Reference 4

Communication styles

According to an economist intelligence unit survey in 2018 different communication styles were the top cause of poor workplace communication. The same report showed that poor communication is having a tremendous impact on the workplace. Respondents said that communication barriers led to:

• Delayed or failed projects (44%)
• Low morale (31%)
• Missed performance goals (25%)
• Lost sales (18%)

There is evidence that understanding preferred communication styles and deliberately working to include a variety of communication styles in teams can improve performance as explored in a number of HBR articles – see below.

The four suits in the cards represent four different styles of interaction or communication.

The suits draw on a wide variety of sources including the work of the EU Erasmus  funded LincInc project and Peter B Smith on Inter-cultural communication, the learning styles work of the work of Linda Berens (Interaction styles) who in turn draws on the work of William Moulton Marston (Emotions of Normal People as a basis for behavior.)

See the following for details of the research and evidence:

• https://eiuperspectives.economist.com/sites/default/files/EIU_Lucidchart-Communication barriers in the modern workplace.pdf
• https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-new-science-of-team-chemistry,
• https://hbr.org/video/4631884629001/getting-to-yes-across-cultures
• http://link-inc.eu/online-center/handbook/intercultural-communication-conflict-resolution/
• Emerging Theories of Human Communication, edited by Branislav Kovacic, Branislav Kova
• Linda V Berens, Understanding yourself and Others, an introduction to interaction
• Communication Styles as Dimensions of National Culture, Peter B. Smith