What’s Your (Communication) Style?

By Lisa Heay, Marketing Planning Manager at Heinz Marketing
Earlier this year I attended a training session for new managers where we did an exercise in demonstrating the value of positive and direct feedback. In that same training session, we also talked about communication styles— how to evaluate our own, as well as how to recognize the communication styles others prefer.
I’m a new manager, and have a ton to learn, but in my short tenure so far, one of the observations I’ve made is that 90% of the conflicts and issues I’ve listened to boil down to either a lack of communication or a miscommunication. Common denominator = COMMUNICATION.
It’s so valuable to not only understand how you, yourself communicate, but how others prefer to communicate or receive communication from you.
Our exercise started with a quiz to help us better understand our natural communication style. For each set of answers, we were