Do your work relationships need a tune up?

One of my favourite topics to learn, discuss and practice in the work place is communication.  

There are many ways to define good communication but my top three would be: 

• Listening– fully, attentively, not just waiting until it is your turn to speak and/or formulating a response whilst the other person is still speaking 
• Empathy – putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and trying to see things from their perspective 
• Emotional intelligence – being aware of your emotions (what are you telling yourself during the conversation) and importantly the other person’s emotions – is there anything happening in their lives at this time that might be influencing their behaviour 

But have you ever felt you did the above but there still was no connection between you and the other person?   

Or that no matter how hard you try with a colleague neither of you seem to be able to communicate clearly with each other? 

This may be down to the fact that according to Carl Jung and others we all have distinct personality types and dominate communication traits. 

There are many personality type quizzes you can do to find out where you sit on the introvert or extrovert, task or relationship orientated scale. 

Suffice to say if you are a task-orientated introvert you might have to adapt to your extroverted relationship focussed colleague and vice versa. 

You can figure out quickly where you sit by answering four simple choice questions 

Are you outwardly or inwardly focused? 

E– talkative, outgoing, like to be the centre of attention 

or 

I – quiet, reserved, like to observe than be in the action 

How do you take in information? 

S – focus on reality, facts and practical matters 

Or 

N – imagine how things could be, the big picture 

How do you make decisions? 

T – logical, place an emphasis on fairness 

Or  

F – consider others feelings, seek harmony 

What does your outer life look like? 

J – make plans, likes rules and procedures, want to know the outcome 

Or 

P – go with the flow, spontaneous and enjoy surprises 

Your answer might look something like this ENTJ – an outgoing person who likes to think about the big picture and not be bogged down by details, want things to be fair and will make waves to ensure this and loves a good plan. 

When this person is faced with a new announcement about work practices changing that she deems unfair she will want to do something about it and go to whoever she needs to for it to be resolved. 

Now let’s say the person she needs to go to is an ISTJ (similar but different enough) and this person is a quieter more reserved person taken aback by her strident colleague (with the gesticulating hands) and more so as the situation ENTJ is deeming unfair was actually flagged in a recent office document (basically the fine print) which the ENTJ didn’t read! 

Both the ENTJ and the ISTJ love rules, planning and fairness so will both stridently demand that they are right and the other is at fault and because they ultimately communicate differently it is harder to resolve. 

What both the ENTJ and ISTJ would benefit from is not only well-honed communication skills but also an understanding of their personality characteristics so that rather than finding the differences frustrating they can instead embrace them and potentially in time leverage the differences to work together more successfully. 

For instance, the ISTJ can help the ENTJ to pay more attention to the details and the ENTJ can encourage the ISTJ to sometimes not get too myopic about detail and focus on the bigger picture. 

Thus, nailing both necessary aspects for any project to succeed (vision and the detail) and most importantly encouraging an environment which enables people to grow.  An environment that prioritises understanding, empathy and compromise. 

In the wise words of Theodore Roosevelt ‘The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people’.