February 2016 Woman At Work Digital

BY INVITATION
Understanding Your Work Style:
The Key to Peak Performance
Sayali Shende is a Corporate Trainer and Founder of
Crackerjack, a training & development solutions company. She
has rich and diverse experience with corporate and academia
in USA and India. She is a professional brand strategist, a
prolific writer and a blogger. She likes to write and blog on a
variety of subjects right from branding to emotional
intelligence to women empowerment.
t work and in the business
world, we come across
different people with varied Aideas and perspectives. People deal
with their work with different
attitudes and approach. Some take
swift decisions, some stew in the
pros and cons; some are reserved
and others mingle effortlessly; some
are big picture, some are micro and
yet some may be both or neither!
These differences can be
refreshing, bring semblance, open
our world to new ideas and make
work better. But all too often these
differences in ‘work styles’ can
cause misunderstandings, gripes,
mistrust and frustration. This leads
to lower productivity, poor team
dynamics and eventually poor
performance. In many training
workshops, the objective is to enable
participants to understand one’s
interpersonal and work styles and
learn to adapt this style to match
the team members’ styles.
Based on the popular Social
Styles Inventory, one can determine
what one’s interpersonal and work
styles are. These are based on 3
dimensions:
Assertiveness
This measures the extent to which
others perceive you to be persuasive
and convincing of your point of view.
Are you a good persuader and influence
others directly or use other means to
achieve your objectives? A person with
less assertiveness could adopt other
means like rolling out new initiatives to
complete a task, get supportive data,
mostly to justify their stand and present
their arguments with people to achieve
her objective. According to this model,
more assertive people speak and
respond quickly, have emphatic
gestures and can convince others easily.
People with low assertiveness express
by first investigating others’ opinions,
are generally reserved and have
controlled gestures.
Responsiveness:
This is the level at which others
perceive you to either control or express
your emotions. Highly responsive
people are easy to decipher and their
body language resonates with their
emotions. Low responsive people are
more difficult to read and their gestures
and facial expressions don’t give a clue
of what‘s on their mind. They are more
focused on facts rather than on emotions.
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| February 2016