How Communication Styles Affect Team Management and Business Environment

Clear communication is an easy way to boost productivity, reduce workplace stress, and create better relationships with coworkers. 

No matter if you are a product manager, team lead, or a business owner, – you must successfully manage different communication styles if you want your team and company to be successful. 

Each person has a unique way of communicating. As an effective leader, you have to navigate these differences in order to utilize their skills. By understanding different examples of communication styles, you will be able to understand your employees better and learn how to collaborate in a proper way.

Over a lifetime, people are used to developing the skill of communication. Even if you apply the most powerful collaboration software, you’ll definitely need to develop this skill, anyway. You will need to learn what to do with each communication style. 

What are the styles of communication? How can we define different aggressive and passive communication examples? Finally, how to identify your own type. Grab your popcorn: this text will put everything in its place!

Why Is It Important to Communicate Effectively?

Effective communication among team players ensures that you have a good understanding of your clients, meaning their interactions with the customer service and sales depts. Of course, this is critical to achieving a high ROI on your marketing efforts and overcoming possible obstacles.

Successful communication in the workplace will positively affect communicating with your clients. It will help to boost customer loyalty by enhancing transparency. 

By understanding the client’s culture, communication styles, and needs, you will be able to position your marketing messages to resonate with those factors that will move your clients through the buyer’s journey.

You will need enough knowledge and extensive research to create marketing messages that will convert customers. It will require finding a way to bring your messages to life with infographics, explainer videos, pop-ups, and other visuals. It’s not a secret that ads with visuals outperform those without them.

The following info about communication styles and styles will guide you in your marketing efforts. Let’s dive into the details!

What is communication style?

Communication styles have the power to create and maintain meaningful connections, a crucial aspect of success in any life aspect. Here are some essential reasons why you need to connect:

• Effective communication and the ability to connect directly correlates with career success.
• A well-defined communication style builds a healthy family environment.
• Stable interpersonal connections positively affect physical and mental health.
• People who feel connected to others have lower rates of anxiety and depression.
• People with meaningful connections live longer.

What are the best communication styles? In order to understand it, we need to delve into their description.

5 Popular Communication Styles

Every individual has a way in which he/she interacts and exchanges information with other people. This is about a unique type of communication.

There are four general types of communication styles: passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, and assertive. Can you differentiate them all? Actually, it’s rather important to understand each communication style, not only for your business role but for every-day life as well.  Let’s try to better understand the characteristics of each style and facts that make them unique.

1. Passive communication

What is passive communication? People who use a passive communication style often act indifferently. They prefer to yield to others and often fail to express their feelings or needs. It is easier for them to allow others to express themselves. Often, a lack of outward communication may lead to misunderstanding and resentment from the side of such people. 

However, passive communicators can be safer to speak with when a conflict happens. They typically display poor body posture and a lack of eye contact, acting in a way that states people never consider their feelings. Let’s say, passive communicators just go with the flow.

2. Aggressive communication

This is a type of communication in which individuals brightly express their opinions and feelings and advocate for their needs in a way that violates the rights of others. Aggressive communicators are often verbally (or even physically) abusive.

You’ll hear and see it when someone communicates in an aggressive manner. This type of communication is emphasized by poor listening, interrupting, speaking in a loud and demanding voice, maintaining intense eye contact, and dominating others. Such people are used to blaming, criticizing, intimidating, threatening, or even attacking.

Aggressive communicators can also be considered leaders and command respect team players around them. These people can focus on winning even if it is on the other person’s expense. Many people admit that this is not a healthy communication type as the content of the message can be lost. Recipients become too busy reacting to the way it is delivered.

3. Passive-aggressive communication

Passive-aggressive communication brings both of the types described above. This is about a type of communication where an individual seems passive on the outside but is indirectly acting out his/her anger. 

People who use this style of communication typically feel powerless. They can undermine the object of their resentments subtly to express how they feel. “Cutting off your nose to spite your face” – this expression is right about such communicators.

People who use this type of communication often mutter comments to themselves while in the presence of other people as if they didn’t want others to hear it. Many of them prefer to refuse to confront others about something that is bothering them. Passive-aggressive communicators are often engaged in rumors and gossip. If they do not get their way, they may complain or sulk.

4. Submissive communication

A submissive communicator tries his/her best to please others and avoid conflict, treating the needs of others as more important than his/her own.

These people often behave as if the other individual has more rights and more to contribute. They always apologize, feeling as if they are imposing when they want something. 

Submissive communication is common for people who try to avoid any confrontation and yield to the preferences of others. It is a usual thing for them to feel like the victim and refuse compliments. They don’t express their desires or how they are feeling. Submissive communicators will always try their best to make themselves as small as possible. They will fidget a lot and will portray submissive behaviors. They typically feel guilty and frustrated and don’t know what they want.

5. Manipulative communication

This type of communication is preferred by shrewd, scheming, and calculating individuals. They are great at influencing and controlling other people for their own benefit. 

Manipulative communicators have an underlying message when they speak and often the other person is unaware of it. They strive to control other people in an insidious way such as using fake tears, sulking, indirectly asking for their needs to be met, etc.

Such a communicator will probably try to patronize, ingratiating, and envious. The other person will feel guilty and irritated, and will not sure of where to stand with them.

If you think that this is all about the types of communication, then you are mistaken. Now is the time to look at the different business communication styles from a slightly different angle.

What Are The Typical Communication Styles in the Workplace?

People communicate differently, even if they’re speaking the same language. Some of us give short and straightforward responses to questions while others prefer to add a ton of details. 

Knowing your own communication style may help to succeed in a personal and organizational sense. There are four communication styles defined by the business writer Mark Murphy. Here they are:

1. Analytical style

Analytical communication style is common for the people who tend to focus on statistics and figures. 

These communicators prefer facts to drive their decisions and inform others. If someone on their team does not use logical thought in decision-making, they will become frustrated. They are typically not emotionally grounded. Team members often see them as heartless or motivated solely by logic. 

However, in many cases, it can be a strong benefit when analytical communicators can cut through emotions and get to the crux of the matter.

2. Intuitive style

Intuitive communication is about using the final result of a discussion to guide one’s contributions. Such communicators are the opposite of analytical thinkers. They just center on what the end goal of the project should be. 

Intuitive communicators are not concerned with details and like to look at the big picture. They are goal-oriented and their key goal is the bottom line and what it takes to get this result. However, people with this style may sometimes miss important details.

3. Functional style

Functional communicators like processes and thrive on organization and planning. They are fond of working with step-by-step instructions and seeing how things evolve into the product. This actually inspires curiosity in the other team members and helps them understand the changes needed to complete projects. 

Functional communicators like statistics and facts. They enjoy using tools like whiteboards and Gantt charts. Their main role is to implement ideas and turn them into reality. Some of them share the traits of intuitive communicators, as they sometimes overlook details within each step of a project.

4. Personal style

A personal communication style completes the list of 4 types of communication. People who communicate in accordance with the personal style, value connection, relationships, and emotional language above all. They may be considered the glue that holds the social fabric of the company together. 

Personal communicators can see things from different perspectives. They usually mediate and ensure that everyone in the office understands what everyone else is thinking. These people inspire trust in others that gives them extra leverage in situations where the buy-in is required. 

However, personal communicators can become upset or exasperated by a lack of emotion in team communication. It is not the best aspect of this communication style.

Conclusion

By understanding all the mentioned effective communication styles, you will be able to learn the most relevant ways of working with different types of people. 

Hopefully, our post will help you know how to react to certain people and situations. These examples of communication styles may assist you in avoiding unnecessary conflicts, reducing stress, and improving professional relationships.

Make sure you totally understand your own communication style. Once you know it, you will be able to improve your strengths and minimize possible weaknesses.

What do you think about the types of communicators? How do you determine your own communication style?

Please, share your thoughts with us!