4 Types of Communication Styles and Underlying Motivations

Crazy schedules, busy calendars, and full-day meetings sound all too familiar. In today’s business world, busy and chaotic is just the norm. Working efficiently and getting your message across different channels quickly and effectively with a fast turnaround in the decision-making process in achieving objectives is critical to a successful business result.

Whether presenting at a board meeting or the usual weekly team meeting, it is critical to delivering on business updates, market trends, goals, objectives, or targets concisely and clearly. Most individuals with short attention spans will ask you to get to the point or check out entirely while you’re still delivering your message.

So how do you influence individuals to help you with your goals and objectives? That brings me to briefly share and explore the four communication styles I have learned over the years.  There are four types of communication and preferences when it comes to gaining buy-ins and support with goals, projects, or the big-picture direction:

1. The Hostile – prefer bullets and categories
2. Indifferent – prefer help and advice
3. Uninformed – prefer empathy and POV (point of view)
4. Supportive – prefer everything and everybody (always the yes person, and in agreement)

For more context, let’s explore each style to provide some understanding of how they work.

Hostile: the core style of the hostile is bullets; when they are in thinking mode, they put everything into a category of yes/or no to process the information. If they can’t do that, they become hostile. To communicate effectively with this type, you will need to be direct, use bullet points and categories to get your message across.

Indifferent: are the style with no reaction or action. The reason this style acts this way is that they feel unimportant and unappreciated. The solution to communicating with them is straightforward to make them feel important, approach, and ask for their help, opinion, or advice. They are much more likely to respond and engage with you by making them feel important and listening to them.

Uninformed: This style takes longer to get back to you and forever to make a decision. How do you communicate with them or what they want? They want to feel understood, that you know their situation and communicate through to them with empathy and a point of view (e.g., I saw your email, I’ve been swamped lately. It’s been really crazy here. I did not get a chance to get to it.) They are saying that because it’s vital for them that you understand their situation. It does not matter if they are busy or not; don’t call them on it. If a decision is needed, ask them for their point of view to allow them to save face.

Supportive: This style wants to be liked by everyone (the people pleaser). What’s important is how other people are going to react to their actions. There are three elements to include in communicating with them; use small talk, everybody and everything, and hierarchies; getting specific group approval is crucial for them. Use the term everybody and everything to move them towards the motivation to act. First, you communicate on their supportive level, virtual small talk, a question, plus a reveal. Then everybody everything.  Use the social group as the motivator. “Everybody says that you can help me with this.” Then, you go from a hierarchy toward a more specific ask, in other words, a general commitment to a more specific commitment. “Everybody says that you can help me with this. The project could benefit from your expertise in this specific area; (specify the task here).”

 

Underlying Peoples Motivations

Communicating to address people’s underlying motivations is key in succeeding at getting buy-ins, and influencing decisions and outcomes. Learning how to address the three key areas of; achievement (accomplishing), affiliation (maintain harmony), and power (influence) who likes to be in charge and control over others. So how does that work; let’s explore each term closely.

Achievement Motivation – are driven by getting recognized for their achievement and what they have done. They always want feedback; people who are motivated by achievement are willing to take moderate risks. Getting them involved gives them slightly unreasonable expectations because that will address their underlying motivation. By providing a little unreasonable timeline in front of others, you recognize them in front of others at the same time.

Affiliation Motivation – is driven by being part of the group (acceptance). They are the individuals who want to be involved and included, often seen talking to several people at once. They focus on group activities and an open-concept working environment. They often avoid risks as group harmony is their underlying motivate or need. You will need to approach everything as group disruption to help them make a cession.

Power/Influence – are driven by having control, influence over others, and a say on everything. The best strategy to address this by putting them in charge, ask them for advice and help.

 

To Wrap up, remember one size does not fit all; you must identify people’s motivations once you can leverage those underlying motivations as tools to help you influence and support your goals and objectives.