Four styles for effective communication 

Have you ever met someone that you just couldn’t get through to? While there could be many reasons for this, one of the most common reasons is that your communication “style” is different than the other person's communication style. The good news is that this gives you an easy way to quickly improve the effectiveness of your communication by adapting your communication style to match theirs. Let me illustrate what I mean.

My wife and I have quite different styles of communication. She loves details and I just want the bottom line. When I get home from work at the end of the day and she asks me “How was your day?” I am likely to respond with a simple “fine,” or maybe give her a quick summary of one or two of the most important events. But when I ask her the same question, I had better be prepared to hear the story of her entire day in excruciating (for me) detail. Because of my communication style, I don’t need nor want the details, but because of her communication style, she needs and wants to give them.

Of course this is just an example, but we all face the challenge of communicating with people who have a different style of communication than our own. In this video we’ll look at the four “styles” of communication and learn how to communicate with each one more effectively.

Our natural tendency in communicating is to use our own style because it is what comes naturally and automatically to us. But if we want to be better communicators, we need to adapt our style to that of the other person.

As you watch this video, you will laugh along as the participants discover their own style and the styles of the others in the room. Enjoy!

Links For The Four Communication Styles

Here's a link to another page on our site that has more information about the four styles of communication.

You can dowload the characteristics of each personality type bu chlicking here.