaire helps us understand there are truly different frames of reference when looking at the same phenomenon. This then opens the door for us to consider how to best capitalize on our differences. For example, one social style is "amiable." A person I used to work with scored high on amiability. She would screen all my emails to identify potential offensive statements. I said to her multiple times, "You're kidding me! How is that offensive?!!" She would patiently explain and help me reword it. As you might imagine, this was priceless.

It's important to note that while the Social Style model can be a useful tool for improving interpersonal communication, it is a simplified framework and individuals may exhibit a combination of these styles in various situations. People are complex and may not fit neatly into one category all the time, but the model provides a helpful starting point for better understanding social dynamics.

Most importantly recognise strategies for conflict resolution by choosing to be emphatic and by putting yourself in other person shoes and being emphatic, which is also important part of negotiation. Acknowledge that you are the part of conflict and accordingly act by analyzing and interpretating your actions and how it effected the other party.