The T.E.A.M. report should give you a good feel for your communication style and how that may differ from others. You probably thought about some difficult people as you read through the other styles, and hopefully you’re now seeing them as “different” not “difficult”. However, it’s not so easy to figure out what to do next.
The first thing is to recognize that you might not have the other person accurately “figured out”, so it’s good to check that out before getting ahead of yourself. You might approach them and share with them what you’ve learned in general about T.E.A.M., maybe even showing them the model overview on pages 3-5 of the report. Then talk with them about your T.E.A.M. style. Don’t use the labels, Tell, Engage. Analyze or Mediate, or the short cuts – T, E, A, or M. Instead be descriptive. For example:
“I learned that I like to move quickly and focus mostly on the work at hand. I don’t take much time to try to connect with people on a more personal level.”
OR
“I learned that I really like to work collaboratively with others and get to know my co-workers as individuals as well as workers.”
Then… shift to the other person, but very tentatively:
“As I reviewed the model, I get the sense that you have very different preferences. I’m guessing that you want to take time to really look at all the details before you made a decision, and you might be frustrated when I don’t give you all the information you want or when I rush you in making a decision.”
People’s styles aren’t always that straight forward, and many are a blend of several styles, so you could try this:
“As I reviewed the model, I get the sense that you have very different preferences. I’m guessing that you want to take time to really look at all the details before you make a decision, and you might be frustrated when I don’t give you all the information you want or when I rush you in making a decision. I think you might also focus more on the people side of things than I do and my strict focus on the work might offend you.”
In any event STOP when you get to this point. Let them respond, ask questions, disagree, or just shake their head and walk away! You’ve had some time to think this over. It may be very new to them. Give them some space to sort it out. Once they do, and they seem interested in discussing it further or are at least willing to listen, you can continue with:
“I think our styles are pretty different and that’s part of the difficulty we have in working together. If you agree, I’m willing to try to adapt my style to better connect with yours. It will be a challenge for me, and I won’t always do it right, so please let me know if I’m helping things or making things worse!
This is where people stop me and say “why should I change, s/he’s the difficult one!”
Well… you now have this knowledge and they don’t. Therefore, you have a greater capacity to change at first. Over time you can invite them to come along. It turns out that making this change is very difficult! So, you won’t succeed all the time. You may keep slipping back to your preferred style. Success depends on staying alert, staying aware, thinking before you speak and reframing to their frame of reference.
It’s not easy, but then again, it’s not easy being in a long term conflict either. If you invest the time in being aware, speaking intentionally and listening carefully – with your eyes and your ears – you’re likely to be successful over time. Eventually, if things are going well, you can invite them to shift a little bit when they’re working with you. Something like this:
“I’ve been working really hard to be more detailed and patient. I hope that’s been helpful. (Hopefully they say “yes”!) It would help me out a great deal if you could try to give me more of a summary of the situation, rather than all the details. I don’t have the head for details and all that information tends to be overwhelming.” (Humility or self-deprecation helps smooth things out.)
This isn’t magic, and these kinds of changes are not easy, but they can be mastered over time and they do tend to help rebuild strained relationships. You might want to try this with friends and family as well.
Let me know how this works for you. Alan@KriegerSolutions.com. If you’d like to schedule a consultation or training about T.E.A.M. Communication Styles®, contact our Project Manager, Nicole O’Connor, at Nicole@KriegerSolutions.com.
If you haven’t taken the assessment yet, you can find out more about it here.