Communication Styles, Part 2

Picking up where we left off in the last post…

I’ve spoken with a lot of indirect communicators who feel invalidated in direct-communicating environments. These people tend to especially appreciate leaders and colleagues who bridge to their indirect style at key moments.

Take Jasmine, who found herself in a job interview. She didn’t need the job — she had a thriving independent coaching practice — but she was pretty sure she wanted the job. Like just about any candidate before an interview, she was nervous.

She felt a generally good vibe from three members of the interview panel: the head of HR, her would-be supervisor, and a would-be peer. The fourth panelist — the head honcho of the whole organization — seemed a bit standoffish, but was cordial enough. They sat down, exchanged a few pleasantries, and got underway. 

Bit by bit, Jasmine warmed into the interview, feeling herself getting into a rhythm, sensing she was doing well. Then came a question from the big boss: “Tell us about an experience you had building community in an unfamiliar environment.” Jasmine’s first thought was: Easy! She’d done a lot of community-building during her time in South Asia. But once she started talking, she wasn’t sure her response was landing. She found herself speaking in abstractions. She started to worry she was losing her audience. She stopped talking.

After a brief, awkward silence, her would-be supervisor, Trevor, spoke: “Thank you for that, Jasmine. It’s helpful. I’m wondering if you might have a specific example of how it played out in one community?” That did it. Her brain started to click. She was recalling detail after detail about her experience, and sharing it with passion and clarity. This time, she could feel the interview panel right there with her, nodding along and appreciating what she was sharing.

When she left the interview, she felt she’d done well. And with good reason: a few days later, Trevor emailed her to confirm her references’ contact information, and a week after that, she was offered the job, which she took. She turned out to be a great fit for the role, doing standout work and getting recognized for it consistently, including through the dizzying challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. And it might not have happened, were it not for Trevor taking just a little extra time to bridge to an indirect communicator.

Jasmine reflected on the experience:

He could have easily just been like, ‘She didn’t really have a clear example.’ But instead, he was able to create space for me to be invited into a clear example. I’ve been thinking about indirect communicators. It helps to ask clarifying questions when you really need that, rather than just being like, ‘Oh, she didn’t get it.’ So I feel like, it was just a micro-moment, but I could have not had a job. It made a huge difference in some ways, you know, if he wasn't willing to slow down and actually make that space in the conversation.

As Jasmine reflected further, she went a little deeper:

Creating space. That’s really what it felt like. That one extra beat of like, pausing to check in. Because I feel like that one extra beat to pause and check yourself, like, am I just operating in a certain way, and, in case I am operating in my own way, can I just make a little more space for some other way to be invited in? And it just takes a beat of that, you know.

Taking a beat. It’s not something we’re trained to do. We’re trained to be efficient. Time is money. Don’t waste it! Do, do, do. Then do some more.

In fixating on efficiency, the time-is-money professional norms that predominate in “Western” societies ignore everything else that makes us human. And still the efficiency frame dominates in the workplace.

I can relate. I know, both from introspection and from formal assessments, that direct communication is my own default style. To me there is beauty in efficiency. Time is at a premium; let’s not waste it on unnecessary words, or unnecessary anything. If I can successfully convey to you what I’m thinking in 30 seconds instead of two minutes, that’s a win.

Yet I’ve also become increasingly aware of the de-humanizing costs associated with the fixation on efficiency. There are very real differences in people’s communication styles, and if we don’t bridge, we can easily end up missing opportunities to forge common ground.

Now, regardless of communication style, it’s normal for people to feel nervous in a job interview. It’s not surprising that anyone, including Jasmine, would feel like they aren’t being as succinct as they might want to be. At the same time, it can be easy to forget that the preference for succinctness is itself culturally specific. If Jasmine hadn’t felt the need to conform to the norm and be succinct, she might have felt less pressure.

When she feels under time pressure to express a thought, she can start to feel overwhelmed, precisely due to her communication style. As she puts it, “I don’t really think specifically. I think that a lot of my indirectness...I get bombarded with a lot of context whenever I think about something, so it’s hard for me to just come to the point, or the specifics, because suddenly everything is in my brain all at once.”

That’s how it is for Jasmine. We don’t know if all indirect communicators experience things this way — they probably don’t — but Jasmine's experience by itself should be enough to convince us that ignoring the needs of indirect communicators comes at a cost. (See the last post for specific strategies for bridging to indirect communicators.)

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