Conversational behavior: Always find the right words
People have different value systems as well as thinking and communication styles. If you know them, you can adapt your conversational behavior to your counterpart and reach your goal more easily.
When talking to people, we often notice that our messages are received differently by our conversation partners, even though we use the same words. This can have various causes. For example, the interlocutors have different know-how or different interests. Often, however, communication does not work because our partners "tick" differently than we do. Because the value systems of us humans are different. For example, while material success is very important to one person, social recognition is the top priority for another. And yet another wants to experience a lot of new, exciting things above all else.
Thinking and communication styles diverge
These values shape our thinking style, which in turn shapes our communication style. For example, people who evaluate everything primarily from the point of view of "Does it pay off?" usually have a rather logical thinking style. Their communication style corresponds to this. They prefer short, concise statements and love numbers, data and facts. This is different for people who primarily look for the appeal of novelty. They get tired of columns of numbers. This is similar for people for whom human relationships are very important.
What happens, for example, when a manager with a more logical thinking and communication style meets a more relationship-oriented employee? The manager showers the employee with numbers, data and facts. Because she assumes: These will also convince my counterpart. The employee experiences the situation differently. He thinks: "The boss doesn't even ask me how I'm doing. Instead, he throws numbers at me and demands that I work more - as if I've been lazy so far." What the manager actually wants to say doesn't reach the employee at all. Not because the employee is unmotivated or even rebellious - no, the cause is different.
Our brain evaluates what we hear
When someone says something to us, the limbic system in our brain first evaluates this statement. Based on our value system, it decides whether the statement is rather important or unimportant, good or bad, for example. Only then does the limbic system forward the information linked to the relevant emotion to the cerebrum, and we react accordingly. Managers should therefore package their messages in such a way that they are perceived as significant by the limbic system of the respective employee and trigger positive emotions in them.
That is easier said than done. For this, we first need to know the communication and thinking style or the value system of our counterpart. These can be determined with personality tests. But you can't always do such tests. A product developer cannot say to his superior, before he presents his ideas to him, "Boss, first fill out the test, ..." It's the same with salespeople before contract negotiations. They need other tools to decide: I should use this communication style because....
Identify the partner's value system
This (pre)decision is made easier by the fact that certain types are disproportionately represented in most professions. For example, safety plays a major role in the value system of most civil servants. And sales managers usually have a different thinking and communication style than the heads of research departments.
Another indication of the value system of our interlocutors can be the furnishings of their offices. Lots of plants, pictures of loved ones and warm colors indicate a relationship-oriented type. If, on the other hand, there is designer furniture and abstract drawings hanging in the office, then our counterpart is probably an experimental type. An indicator of our partner's value system is not only his language but also the way he greets us: Does he get up from his desk and walk towards us or...? Does he get straight to the point or...? Based on such factors, we can make an initial assessment.
Adapt the argumentation and language style
If we know the preferred thinking style or value system of our counterpart, we can deduce which messages we should place at the center of our speech because they are
- offer him the greatest benefit from his point of view, and
- trigger positive feelings in him.
This assumes that we have identified in advance the core messages relevant to the different types. For a person for whom material gain is very important, this may be the time and cost savings achieved by a solution. And for a person who values security? With her, the argumentation can be aimed at how error-free a machine works.
However, it is also important that we package our messages in such a way that they are received. Let's say you want to convince your colleagues to purchase a certain software. Then, to a more logical thinker, your argument might be, "This software reduces processing time by 30 percent. This will reduce our costs by 15 percent." For an experimental type, it might be, "Imagine production that runs completely glitch-free. We are getting closer to this vision with this software, because ..." With such a type-specific argumentation, there is a high probability that your colleagues will at least consider your proposal sympathetically.
To the author:
Joachim Simon from Braunschweig, Germany, is a leadership trainer and speaker specializing in (self-)leadership (www.joachimsimon.info). He is the author of the book "Selbstverantwortung im Unternehmen" (Self-responsibility in the company) published by Haufe-Verlag and co-founder of the (self-)leadership coaching app Mindshine.
