Social Style/Management Style: Developing Productive Work Relationships

By Robert Bolton and Dorothy Grover Bolton

What is social style, and how can you make it work for you in a business situation? Your success at any management level depends largely on your ability to deal with other people.

In this business-oriented approach to interpersonal relationships, management experts Robert Bolton and Dorothy Grover Bolton show you how to assess various behavior patterns and how to use that knowledge to capitalize on your strengths, minimize your weaknesses, and get the results you want from others. Are you predominantly an Amiable, an Analytical, an Expressive, or a Driver?

Nearly everyone, according to Boltons' extensive research, uses on of the four basic social styles more often than the others. No style is better than any other, but each does bring with it a unique pattern of strengths and weaknesses. This book shows you not only how to recognize your style but also:

• how to use that knowledge to manage others more effectively,
• set appropriate life goals and career paths,
• plan a sound self-improvement plan,
• increase your creativity, and more.

The best managers excel at being what they are rather than trying to be what they are not. If you feel that your effectiveness at work could be increased by better interpersonal skills but are tired of theories that want you to overhaul yourself to fit some uncomfortable, impersonal "management style," then let Social Style/Management Style improve your dealings with others and still let you be yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Oct 25, 1984
• ISBN: 9780814424384

Robert Bolton

Robert Bolton, Ph.D., is president of Ridge Consultants in Cazenovia, New York, a firm that specializes in improving human performance in industry, health care, education, and government. His staff has taught communication skills to thousands of managers, salespersons, first-line supervisors, secretaries, customer-relations personnel, teachers, members of the clergy, health-care workers, couples, and others. He is the author of People Skills, People Styles at Work, and Listen Up or Lose Out.

Book preview

PARTI

What Is Social Style?

People who have a greater awareness of the communicative significance of actions . . . can be more successful ... in work that involves the persuasion, leadership, and organization of others. . . . Most can benefit from a greater awareness of their social style, the effect it has on casual and brief interactions with others, or its more general effect on their social life.

—Albert Mehrabian     

Silent Messages       

CHAPTER 1

Managing Yourself and Working with Others

After reviewing the history of human thought, the philosopher Aldous Huxley said there is only one question of importance: Who am I and what, if anything, can I do about it?¹ There are, of course, other basic questions that demand clear answers. For example: Who are the other people in my life and what, if anything, can I do about the way I interact with them? Common sense tells us that our answers to these questions will have a major impact on our lives and our work. This book is designed to help you discover pragmatic answers that will contribute to your effectiveness at work and to fulfillment in your life. Our approach is based on the social style concept for understanding oneself and others.

The Social Style Concept

The social style concept, initially formulated by David Merrill and his associates, is perhaps the most useful model for helping people at work understand themselves and others. A social style is a pervasive and enduring pattern of interpersonal behaviors. A more detailed explanation of this concept will be given in the next chapter. For now it is enough to say:

There are four social styles, none of which is better or worse than any of the other styles.

Evidence to date suggests that the population of English-speaking Americans is evenly divided (by statistical analysis) among the four styles.

Each person has a dominant social style, and that style influences the way he works.

Observable behaviors are the key to understanding a person’s social style.

The best way of discovering one’s own social style is to receive feedback from other people.

Understanding Yourself

The most powerful influence on a person’s life is the view one holds of oneself. Accurate self-knowledge is essential for:

Developing positive personal relationships.

Managing others effectively.

Setting appropriate life goals and career paths.

Planning and implementing a sound self-improvement program.

Increasing one’s creativity.

Increasing other aspects of personal effectiveness.

Self-knowledge is the starting point for effectiveness at work.

Each person has a self-image that, to some degree, does not match reality. A significant difference between self-image and reality can be harmful. The more self-aware you are, the less likely you are to be vulnerable to your illusions. The more aware you are, the more you can do with your life. As our friend Therese Livingstone Smith said, Awareness is the foundation on which other experiences rest.

In many courses based on the social style concept, each participant receives confidential information about his behavioral patterns from experts on that subject—the people he trusts and who know him well. The feedback received is based on behavior the others observed. This information about how the participant comes across to others is very useful.

Self-knowledge is the starting point of leadership effectiveness. As Machiavelli, the shrewd fifteenth-century author and statesman, wrote, To lead or attempt to lead without first having a knowledge of self is foolhardy and sure to bring disaster and defeat.²

Managing Yourself

Effective self-management is essential to supervising others well. Many management problems that seem to be caused by outside forces actually result from the manager’s own behavior. People who try to manage others without first achieving a large measure of self-mastery usually misdirect their energy. As D. H. Lawrence wrote concerning one of his characters, Poor Richard Lovatt worried himself to death struggling with the problem of himself and calling it Australia.³ Many a manager has struggled with the problem of himself and called it the department, the boss, or a particular subordinate. As long as a person mismanages himself, he is apt to mismanage everything else.⁴

A central theme of the social style concept is: Excel at being what you are, rather than try to be what you are not. Social style teaching does not suggest that you alter the essential you. It does not attempt to overhaul you so you will fit some supposedly superior style. Indeed, research shows that every style is effective if it is implemented well and is appropriate to the situation. A major purpose of this book is to help you see the special opportunities and weaknesses of your own managerial style. Then you can capitalize on your strengths and protect yourself against your style-based weaknesses.

Understanding Others

Never before in history have people been required to interact with so many other people. The sheer numbers of people that we have to relate to in the modern organization is a new phenomenon. So, more than ever before, we need an effective way of understanding and working with a wide variety of people. Yet most people find it extremely difficult to understand other people. Lewis Thomas, a gifted and sensitive scientist, said, Our behavior toward each other is the strangest, most unpredictable, and almost entirely unaccountable of all the phenomena with which we are obliged to live.⁵

There’s no question about it: People’s behavior is difficult to understand. However, the social style model helps us to see that within a person’s seemingly haphazard behavior there is far more order than most people suspect. Much behavior is habitual and fairly predictable. The patterns fall into two crucial dimensions—assertiveness and responsiveness. If you learn to locate a person on these dimensions, you can determine his predominant social style.

Obviously, understanding another person’s social style does not tell us all there is to know about that person. But it does give us insight into differences between people and helps us understand some of the potential trouble spots in our relationships with those whose behavior patterns are different from our own. When we lack awareness of another person’s working style, it is easy to misconstrue the other’s words and behaviors because we often interpret what the other person says and does from the perspective of our own social style rather than the style of the other person.

Understanding other people’s social styles improves working relationships by increasing one’s acceptance of the other person and his way of doing things. The social style model helps people understand at a deeper level that, just because another person’s way of doing the job is different, it isn’t necessarily wrong. In fact, each working style, when used effectively and appropriately, can be successful.

Increased acceptance is not only a key to work effectiveness, it is essential for all sound relationships. Philosopher Martin Buber put it this way, Genuine conversation . . . means acceptance of others.⁶

Working with Others

Although there are other useful applications of social style, the focus of this book is on creating more productive work relationships. This can be partly achieved by factors we have already mentioned:

Better work relationships begin with improved self-understanding and self-management. Working on a relationship always requires working on oneself.

Increased understanding and acceptance of others also enhances relationships.

Two other general approaches for improving work relationships are taught in this book. They comprise the principal aspects of what we call interpersonal flexibility. One of these approaches focuses on the way virtually all people like to be treated. Certain types of interpersonal behavior nearly always work better than others. These basic ways of behaving with people— honestly, fairly, and respectfully—contribute to productive relationships. Without these fundamentals, relationships will be on shaky ground and will usually be exploitive, especially over the long haul.

We use the terms style flex⁷ and to flex one’s style to describe the other way of enhancing relationships. It involves the use of interpersonal processes that are compatible with the way the other person chooses to relate. Here, in a nutshell, is how style flex works.

First, identify your own social style. Next, identify the probable social style of the other person. With this information you will be able to predict which aspects of your communication will probably be comfortable for both you and the other person and which aspects may be more strained. You will be able to predict at what points your two styles will mesh and where they are apt to clash. Thus prepared, you can anticipate needless conflicts and miscommunication and head most of them off before they happen. Working with the strengths of others will also become more natural.

Third, having diagnosed the gap between your social style and that of the other person, add or subtract some behaviors from your usual way of relating. That will help the other person feel more comfortable.

Thus, style flex is the temporary use of less habitual behaviors to foster a mutually beneficial interaction. The person who, in addition to treating others honestly, fairly, and with respect, follows these few steps of style flex can increase work effectiveness. Not only can he improve his own performance, but also, through improved work relationships, he can facilitate higher productivity in others.

All of us flex our styles to some degree without even thinking about it. We are more concerned about being on time to a meeting with John, who is known for his punctuality, than with Chris, who seems less time conscious. We are apt to joke for a few minutes before getting down to business with Karen, who loves a good laugh. With Mary, though, we tend to get right to the point because that’s the way she prefers to work. When we make these adjustments without thinking about them, we are doing unconscious style flex. As a conscious approach to work relationships, style flex needs to be done only occasionally—at moments when the stakes are important. To flex one’s style all the time would be to lose one’s sense of self—probably the greatest loss of all.

The value of interpersonal flexibility is most apparent when compared with its opposite. People with low interpersonal competence tend to withhold or distort important information or to be manipulative. They seek win-lose rather than win-win outcomes. They act in ways that subtly or overtly put themselves up and others down. And they try to force others to work in their own accustomed way rather than adapt their way of working to meet the needs of others.

Management consultant Stuart Atkins says of inflexibility: My-way-or-your-way is the most tension-producing, dissatisfying, time-wasting, energy-drawing, relationship-breaking activity known to man, woman, or child. ⁸ Inflexible approaches to people harm relationships and rob us of one of the potentially richest rewards of work life—satisfying human contact. Interpersonal inflexibility also causes productivity to plummet.

Interpersonal Flexibility and Vocational Success

Effectiveness at work has many components. We hardly mention technical ability in this book because our focus is on the interpersonal dimensions. It is obviously important to have the technical skills, but technical mastery alone is insufficient. One needs to be able to relate to others—peers, boss, subordinates, customers, suppliers, regulatory agency personnel, and others. A significant percentage of people who have ample technical skill are hampered by low interpersonal flexibility. Their less-than-adequate ways with people often create needless resistance to them and their ideas. Other factors being equal, the ability to forge productive relationships makes the difference between higher and lower levels of success.

The Interpersonal Factor

Almost all work today involves relating to other people. Studies show that people who have less than the average amount of interpersonal contact at work still spend about 20 percent of their time communicating with others on the job. Usually that fifth of their time is crucial for accomplishing what they want to do. Success or failure in the modern workplace hinges, in large measure, on the effectiveness of interpersonal relationships. For instance, surveys of customers’ buying habits reveal the importance of interpersonal competence in that area. In most cases, the customers’ decisions to stop buying or to switch to another source is primarily dependent on what salespeople do or don’t do to make the buying experience a satisfactory one.

Managers especially find the key responsibility of their position is achieving results with and through other people. Although most managers know this in the top of their minds, on-the-job behavior suggests a very different priority. For instance, when studies in a major chemical company showed that more than half of the managers’ work time was spent on people management, the managers’ attitude was that their time was being wasted. They didn’t think they were being productive unless they were primarily in a doing role rather than in a coaching, facilitating, and coordinating role.⁹

It’s not surprising that managers react this way. Early in life they struggle to discover where their aptitude is greatest. Then they discipline themselves in school to develop their areas of skill. During the first years on the job, they further hone those abilities. Then, after one or two promotions, the demands of their jobs change radically. Instead of their chosen areas of concentration, they now need to develop a new specialty—understanding and managing people. Their technical competence may still be important, but if they have several subordinates reporting to them, their most important asset is the ability to achieve productivity through others.

Lasting effectiveness in front-line supervision benefits from interpersonal competence because, in the final analysis, you can manage only with the consent of the managed.