One of the many insights that will help you to use your influence to change your world is blending with communication behavior. And because behavior changes, you must pay some attention in order to notice the changes and respond to them.
Here is an insight to help you communicate more effectively. When you talk with individuals, match your style to their need. Pay close attention, because style is behavior, and behavior changes depending on the situation.
In this model, there are four communication styles that reflect four communication needs. Notice the needs and speak in kind and you speak to the needs and thus strengthen the communication.
2 Variables
To recognize the style of a person's communication need, you need only make two distinctions. First, is their communication about people or a task? And secondly, do they communicate directly or indirectly?
Sometimes, people talk about what they're doing, either the end result, the details, or both. I'm calling this a task focus. The task could be discussing an idea, making a decision, resolving a dispute or achieving an objective.
Sometimes, people talk more about the human side of life, either about the people around them or about themselves. This is what I call a 'people-focus' whether they are describing thoughts or feelings or views about others or themselves.
A person focused more on a task than on people may pay more attention to the end result of the task than the details they encounter along the way. Or, they may pay more attention to the details of the task than to the end result. You can notice this in the way they talk. A person focused more on people than on a task may express more interest in the opinions and feelings of others, or in their own opinions and feelings.
4 Communication Needs
1) Need for Action: When a person is focused on the end result of an interaction or an idea, she has a communication need for action. She needs you to speak directly and actively. She needs to hear movement in a direction in the way you talk.
2.) Need for Accuracy: When a person is focused on the details of an interaction or an idea, she has a communication need for accuracy. She needs to hear that you are paying attention to the details in the way you talk.
3.) Need for Approval: when a person is focused more on what others think and say than on her own thoughts and feelings, she has a need for approval. She has a need to hear in the way you talk that you have that same concern for her feelings and thought.
4.) Need for Appreciation. When a person is focused more on describing her own thoughts and feelings than she is in talking about the thoughts and feelings of others, she has a need for appreciation. She needs to hear that you appreciate her in the way you talk.
These needs, action, accuracy, approval and appreciation, get communicated through the style or structure by which a person speaks. And there are indicators (when you notice them) that allow you to speak to the need.
4 Styles
1. Action = Get to the point
The person with a need for action will speak directly, and to the point. There's no mincing of words here, as momentum and movement are of a high priority. She is apt to talk in an authoritative and commanding way. Blending reveals that when a person is direct and to the point, you want to be direct and to the point in dealing with her.
2. Accuracy = Give the details
The person with a need for accuracy will speak indirectly, offer a lot of detail, and take her time before arriving at the point. You may find yourself wondering... about the point of it, but eventually she'll get there.
When accuracy is important, she is likely to ask questions to acquire information, or make long statements to establish facts and stimulate thinking. The revelation of blending is that when a person is detailed and indirect with you, you can be detailed and indirect in your responses with her.
3. Approval: Be Friendly and Considerate
The person with a need for approval will speak indirectly and express concern for the opinions and feelings of others. This person will... consistently check that no offense has been given, and she will have sensitivity and respect for their time.
The revelation of blending is that whenever someone talks to you in a considerate and indirect way, you can can be considerate and indirect in your responses.
4. Appreciation = Speak with energy and enthusiasm
The person with a need for appreciation will speak directly and enthusiastically. Using exclamations and personal stories this person works to grab attention and evoke feelings, in order to hold the spotlight of your attention (and by inference, your appreciation for what they have to say.)
And you may be wondering why they're going on and on about it. Blending reveals that when a person is direct and enthusiastic, you want to be direct and enthusiastic in your communication with her.
An excellent way to use the needs-style approach in your persuasive communication, in order to make what you say more compelling and powerful, is to try delivering your ideas in each of these ways: action, accuracy, approval and appreciation.
What's More Attractive, Likes or Opposites?
But if like doesn't attract like when it comes to genies delivering bicycles, do opposites attract instead? No, not when it comes to people, at least according to some research I've seen. But then, it depends on what you mean by opposite.
Is Persuasion Bad For Society?
The question before us: Is persuasion bad for society? It's an important question, because our world is witnessing an unprecedented onslaught of persuasive communication at every turn. Much of it is the creation of professional propagandists and marketing geniuses whose ethic is play for pay, and whose only boundary is 'whatever the market will bear.'
Is It Moral To Communicate Persuasively?
To understand the moral basis of persuasive communication, I reference the writing of of David Weinberger, a Fellow at the prestigious Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society, when discussing the morality of the Internet and its myriad links, and then draw a link to the morality of persuasion.
