As we continue on our leadership journey change makers joined ROI experts for Learning Lab 4 just before the winter break. Together we took a deep dive into communication and leadership styles and how they impact the way we lead, build rapport and relationships, engage with others and the unspoken cues we communicate. We explored the importance of sharing our stories with authenticity embracing the conflict and mining our experiences. Change makers had the opportunity to self-reflect on our own styles of leadership and communication and those techniques we can deploy to build strong relationships by stretching our awareness and capacity.
Change Makers unpacked the following four main leadership styles:
TELL
direct, efficient, action-oriented
The Tell Leadership style finds and solves problems independently of a group. Their tone is decisive, and these leaders take a tactical approach. They don’t care so much about the appeal of a solution or whether it is a crowd-pleaser so long as there is a solution they believe will work.
SELL
detail-oriented, big-picture, systemic approach
The SELL style, is similar to Tell in that these leaders will come to a decision independent of the whole, but with the added desire to have team support. Their tone is persuasive and they use “big picture” thinking. They value having a strategy in place with milestones, and focus on not just any solution, but the “right” one.
PARTICIPATE
warm and friendly
Participate is the third dominant leadership style which uses a consultative approach to decision making and solicits buy-in from teams. Participatory leaders want you to WANT to participate. They focus on “trying” solutions and value team effort and participation in the decision-making process.
DELIGATE
sharing and personable
Delegate Leaders use a collaborative approach and often are insightful and spontaneous. They can be prone to procrastination but are the best listeners. The routine or mundane irritates them because they value insight from team members.
These styles showcase how leaders communicate their expectations to their team and how, as a team we can best coordinate our approach with them. Tell leaders seek immediate decisions and often don’t invest in small talk, whereas a Participate leader values a team building approach using rapport and relationship building techniques to reach decisions collaboratively. Leaders of all styles posses their own unique value and seek sound decisions, just differing in our approach and how we arrive at decisions. Knowing the “hidden rules” of these types helps to both identify qualities in ourselves, but also in others and know how to best work together.
People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
Building rapport and relationships is incredibly important to our communication, particularly when less than 10% of what we communicate to others actually comes for the words we use.
55% of what we communicate happens through our body language
38% comes from the tone of our voice
7% is the actual words we use
DID YOU KNOW
When a verbal message and non-verbal one differ, people will default to believe what our body language is saying.
In short, we may not always remember what we heard, but what we felt in a conversation.
Gestures and body language communicate as effectively as words and enable us to be generally more persuasive by being aware of what our bodies are saying.
Some approaches to improve rapport through body language and non verbal communication includes mirroring and matching. Mirroring is the action of copying the other person’s actions, (they step back, you step back) and matching includes matching the rhythm of the speaker (speaking the same tempo). Both of these actions build connection and understanding during conversation.
A few tips for a strong, communicative mindset are:
- 1. Be consistent
- 2. Take a “rising approach” with our body language
- 3. Ask insightful questions
- 4. Use affirming language and stay in a growth mindset
- 5. Reserve judgement and be curious
- 6. Avoid jargon/acronyms and slang
Storytelling
Storytelling is an effective way to connect and build relationships as well as communicate complex ideas in a simplified way. This can be helpful when taking on projects that require support, as storytelling can help to communicate the core vision and goal of the project and encourage participation from others who are aligned with your cause.
The 7 Core Principals for Effective Storytelling include the following:
- 1. Be clear on the core message (ie. the Food Bank is in need of volunteers to feed the community)
- 2. Embrace conflict and challenges (ie. it can be difficult to find the time to volunteer, but every minute of donated time means less people go hungry)
- 3. Have a clear structure and purpose (ie. by increasing our volunteer base by 10%, we can feed 25% more people)
- 4. Narrow the scope (ie. You can volunteer with the Food Bank by filling out a volunteer form and identifying a time commitment that is right for you)
- 5. Mine personal experiences (ie. I started volunteering when I was four years old and it has been incredibly fulfilling in my life)
- 6. Engage your community (ie. This Saturday the Food Bank will be collecting donations at the grocery store, stop in and say hi)
- 7. Observe other good storytellers (ie. I heard a motivational speaker at a conference and their message resonated with me because of a particular tactic they used, that I would like to try)
Disc Personality Styles
In the second half of this Learning Lab, Change Makers were guided through a DiSC Assessment. The DiSC Model is a four quadrant model that shows how we communicate, how we approach problem-solving, and how we are motivated to reach our goals. No style is better than another and each trait is on a spectrum, meaning that everyone is a unique blend of these traits.
Throughout the breakout sessions, Change Makers were given the opportunity to connect with others who shared similar traits, as well as connect with other Change Makers who aspired to better connect with those with opposite and different traits. These discussions allowed Change Makers to better understand each other’s communication styles and motivations and how to work with each other, all excellent lessons to take beyond this Learning Lab to our personal and professional lives, so that we can communicate and lead with empathy.
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