How To Discover Your Individual Communication Style

 
We all have our own communication style, and most of us have strength in more than one area.
Knowing how your strengths—and challenges—stack up gives you insight and an awareness to guide you in having more successful conversations.
When those who work together understand their own and each others' strengths, they bring out the best in each other and take more risks, respecting individual differences and developing a stronger team where innovation and productivity flourish.
There is a deep connection between learning styles and communication styles; use this inventory to gain insight into the processing strengths that drive your own personal communication style:

1. Interpersonal

Your preferred learning style is interpersonal if you agree with the following:

• It is important for me to get my thoughts and feelings out in the open.
• Others seek me out for counsel or advice.
• I am intrigued by emotional dynamics in interpersonal relationships.

A coworker communicating with you might ask you, "What do you know about our customer in terms of what really matters to them?"
If you are interpersonally driven, then you are tuned into human relationships. You intuitively understand the feelings, motivations, and goals of others. Your understanding of the customer is rooted in the emotional connections you develop.

Listen, Speak & be Heard

 
Communication is both an art and a science. It often involves acts of speaking and listening, reading and writing, but it also goes beyond these and incorporates the transmission of non-verbal language, sign language, codes transmitted electronically (e.g., Morse code), and physically (touch; hormones; muscles, tendons, nerves), and messages communicated through music, and by other means.
Although you communicate simply by being in the world, developing good verbal and body language skills involves learning and consciously using your skills to improve.
The act of communicating verbally serves to convey how we feel and how we think to others. It is also the basis of how we relate with others, using language as its medium. Increasing knowledge and awareness of some of the components involved in effective communication can serve to improve how we use those components personally.
To explain all the features required of good communicators, you need to delve into the nature of verbal communication in its various modes. Basic questions are: How can you put yourself on a path that would make you into a better communicator? How can you develop skills to overcome some fears or limitations?

Effective communication may be said to involve the transfer of values, beliefs and thoughts from one person to another.

• To transfer a spoken message, it is obvious that speakers and listeners are involved, with timing used for speedy transmission. Speakers use verbal and body language to convey messages, looking towards listeners. Listeners respond by glancing towards speakers, with words and movements and attention to timing and turn-taking.
• What can you do to become a more effective speaker? Look around and observe some good exchanges between people and check out their body language. It's good to start with body language, because it is powerful, and often the beginning of good exchanges.
• It may be useful to know more about what your attitudes are regarding communicating and your communication skills. To find out more about this Click here

11 Things All Great Leaders Know

 
Great leaders – and by great, I mean leaders who great people willingly follow in small organizations and large ones, know that the bottom line is measured by how well our teams are inspired and motivated. 11 facts true leaders know that help guide themselves and their organizations:

1. We’re only as good as the people we attract. Good leaders don’t need to be the smartest person in the room, and they know that everyone around them reflects on them. The stronger the team around us, the stronger we are. If we can’t attract high performers then we aren’t one.
2. We make mistakes too. Great leaders understand and embrace their imperfections. When they make mistakes they own up to them in public, address the mistake and move on. The best leaders learn from their mistakes and don’t repeat them.
3. The more power we give away the more power we have. The power “held” by someone is proportional to the power, authority and responsibility they give to other people. Power is exponentialized by sharing it with our colleagues, not by hoarding it to ourselves.
4. Staying well and fit is part of the job. We can’t be too busy to stay well. Leading well takes energy – physical and mental stamina. If we’re not fit, neither are our organizations.
5. We can’t “fix” people. People can’t be managed or “fixed.” If we try to fix people, we will fail….epically. Good leaders understand they need to instill good will, help their people identify their strengths and then play to them. They don’t fixate on what’s wrong; they concentrate on what’s known and seek to maximize.
6. Over-communication is impossible. The telephone game is loudest in a vacuum of communication from leadership. Great leaders communicate with their teams early and often, and they reinforce their points repeatedly not worrying if they’re being redundant because they know they can’t be.
7. We can change people’s lives and not know it. Sometime in our careers people who have worked in our organizations will email, call or meet us and tell us that we changed their lives. Great leaders probably won’t remember that moment, but we know and are humbled that we can have that impact.
8. People with lives come to work. People – with their own backgrounds, experiences, families, interests and problems – come to work, and to expect them to not show up during working hours is unrealistic and unproductive. Great leaders understand that life is dynamic and that the best organizations accommodate their teams’ lives and shiftconstantly to make it work.
9. Rules should be broken every once in a while. Rules and policies exist to give guidance. We know that we should bend those rules from time to honor reality effectively and respectfully.
10. People will leave us – and that’s OK. Expecting that your team will stay with you through their careers is misguided and foolish. Great leaders know that their influence increases as their people go out into the world as champions of their organization and they do everything they can to foster great alumni relations.
11. We can’t do everything well. No one is perfect. No one is a straight A student in a job either. Great leaders understand what they’re good at and where they shouldn't spend their time and they hire great people to do the things they don’t do well.

From www.rocksarehard.com