As a growing multidisciplinary A/E/C firm with offices across the U.S., the size and scope of our services continually evolve. One communication skill remains essential for our leaders – flexibility. The need to build trust among our dispersed teams, offices, and clients is key, and we continue to see evidence that how that trust is built is dependent on how a leader adapts their communication style to those around them. In particular, we see successful working relationships established with new employees when leaders display patience and empathy, and this requires practice and intention. More than anything else, it requires flexibility and constant adjustments by leaders when working with different personality styles. It’s not an elusive art form, but it’s not easy either. I have delivered workshops to various groups within our firm and focus on encouraging flexibility as one of the most important personality styles in the workplace.

Evaluating Communication Styles

In order to enhance communication skills for our employees when working with clients or coworkers, we introduced the DiSC^® assessment a few years ago. We have completed over 1,400 assessments and dozens of workshops. Often, we’ll facilitate a session virtually and face-to-face, and employees remain engaged regardless of the modality. The personal narrative report that accompanies the assessment describes an individual’s style with shocking accuracy and sparks personal discoveries.

Our best leaders are naturally inquisitive about how their teams react and adjust to change. ” Dave Rutkowski

But, the greatest benefit has been the conversations that the workshop and report inevitably spawn. We do not use the assessment in isolation. Instead, a trained facilitator leads a conversation with employees to provide context and explore opportunities for interpersonal growth with participants. Often, when we run a workshop, people will ask which personality style is most effective for different workplace situations. Our response is that no one style is more—or less—effective than another style. The people who are the most effective are the ones who adopt the mindset of flexibility. How individuals tailor their communication styles and adapt to the needs of others is a person’s greatest asset.

Facilitating Flexibility as a Leader – It’s All About the Conversation

The idea of being flexible and adapting our conversations to the styles of others may seem intuitive. Yet, it still needs to be reinforced regularly; it is not a one-time discussion. The principles of flexibility and adaptation discussed during any workshop need to be periodically reintroduced and emphasized as part of the organizational culture. This is true regardless of any personality assessment tool that is used. We embed the concept of flexibility and adaptability in our key training programs and internal communications to continue the necessary reinforcement. It needs to be part of the organization’s cultural language, and it needs to be modeled by the organization’s leaders. If you are a leader, teams need to see that you are regularly being vulnerable and flexible too.

We’ve found that our most successful leaders embody the skills of a facilitator more than the traditional or stereotypical role of a manager. They embrace recurring conversations with coworkers and use non-judgmental open-ended questions to learn more about others so they can better understand how to communicate in a fashion that motivates. For example, our best leaders are naturally inquisitive about how their teams react and adjust to change. Like a skilled facilitator, they ask questions from their teams and clients rather than simply direct what people should do.