is154997148 communicate effectively largeDo you find yourself struggling to communicate as effectively as possible with different types of people? Do you find yourself saying: I can’t figure out what his or her problem is, they are impossible? Here's a handy guide on how to communicate clearly with any personality style. It is based on the five personalities traits psychologists believe are fundamental to our personalities.

When you're in the workplace, you're sure to encounter many different personalities. Do you know how to communicate clearly with each of them?

[quotes]Communication is about much more than just effectively getting your point across. [/quotes] It's key to having a healthy, thriving work environment. Without good communication across personality types, many issues that could have been avoided will become obstacles. The better the communication, the more work can get done.

In this guide, we'll teach you how to approach communication with all different personality styles. Keep reading and let us clear up the mystery of clear communication!

As good as the following guide sounds, as professional business coaches we’ll show you a  second and even better way to identify individual styles and easily communicate with them. Used over a million times a year by business and institutions, it has extensive validation and history of working in the world of business. DISC, the better way.

Since business success all about people and understanding them, what you learn now will help you in your career and personal life going forward.

"The Five Most Common Personality Types" Guide to Communication

Everyone is different, but we can talk about personality types more easily if we break them down into some major categories. Researchers have successfully determined five personality types that you're most likely to need to communicate clearly with.

[quotesright]Keep in mind that knowing your own personality type makes communicating with all the others far easier. [/quotesright] As you read, consider what type you might be, as well as where your coworkers and professional associates fall on this list.

1. Nurturers

Nurturers naturally desire to help and care for other people. They want the organization to run smoothly and harmoniously. These personality types tend to care deeply about principles and values, both their own and those of the company.

2. Creatives

Creatives are those innovative individuals who always come up with new ideas. [quotesright]They think about the future and are always looking for ways to improve things. [/quotesright] This personality type is great at making unexpected connections that others might never see.

3. Guardians

The guardian personality type focuses on protecting and preserving the work environment. These individuals value hard work, responsibility, and stewardship.

They care deeply about logic and want things to stay clear and straightforward. They also love seeing concrete success tracking measures so they'll always know where they stand.

4. Connectors

Connectors are just like what their name sounds implies: People who love drawing connections. Unlike creatives, those connections aren't necessarily for innovation. Instead, this personality type loves connecting resources, ideas, and people.

Connectors tend to intuitively sense what others are feeling and what they might need.

5. Pioneers

These loud, domineering individuals have thought patterns that might feel militaristic. They care deeply about success and winning and are always looking to the future through that lens.

How to Communicate Clearly with Each Type

You can probably easily identify many of the people in your workplace with these categories. But how can you communicate clearly with all of them?

Each of us has our own personality type and will naturally be adept at communicating with certain others. But there are those personalities that pose a challenge.

You might feel like you just don't "get" why some people are the way they are. With this guide, though, you'll be able to approach every personality type and communicate with ease.

Nurturers

To communicate with a nurturer you should keep in mind that they are excellent managers. People with this personality type tend to be very supportive of their team, which results in greater workplace productivity.

However, you should also know that nurturers are more likely to be resistant to change. If you want them to jump on board with a new idea, you'll need to spend time focusing on how much it will benefit your customers or your employees.

Creatives

Creatives love big, future ideas. They're innovative and drive growth, which is why they're attracted to fields like design, academia, and tech. In fact, today's tech-focused modern world tends to value creatives above all else.

However, it can take some work to get creatives to share their valuable ideas with the team. If you identify creatives on your team, remember to ask them lots of questions to help draw out those ideas.

Guardians

Your team might not always appreciate the guardians in their midst. Guardians tend to look to the future and see the things that could go wrong, rather than the great ideas that could go right.

However, there's a lot of value in that perspective. It helps keep your company on the right path and can help avoid potential disaster. Guardians can also be instrumental in taking big ideas and making them successful realities.

Make sure to take the time to speak with this personality type so you can really understand their concerns and their motives. Reassure them if they seem too worried about a potential outcome.

Connectors

Connectors, on the other hand, tend to be popular with the team. They keep things fun at work and inject life into dull moments.

A connector is a natural networker and people person. Connectors tend to thrive in positions such as sales. They're also natural collaborators and will often do their best work as part of a team. And, if you're looking for resources, connectors will always know who to ask.

Pioneers

Finally, there are the pioneers. These people tend to be excellent in leadership roles. They're great at putting together strategies and making difficult decisions on behalf of the team.

However, keep in mind that pioneers tend to be the loudest, and are less likely to listen to others. To make sure you hear from everyone, you should encourage the other personality types to speak first, before the pioneers can take over the conversation.

How to Use Communication Styles Effectively

Your team always needs a balance of all these different personality types. They all play an important role in making your team work smoothly. When you're hiring, keep this in mind – you don't want to be too creative-heavy without any guardians, for example.

However, you'll also need to make sure that these different people can communicate clearly with each other. Don't let poor communication get in the way of your company's success. Make sure everyone has access to the information they need about personality styles.

However, Using the Above Is Not the Best Way to Communicate

The system above sounds great but how do you put it to use and apply it? What is each style looking for from you? How should you position your product, service, or outcome so they buy into what you are saying? What words are they looking to hear when you communicate?

Using the five personality styles, you can go away happy but find it not very useful because it gives you just single composite dimensions of the personalities you’re dealing with. [quotes]The problem is that people are not one dimensional personalities you can fit into pigeon holes like a letter.[/quotes]

Worse, how can you identify these traits if you run into a nurturing creative connector? Is that a fit for management, the art department, or sales? Could you quantify determine if any candidate using five personality system is someone will fit a specific job? It's just not nuanced enough nor does it get beyond the very surface of what you need to know about motivations, strengths, weakness, etc.

People are multi-dimensional and their personalities are a mix of many factors. Worse yet, they are adaptive and modify their personality based on circumstance. It’s daunting; you are tying to make sense of a kaleidoscope that changes situationally. Fortunately, there is a simple system that helps you very quickly determine the best ways to communicate with someone based on what they say and how they act.

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Discover A Better Way

To learn more about DISC and other tools that will help you communicate clearer with others, be more persuasive, identify the best people for a position, avoid hiring the wrong people and more, let’s talk.

We are DISC experts and have a broad spectrum of proven assessments that helps you improve your effectiveness and increase your company’s bottom line.

USA: 877.433.6225 feedback@focalpointcoaching.com

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It’s called DISC and it only has 4 communication styles and we are all a mix of these. Learn DISC and you’ll be able to know what to say to someone and how to phrase it so you come across as knowledgeable and someone who understands.

DISC Download Click Image to Download an infographic that helps you identify styles through casual observation.

DISC Identifies Just Four Styles

  1. Dominance
  2. Influence
  3. Steadiness
  4. Compliance

Each of these has specific characteristics that guide their behavior and are the key to communicating with them:

  • Values
  • Dislikes
  • Will Avoid
  • Under Stress
  • Decisions Based On
  • Take time to be
  • Give them

Each style has:

  • Quick Identifiers/Indicators you can quickly spot
  • Things you need to know and use when communicating with them
  • Things NOT to do when communicating.

A quick example

The Dominance style is decisive, impatient, tough, competitive, direct, and does not listen.

When communicating with this style, you want to get to the point, not waste time on much small talk, give immediate feedback, concentrate on the subject, maintain a focus on results. Do not frustrate their desire to take action, don’t restrict their power, and do not spend time on the details.

Hit the big parts, let this style ask for more details if they want them, get in, get your key points across and get out. Joe Friday of the old Dragnet program was famous for the line “Just the facts ma’am.” That’s the Dominance style.

Where did the DISC profiles system come from?

This widely used system grew out of pioneering work by Dr. James Marsdon, a Harvard trained PhD psychologist, inventor, and a consultant to Hollywood among many others. His achievements included putting theory into practical use to create more realistic acting methods, developing a key insight used in the refinement of the lie detector, and creating the hit show Wonder Woman.

His study of a person's sense of power and will, and their effect on personality and human behavior measurably added to the field of psychology. His book, Emotions of Normal People, published in 1928 was a foundation for DISC. In 1931, Marston published a second book, Integrative Psychology.

Years later, Walter V. Clark, an industrial psychologist, created the DISC Assessment in the mid 1950s based on Marsdon’s work. [quotesright]The initial version of this has been refined over the years into a powerful assessment tool used over a million times a year. [/quotesright]

Both businesses and public institutions use it and other assessments offered by several assessment firms to help them to find the best person for a job; they identify motivations and traits which are used to help leaders, teams and sales forces communicate clearly and more effectively with others.

If you’d like to learn more about a system you can use that will catapult your communication skills to the top of the class, get in touch. We’ll help you learn more and if you wish, help you learn DISC as well. We’ll even give you a complimentary “Cheat sheet” for identifying each style and how to communicate best with them.

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