Daniel Goleman, an expert on emotional intelligence and an author of various books on this subject including ‘Blink’ says that a good golfer doesn’t play with only one club in his bag. In order to ace the game, the golfer has to have a play with different kinds of clubs to master the tricky terrain as and when the situation requires. The versatility of your clubs then leads to the quality of the game.
He then goes on to relate it to the style of leadership in everyday business as usual life. Why would then a manager adopt the same style of leadership with every direct report. A good manager flexes his or her style to suit the temperament of each of his team members and direct reports whereas an ineffective manager expects everyone else around him or her to change their style to suit the manager’s ways.
Many decades ago, almost in the industrial age, two American psychologists Merrill and Reid, came up with a simple but quite potent social style assessment tool which complements the idea of manager versatility. The tool was called social styles and aims to assess how each individual comes across in their interpersonal skills. The social styles tool, measures people on their responsiveness and assertiveness scale. People who are high on assertiveness tend to be driven and goal-oriented and have a dominant streak in their personality. The responsiveness scale refers to the emotional reaction of people. Highly responsive people are emotionally charged and are highly social. Whereas those on the lower end of this spectrum are emotionally very controlled and steer clear of people sensitivities and nuances.
The social styles model defines four distinct categories of people. None of them is superior or inferior to the other. It just describes how a specific style comes across in any set of circumstances.
The driver is highly assertive and least responsive to emotional expressions. In their dominant interpersonal skills, they come across as impatient, goal oriented, focused and competitive. They operate with short attention spans and don’t take very well when it comes to emotional expression or people sensitivities. Their manner can be considered abrupt by some people and can be considered too task focused. Drivers have a strong desire to be in control.
The analytical style is low on the responsiveness and assertiveness scale. They are the technical experts usually and have a high need for process orientation, extreme attention to detail and have an innate need for accuracy. They work slowly but carefully whilst upholding absolute compliance and adherence to rules, requirements and involve themselves with doing the right thing. Inaccurate information and processes can make them quite upset.
Amiables are low on assertiveness and high on responsive scale. They are the kindest people to be around. They are the friendly faces in offices with an amazing appetite to hear people’s sob stories or adventures. They run away from confrontations, work slowly and at their own pace. Don’t wish to upset the apple cart. They are very collaborative and like to please others. They have a need to be included and feel part of the team and wish to be liked.
Expressives are high on responsiveness and high on assertiveness. They are loud, extroverted people and are usually the life of the party and in charge of all social clubs. Their attention spans are short. They love to narrate stories and are charged by social activities. They believe in comradery and love attention. Expressives have a deep need to be recognised.
Broadly each of the four categories bring their own unique flavour to the team. The driver, believes in command and control which doesn’t go down well at all with the amiable who believes in kindness and warm and fuzzy chats to get work done. Whereas an analytical person gets miffed by the vagueness and imprecision an expressive operates with.
Having these diverse social styles puts an added challenge to the manager who not only first has to know their own style and then identify that of their individual team member. This means that once identification of social styles is done, the manager now has a task ahead of them. This task is about flexing their style.
An effective manager understands self and then understands the team that they work with. This involves being conscious of the innate working need of the direct report and altering your communication and leadership style to suit that of the direct report. For example, if the manager has a ‘driver’ social style predominantly, who gets straight to the point, dislikes small talk and is very work driven with impatience to achieve results whereas their direct report is more of an expressive who loves to tell how their weekend was, possibly share half the plot of the movie they caught last night. An interaction between the driver manager and the expressive direct report which involves the manager calling up the report first thing in the morning saying hi and asking about the presentation straight away may not go down very well. The direct report may feel alienated and the opportunity to build rapport may have been lost potentially. However, some amount of small talk may help to set the scene in a more palatable way to ease into work. This is very demanding for a driver who dislikes small talk but then who said being a manager was an easy job! This is what a manager is expected to do anyway.
Similarly, whilst giving feedback, assigning a task, dealing with the direct report in difficult scenarios, it is critical to flex your style as a manager to mirror that of the direct report so that they can relate better to the message and the manager.
A versatile manager can do this with ease overtime; it takes practice, conscious activity of being aware of your own style vs that of the team. Whilst there is no prescription right or wrong, should or must, or sermonisation but in the practical field it has been observed that tailoring your approach to suit each individual has long term dividends in motivation, better rapport and a more productive team culture.
It is also important to remember that whilst the aim is not to pigeonhole or box people in quadrants and tendencies as we all are a beautiful kaleidoscope of our unique tendencies. This model only helps to define in broad terms loosely what categories people may fall into. It then assists in flexing our behaviour to suit their need better. People may be a blend of some categories with one style being dominant over the other at different times. So there is no black and white tendency here but an overall indication of which way a person sways.
To conclude, it would be reasonable to encourage managers to reflect first on their own social style and then evaluate that of their direct reports. Once this step is undertaken then comes the test of a leader’s versatility- how far are you willing to go to meet your team in flexing your social style to match theirs. The rewards could be manifold. You may want to try to be pleasantly surprised.
The writer is a senior banker and freelance columnist
