Communication Adaptability
The eighth quality of the Worldâs Greatest Communicators is Communication Adaptability, which is your willingness and ability to adjust your communication based on the particular needs of the situation or relationship at a particular time. It is something applied more to yourself (to your patterns, attitudes and habits) than to others.
For any situation, the strategic adjustments that need to be made will vary. The decision to employ specific adaptability techniques is made on a case-by-case basis: you can choose to be adaptable with one person, and not so with others. You can choose to be quite adaptable with one person today and less adaptable with that same individual tomorrow. Adaptability concerns the way you manage your own behaviors. It means adjusting your own behavior to make other people feel more at ease with you and the situation.
Adaptability does not mean âimitationâ of the other personâs communication style. It does mean adjusting your communication style in the direction of the other personâs preference, while maintaining your own identity.
Adaptability is important to all successful relationships. Effectively adaptable people meet other peopleâs needs in addition to their own. Through practice, they are able to achieve a balanceâstrategically managing their adaptability by recognizing when a modest compromise is appropriate, or, when the nature of the situation calls for them to totally adapt to the other personâs style, they do so. Adaptable people know how to negotiate relationships in a way that allows everyone to win. They are tactful, reasonable, understanding, and non-judgmental.
Your adaptability level influences how others judge their relationship with you. Raise your adaptability level and trust and credibility go up; lower your adaptability level and trust and credibility go down. Adaptability enables you to interact more productively with difficult people and helps you to avoid or manage tense situations. With adaptability, you can communicate with other people the way they want and need to be communicated with. It is practicing the Platinum Rule during interpersonal communications rather than the Golden Rule which states: âDo unto others as you would have them do unto you.â The Golden Rule implies the basic assumption that other people would like to be treated the way that you would like to be treated. The Platinum Rule accommodates the feelings of others. âTreat others the way they want to be treated.â The focus of relationship shifts from âthis is what I want, so Iâll give everyone the same thingâ to âlet me first understand what they want and then Iâll give it to them.â
The concept of adaptability, as developed by Dr. Michael OâConnor, my co-author of our People Smart books, is a two-part process. It combines flexibility with versatility. Flexibility is your willingness to adapt. It is your attitude. Versatility is your ability to adapt. It is your aptitude.
When you have both flexibility and versatility, you display specific characteristics. In fact, formal research studies have identified 10 attributes of people who are highly adaptable. Those who have lower adaptability also display 10 distinct characteristics. Of course, none of us is totally adaptable, or totally non-adaptable, which is why it is so important to know both the 10 characteristics you can adopt to increase your communication adaptability and the 10 that can undermine your ability to adapt.
So letâs examine these characteristics, beginning with the five positive and five negative qualities of flexibility. High flexibility is characterized by these five attributes:
âą Confidence
âą Tolerance
âą Empathy
âą Positiveness
âą Respect for others
The first attribute, confidence means that you believe in yourself, you trust your own judgment and resourcefulness. Weâve discussed at length how indispensable confidence is if you want to gain someoneâs attention.
The second high flexibility attribute is tolerance, which means you are open to accepting opinions and practices that are different from your own. We can easily think of people who are intolerant of others because of religious or political beliefs. Those intolerant folks may attract like-minded people, but they donât gain the attention of a diverse audience.
The third high flexibility attribute is empathy. The root of the word empathy is pathos, which means âfeelingâ in Greek. Empathy is a term for deep feeling. It means, âI feel what you feel. I can put myself in your shoes.â Another word with the same root, sympathy, means merely acknowledging someone elseâs feelings. It results in kindness and pity, and it comes from the head. Empathy results in feeling the pain, or the joy, of the other person. It comes from the heart.
The fourth high flexibility attribute is positiveness. Dr. Norman Vincent Pealeâs book, The Power of Positive Thinking, has sold well for over forty years because it contains such a universal truth. A positive attitude leads to positive events in your life.
The fifth high flexibility characteristic is respect for others. This is the sincere desire to understand and consider other peopleâs choices, commitments and needs in relation to yours.
Just think of the successful individuals you have admired, both friends and public figures, and you will probably notice your list is full of people with high flexibility strengths.
Now letâs consider the five Low Flexibility traits:
âą Rigidity
âą Competition with others
âą Discontent
âą Being unapproachable
âą Difficulty in dealing with ambiguity.
The first negative flexibility trait, rigidity, can be illustrated with the attitude: âItâs my way or the highway.â It can also come disguised in such sayings as: âThatâs just the way it is,â or âThose are the rules,â or âThatâll never work.â Do those kinds of sayings ever come from your mouth?
Competition is the second low flexibility trait. Competition with others is fineâin sports, in contests for salesperson of the month or in the lottery. But generally, most of our days are spent in collaboration with others, people we work with, live with, and interact with in public. A person who lives his life in competition with everyoneâand we all know someone like thatâmight be admired for his achievements, but he doesnât get the freely given attention and support of others. A person who exudes the message that âIâm smarter, or prettier, or wealthier, or more committed than you areâ doesnât garner peopleâs trust. Thatâs because the message is clearly âMe first.â
The third negative flexibility trait is discontent. This is the opposite of positiveness. In more vernacular terms, a person with this trait is called a complainer, a whiner, a wet blanket. Itâs easy to see why this person doesnât get support.
Being unapproachable is the fourth negative flexibility trait. Nobody who wants to gain power and influence and with others would describe themselves as âunapproachable.â Yet sometimes we hear things like: âIâm sticking to my guns no matter what.â Or, âDonât come to me with a problem if you donât have a solution.â Or, âIâm only interested in what works.â The attitude behind those statements is: âDonât bother me unless itâs worth my time and it corresponds to what I already believe.â Obviously, this attitude is not conducive to collaboration!
The last negative flexibility trait is difficulty in dealing with ambiguity. Because ambiguous situations can have several possible meanings, interpretations or outcomes, some people donât like them. For these people, it has to be either/or, one way or the other. They get nervous in the face of the unknown. âLetâs nail this down.â âLetâs choose one now and go for it.â At times, that approach may be necessary. But rigid people always want to get closure on one meaning, one interpretation, one outcome, as early as possible. And often that approach leaves out the opinions and contributions of other people. It certainly leaves out the possibility of serendipity. On the other hand, people with a high tolerance for ambiguity create more options for good outcomes, including choices they couldnât have predicted.
Now letâs look at the other half of the adaptability formula, versatility. Our research indicates that people have a better developed level of flexibility than versatility. Versatility requires a set of personal aptitudes. While many people are willing to modify their behaviors, they often lack the necessary set of abilities. Versatility is something we acquire over time through a variety of resources. These include formal education, daily life experiences, and observations of others who demonstrate high versatility behaviors. It generally means approaching every situation as a new opportunity for learning and growing.
The five high versatility traits are:
âą Resilience
âą Vision
âą Attentiveness
âą Competence
âą Self-correction
As we look at them one by one, try to honestly assess how much of each ability you possess.
The first high versatility trait, resilience, means knowing how to overcome setbacks, barriers and limited resources. Mainly, it has to do with your emotional strength. The very successful Lawrence Kasdan, screenwriter of many hit films including Raiders of the Lost Ark, endured over 60 rejections before he finally sold first script.
Could you have persevered through dozens of turn-downs? How many cold calls can you make in a row that all turn out to be âNo, thank you?â If you keep on going until you succeed, thatâs resilience.
Vision is the second high versatility trait. I think itâs easy to see why someone who has the power to imagine, to be creative, to suggest alternatives, is going to be more influential than someone who canât.
The third high versatility trait is attentiveness. That means being aware of elements in the environment. It can be as simple as noticing when someone is getting bored, or sensing that nowâs not the right time to present your ideas. It is knowing when to act and when not to act. It means paying attention to more than your own needs.
The fourth high versatility trait is competence. Competence begins with expertise. It also involves a problem-solving ability that goes beyond your specialty. If you donât know how to answer a question or fix a problem, you can find someone who does. It means having a can-do attitude and following through on it.
The fifth high versatility trait is self-correction. That means that once you initiate a project, you ask for feedback and place priority on problem-solving, not on being right. It means youâre able to see when youâve developed a non-productive pattern in your behavior. It is being able to say: âI think this approach isnât working. Iâd better try something different.â
Again, the five high versatility traits are: resilience, vision, attentiveness, competence, and self-correction. Now letâs round out the picture with the five low versatility attributes: subjectiveness, bluntness, resistance, single-mindedness, and unreasonable risk-taking.
The first negative versatility trait is subjectiveness. That means seeing everything strictly from your own perspective. âThis is the way it looks to ME.â And thatâs the only way you can look at it. True versatility allows you to see things from other peopleâs perspectives. You may be willing to look at an issue from another perspective, but CAN you do it? In order to reduce your subjectiveness, practice with an issue that you feel strongly about. Can you really articulate the argument of someone on the opposite side?
The next negative versatility trait is bluntness. Evaluating someoneâs idea by saying, âThatâs stupid!â may be brief and to the point.
But it will cause hurt feelings and a lack of motivation. You can win a lot more people to your side by saying, âYou know, this doesnât look like itâs going to work. Letâs explore some other options that might work better and see if we can incorporate some of your ideas as well.â Developing your tact and verbal skills takes time. It is especially helpful to listen to the kinds of phrases that tactful people use: âLet me tell you how I see it,â âI know youâre feeling strongly about this and I can appreciate that,â âLetâs see if this fits for you.â Tactful people make sure their words donât feel like assault weapons.
The next negative versatility trait is resistance. This generally means resistance to change. Obviously, we do not have to accept any and all changes that come down the pike. But every military general, every politician, every medical researcher knows you are dead in the water if you always stick to the âtried and true.â Breakthroughs happen when people try something new. If you catch yourself saying: âthis is the way weâve always done things around here,â think about it. What are you resisting?
A fourth negative versatility trait is single-mindedness. This is akin to tunnel-vision. It means you have one goal and a set way to achieve it, and nothing else matters. Single-mindedness means you canât see that other people have goals too. Letâs recall our discussion of trying to inspire people with a larger vision of what you are seeking, where you help them to see how your plan will fill their needs too. Here is an example of single-mindedness: someone who loves birds so much that she will do anything to protect them. This includes wanting to set out poison for neighboring cats and squirrels. She does not find it in her interest to unite with other people to help all the animals live in a balanced ecosystem; she is only concerned about her beloved birds.
The final negative versatility trait is unreasonable risk-taking. If you want to go bungee-jumping and risk your life, thatâs one thing. But when you are asking people to follow your lead, to go forward on your vision, you need to assess and take responsibility for the risk level that you are creating. How much did John DeLorean assess the risk that his investors were taking by giving him money for his new car company? In retrospect, he was very careless with their money. When you have high versatility, you are able to see a variety of avenues toward the success of your goal, and you choose those with the least amount of risk to those who follow you.
Only when you develop the willingness and the ability to adapt can you develop personal power with large numbers of people. You need flexibility and versatility.
In order to test your flexibility and versatility quotients, hereâs a quiz. In the following p...