Your emotions are your response to your thinking and mental patterns. Your mental patterns, in turn predict your behavioural style. Your behavioural style has the ability to stir up emotions in others.
Behavioural style, or social/communication style, is the way you conduct yourselves in front of other people, particularly in the workplace. Are you friendly and warm? Are you reserved? Are you assertive? Are you in full control? Your behavioural style, which is important to delineate from personality, either attracts or repels other people, and vice versa. Sometimes you cannot articulate why you like or dislike someone’s behaviour, because these types of preferences are unconscious. Influential leaders and those desiring to be influential in their workplaces, understand their own behaviour and the impact it has on others around them. Understanding this is critical to enhancing the performance of your workplace.
There are four main categories of behavioural styles that are generally recognized. Note that different researchers assign different names to these attributes:
1. Driver (aka Director, Dominant, thinker/intuitive): A driver is assertive, interrupts conversation, answers quickly, seeks out key facts, has low levels of empathy, and is extremely task focused.
2. Expressive (aka Socializer, Influencer, intuitive/feelings): An expressive person is enthusiastic and friendly, talks a lot and talks fast, loves to tell stories to convey a point, can be loud, seeks to grasp concepts, is assertive, has high levels of empathy, and is people focused.
3. Amiable (aka Relator, Steady, feelings/sensing): An amiable person is a good listener, responsive, people focused, and friendly. This person seeks to understand and thrives on building relationships.
4. Analytical (aka Thinker, Conscientious, thinker/sensing): An analytical person is more responsive than assertive, attentive to facts, unemotional, extremely precise, detail oriented, and not fond of small talk.
All of us have a dominant style, but we also have habits that fall into the other three categories. Each style has its strengths and weaknesses, an important consideration in team formation. When building a team, you should include people with different behavioural styles because each style contributes differently and beneficially to team dynamics and team goals.
Identifying your own and being aware of others’ behavioural style will contribute to your leadership success in several ways. First, this recognition improves your interaction and communication with others. For example, if you
know someone has an analytical style, you will adjust the way you talk and act to avoid triggering an emotional reaction in that person, and so that your interaction with that person accomplishes its goal. Second, it allows you to showcase or model, and thus teach, the combination of behavioural styles that work best. Third, it gives you an opportunity to play to your strength.
As a leader, you are in a unique position to make a difference in peoples’ lives. Initiating Positive Presence as a high-priority business strategy and performance improvement initiative develops your emotional awareness and understanding of your and others behavioural styles – and in doing so, transform your workplace into the peak performing environment we all desire.
CORPORATE HARMONY is grateful to Dr. Michael E. Frisina for his contributions to this entry.
Catherine is the President and CEO of CORPORATE HARMONY, providing virtual solutions for leadership development and organizational culture change. Her leadership and coaching experience as a Project Manager in an ever-changing, fast moving technological organization with unrelenting demands drove her to the realization that a positive mindset and strength-building behaviors are essential for today’s complex and chaotic organizational systems. CORPORATE HARMONY’s virtual platform of programs, coaching and performance measurement, is an innovative online technology of tested proprietary content. The world-class content of CORPORATE HARMONY’s Positive Presence Program develops the skill of ‘Positive Presence’ and the necessary ‘Positive Presence Behaviour Competencies’ for maintaining a positive and energized mindset and increased performance in today’s complex work environment, and leading to a culture of collaboration and connection. Catherine’s vision for Corporate Harmony is to bring the skill of “Positive Presence” to the corporate world as it becomes more complex, ambiguous and chaotic. Catherine is uniquely positioned to impact organizations’ productivity and long term success, with her powerful vision of eliminating bad stress from every workplace around the globe, bringing purpose into the people equation to promote healthy, productive and meaningful work cultures and turn the tide on the neglect of mental health on a global scale. Catherine is author of the book: “CORPORATE HARMONY – The Performance Link for Today’s Modern Organization” Catherine can be reached at: Catherine.Osborne@corporateharmony.ca or go to ‘contact us’ on our website www.corporateharmony.ca. Catherine is available for consultation, and can be reached by 519-695-3407.