Rational vs. emotional communicational styles
Stop me if you heard this. I very rational and objective person makes what they believe is a completely rational statement to another person. The other person is more of an emotional communicator and takes total offense to this statement. What’s funny is the rational communicator can not even fathom what was wrong and repeats the statement. This only fuels the rage of the emotional communicator. The discussion ends with everyone mad.
The true irony of this statement surrounds the rational communicator. The rational communicator is either not capable of accepting feedback about his statement or prefers to fuel the fire. The former is irrational behavior, the latter is emotional behavior and neither is rational communication.
I highly recommend observing this as a third party who is not involved in the discussion. Highly entertaining.
After taking the Berkman Method personality test, one learns about the 4 major categories of communication styles. One of the best things I remember from the test/training is what to do when two conflicting communication styles need to work together. What they suggest is finding someone else who does commuicate well with the more difficult style and use them as an interpretor of sorts to make things go smoother. This may seem silly, but if there is a serious conflict in styles, it is incredibly hard to keep the conversations “rational”.
No doubt personality tests that reveal your communication are a big help. I know many of us have taken them and the seem immediately useful right after the results are given out. The overtime we all forget or move to new organizations with new co-workers. For whatever reason, everyone seem to forget about this stuff. Maybe it should be part of new hire training. The first thing you do is take the test and give the results to your new co-workers.