„‚ CONDITIONS THAT HINDER EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

Style Blind Spots
The bigger one’s blind spot, the more one tends to overuse one’s strong-suit style and to
be oblivious to the need to match styles with someone else on a markedly different
wavelength. People get along best with others who are on their wavelength: Like attracts
like. Thus, thinkers will tend to gravitate together, producing a group with tremendous
ability to handle analytical problems; as all group members have strongly developed
thinking skills, they enhance one another’s effectiveness. While such a group builds an
enviable record for its success in coping with analytical problems, sooner or later it will
be handed a problem that calls for skills in intuition or empathy—and then disaster can
very well result. It is not just that the group’s skills do not match the skills the problem
calls for; worse, “groupthink” (Janis, 1972) can result, as the group’s mutually shared
blind spots increase its members’ tendency not to use their weak styles, which in this
case would be more appropriate.
APPLICATIONS OF THE FOUR-COMMUNICATION-STYLES
APPROACH
Knowledge about stylistic preferences has been used to hamstring juries. If, by
questioning, it is possible to eliminate all the “feelers” from a jury, the group that results
will not be able to achieve consensus on any issue that is at all emotional or
controversial.
Style Flexing
The most frequent use of expertise in these four communication styles is “style flexing.”
This involves:
■ Knowing your own most and least favored styles, in stress and nonstress
situations alike;
■ Knowing how you come across to others in either situation;
■ Learning how to identify the dominant style of any person(s) to whom you may
be talking; and
■ Learning how to switch your style so as to get on the same wavelength as your
conversational partner(s).
Team Building
The next most-frequent use of expertise in this approach is in team building. It is quite
unusual to be a “team in one” (equally strong in all four styles both under stress and
nonstress conditions). Most of us have overdeveloped some styles and underdeveloped
others, but there are some different strong-suit styles that seem to go well together—
feelers and thinkers in growth groups, for instance. The thinkers can dispassionately
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The Pfeiffer Library Volume 6, 2nd Edition. Copyright © 1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer