Gil Allen had a lot riding on his upcoming meeting with his boss, Joe Patterson, the organization’s executive vice president. He had an hour and a half to present his department’s staffing and budget needs for the coming year. If new items were not approved and the increases were not transferred to other items, his plan for the department would be paralyzed.

Cost containment was the top priority in the budgeting process that year. It was not a year in which to ask for increases, but Gil’s proposed costs would pay for themselves in no more than three years, after which significant savings would be realized each year. But Gil’s plan would not have succeeded had he not overcome the budget hurdle.

No one saw the working relationship between Jill and Joe as easy. After a tense meeting with Joe, Jill told his wife, “It’s just that the communication chemistry isn’t right.” In an executive coaching session, Jill learned a more helpful way to describe the problem. He saw a clash of styles between himself and the executive vice president: he was “expressive” and Patterson was “analytical.” Neither had the flexibility to do so, and the “my way, not your way” approach they used to work together had seriously hampered their relationship.

For the past four years, Jill’s presentation of the budget to Patterson had seemed miserable. The more enthusiastic Jill talked about the budget, the more Patterson grew distasteful. Jill’s colorful visual effects were appreciated by some but had no effect on Patterson. Patterson’s disdain was evident in his remarks that he could be persuaded by facts but not dazzled by lights.

Two insights from this session led Jill to adopt a different approach at the next budget meeting. The first is that how you present your proposal is as important as what you include in the proposal. The other idea that struck him was that when the relationship isn’t going well, don’t repeat what you’re doing; try something different.

What Gil decided to do differently was to use new skills he hadn’t used before to adapt his style during the important budget meeting. During an executive development session, Gil came up with a computer-generated composite image of five employees’ views of what his style was. Gil identified Patterson’s style and identified both locations on the style grid. Gil then asked Roger, one of his key employees who has an analytical style like Patterson’s, to help him come up with a better style to use during the meeting. The two settled on three different things Gil would do to better engage Patterson.

The first thing was that Gill started with agreement. Instead of trying to build rapport through storytelling, as he usually did, he showed greater focus and interest in the task. Gill planned to make his opening comments informal and brief, and to quickly move to the purpose of the meeting, thus making the beginning serious and unexciting.

Secondly, Gill decided that his presentation would be comprehensive and based on reason, supporting his opinion with a written summary and comprehensive and detailed appendices. Roger Gebel helped to prepare the presentation, reports and written appendices, so that Patterson would have access to all the data he could possibly need, which would be carefully organized for easy reference.

“I also decided to train myself to do more,” says Gill. He got into the habit of talking less and listening more. Instead of rushing to dismiss Patterson’s concerns as he usually did, he encouraged him to state all his reservations fully. When he understood Patterson’s frame of reference, he knew where they agreed, and so he used facts and reason as much as possible when discussing their differences.

Gil and Roger liked the approach they had planned, but Gil was apprehensive about executing the plan. Although he had only changed three things in his presentation, two of the changes involved a lot of things and were not easy for him to do. So Gil and Roger staged the meeting with Roger playing Patterson. The first attempt did not go very well. The two discussed what improvements could be made and tried again, this time to a satisfactory degree. Gil told Roger, “I am ready, as I always will be.”

In the actual meeting with Patterson, Gil felt he had done a good job of adapting his style. As he watched the communication between him and Patterson, he noticed some slip-ups, but overall he was able to execute the plan. He was pleased with the outcome of the meeting. They had reached a rapport that he had never had before, and Patterson had not cut Gil’s budget. Gil concluded that the three behavioral changes he had made to get along with Patterson would benefit him in future meetings as well.

If adapting the style has benefited Jill, it will benefit you as well. However, this does not mean that by adapting your style effectively you will inevitably achieve your goals. This is neither possible nor required. If you can, through a style, make others carry out your orders automatically, this will destroy the freedom of others as human beings. When we say that adapting the style may work, we mean that there is a great possibility that familiarity and closeness will be better, and that your ideas will find the attention they deserve. If you also listen to the other person carefully, you will both often come out with a better result than if you did not adapt your style.

If adapting the style has this constructive effect on interaction, the question that arises is: (How do you do this?) In this chapter we will summarize the steps of adapting the style.

A four-step process

In his meeting with his manager Patterson, Jill followed a series of steps.

Step 1: Identify. Jill identified his style and identified Patterson's style.

Step 2: Plan. With the help of a colleague, Jill selected three different types of behavior that he could use from getting along with his manager, he realized that in the context of the conversation during the meeting it would be difficult for him to do some of what he planned, so he ran a trial run of the plan with his colleague.

Step 3: Implement. During his meeting with Patterson, Jill made the behavioral changes he felt would help him get along with Patterson’s style of working, and he also periodically tested the meeting to see if he needed to take any corrective action during the meeting.

Step 4: Evaluate. At the end of the meeting, Jill mentally reviewed the process and learned from the experience.

Let’s take a closer look at what each step entails.

Step 1: Identify

In this step you:

* Observe your style

* Identify the other person’s style

To volunteer your style, you need to define it very precisely. Your initial assessment of your style may be wrong, and one reason for this is that your style is not so much about what is inside yourself as it is about how you deal with others. If you have not yet received feedback from others about your style, do so now.

To volunteer successfully, you must clearly define the style of the person or people you will be communicating with. And defining the style of others is essential.

Now that you know your style and the style of the other person, you are ready for the next step.

Step 2: Plan

Some people are reluctant to plan how to interact and communicate with colleagues. More than one person has said: (How bad it is when you have to plan how to relate to someone, everything is so... calculated).

The truth is that everyone does some planning for their contacts. We schedule meetings, sometimes make notes of things to cover on the phone, and when you know Helen is an early bird, you schedule an appointment early in the day. On the way to work, we think about the important conversation we are going to have.

We even plan our relationships outside of work, even the most intimate ones. Before proposing marriage, many of us spend a lot of time thinking about where to propose and what to say. If we say something nervous, when we leave the house in the morning, we may try to think about what we can say or do to get the relationship back on track.

It is human nature to anticipate many of our meetings with others, to think about the tone we want the meeting to take. In planning the tone, all we do is incorporate what we know about tone into the preparation process.

With experience you can often plan in your head and on the fly as you talk to the person, but at the beginning, or when the stakes are high or the conversation tends to be quite high, it is better to plan ahead and sometimes it is advisable to write the plan down.

You may now need to take some time to familiarise yourself with this valuable resource.

Type adaptation deals primarily with the process of dialogue or interaction, and we can often have good meetings if we also develop a constructive approach to the content of the discussion. As you may recall, Gill Allen was very good at planning the content he discussed with Patterson as well as the way in which it was presented, by bridging the gap between their styles.

Step 3: Act

In this step you engage in practical interaction with the other person, usually face-to-face, but sometimes by telephone or in writing. When you call the other person, you make the behavioural changes you think will improve the conversation.

As you adapt your style, see if the changes have had a positive impact on the conversation. Is this way of communicating or interacting helping the other person work better with you? Are you both more productive? If so, your theory has worked. If not, you can make adjustments on the fly to improve it.

A truly flexible person knows that when communicating with others, a certain amount of trial and error is inevitable. So do your best to think about how you can adapt to fit each person, act on what you have planned, monitor the impact of your behavior, and then change your plan and behavior when you feel it is necessary.

Step 4: Evaluate

Even though the conversation is over, there is still one essential step to adapting your style: evaluation.

Once you have adapted your style, take some time to evaluate what you have done. Over time, these brief evaluations can help you increase your style adaptation skills and improve your relationships.

First, look at the results of the conversation.

- Looking at the content of the discussion, was the person more relaxed than usual?

- Was the conversation more productive than usual?

Next, note what went well.

- What did you do that the other person responded to positively?

- What behavior did you change that had the biggest impact?

- Is this something you did well that you want to do more of with this person?

- Is this something you would like others with similar styles to do?

- Finally, identify what went wrong in your attempt to adapt your style.

- Identify exactly what you tried to do that didn’t help the conversation.

- Was the problem due to:

Not identifying the person’s style correctly?

Poor planning?

Ineffective implementation?

The assessment plan enriches your understanding of the four styles. When people first learn this model, they often have a simplified idea of ​​each of the four styles. A real-world understanding of how these styles present themselves in everyday life comes from practicing the styles and learning about them from each experience. The more you reflect on the styles that another person has behaved in when you meet them, the richer your understanding will be that you would not have had any other way.