We went to church last week and after church I was talking to a friend that I hadn’t seen in a few weeks. I had almost forgotten that the simplest conversation with him takes a long time. I think we all know people like that — they insist on giving you every nitty-gritty little step when you wish they’d cut through the chase and just give you the bottom line. All this painstaking detail makes your brain start to hurt. I’m sure there must be a lot of communication “styles.” In fact, there is an online quiz called “What’s Your Communication Style?” If you’re interested, you can check it out and even take the quiz — it’s free. Anyhow, I though it was interesting…. according to the site, about 21% of people have Functional communication style and roughly 24% have an Intuitive communication style. The Intuitive style seems to be the style more prevalent in very senior executive roles.
Intuitive communicators like the big picture and avoid getting bogged down in details. They prefer a broad overview that lets them skip right to the end point.
Functional communicators like process, detail, timelines and well-thought out plans. They communicate things in a step-by-step fashion so nothing get missed
One benefit of Intuitive communication is not getting bogged down in too many details, allowing greater comfortability with big ideas and out-of-the-box thinking.
The benefit of having a Functional communication style is that the communication generally hits all the details and nothing gets missed.
Of course the important thing isn’t the style — the important thing is that there actually is communication, something that seems to be lacking too often today. Even though I prefer someone who gets to the point quickly, I’m working on being more patient with “functional communicators.” I keep reminding myself that they’re not just rambling, they’re detail oriented.
And now, I’m learning about a whole new set of communication types — I haven’t figured texting out yet, and don’t get me started on emojis…
— 30 —.