People Styles
What motivates people? How can you influence them? How can you tap into people's strengths and potential, and minimize the impact of their weaknesses?
Once you know what to look for, the answers to these questions are less mysterious than you might think. Research has shown that by looking at two dimensions of human behavior, you can learn a lot about what makes people tick. And once you know how to read the people you work with, it becomes clear how to work with them more effectively.
That's what our People Styles workshop is all about. This course will help you increase:
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Your ability to observe and read other people's behavior
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Your awareness of your own style and what you do to heighten or reduce interpersonal stress in others
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Your ability to "flex" your behavior to be more effective in difficult interactions without sacrificing your integrity
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Your appreciation of styles different from your own.
Ridge's founders, Robert Bolton and Dorothy Grover Bolton, wrote the classic business books on style, Social Style/Management Style and People Styles at Work. Supported by strong behavioral science research but focused on practical application, these books have helped thousands of people improve their relationships and results at work.
There are many different "style" and "type" workshops out there. Here's what creates the People Styles edge:
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Feedback from others
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Research-based profile
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Specific behavior-based skills
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"Flexing to" versus "pigeon-holing" others
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Practice with feedback
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Treating others as individuals, not just "a style."
FEEDBACK FROM OTHERS
Participants in the People Styles training receive a personalized Social Style Profile based on the feedback of 3-5 colleagues of their choice. They contrast this feedback from others to their own self-assessment and learn the differences between how they perceive themselves and how others perceive them. Given this feedback from others, they know what they are doing to create interpersonal stress, then what to do to minimize it.
RESEARCH-BASED PROFILE
The Social Style Profile is grounded in 50 years of research. It is the most valid, reliable, and effective behavioral measurement instrument we're aware of. If you would like to receive a white paper detailing the methodology of the profile, contact us.
SPECIFIC BEHAVIOR-BASED SKILLS
Most training about styles focuses on understanding the preferences and motivations of different styles. This often results in a "pop psychology" assessment of your coworkers but little else. Rather than reduce stress in others, it often creates more tension. People resent being profiled this way.
Our take is that relationship stress occurs when people's behaviors are out of sync: their pacing is different, they express emotions differently, and their energy is different. Though these disconnects may seem minor, they can create enough static to damage interactions and even important work relationships.
We teach key behaviors to "flex" so that you can get in sync quickly with other people, so that you can be on their level while simultaneously maintaining the integrity of who you are.
"FLEXING TO" VERSUS "PIGEON-HOLING" OTHERS
The purpose of styles training is to highlight differences in order to work more effectively with them. Unfortunately, it's easy for such exercises to degenerate into stereotyping as people focus on the narrow definitions and weaknesses of other styles. Things are often said in jest; such "style bashing" may begin in the workshop, and unless corrected, it is what people practice back on the job.
In People Styles, we make sure the tone remains positive and respectful by keeping participants focused on what they can do to change their own behavior. They identify ways they can better play to their own strengths, minimize their own weaknesses, and ultimately work more effectively with people.
PRACTICE WITH FEEDBACK
The heart of People Styles is not style theory but skill practice—participants learn how to read others and adjust their own styles with a combination of integrity and impact. Throughout the course, they receive feedback from other participants as well as our trainers. The payoff: when they leave the course participants have the skill and confidence to apply what they've learned immediately back on the job.
TREATING OTHERS AS INDIVIDUALS
Our behavioral approach to styles not only asks participants to use the lens of styles to gain better understanding into how they can adjust their behaviors, but also challenges them to go beyond styles and focus on how to "show up" more effectively with a particular person. By attending in this way, participants learn to see beyond style and appreciate the unique richness of their colleagues, person by person.
Copyright 2008 Ridge Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.