How Flexible is your Communication?

Before my speech，I want to ask all of your a few questions and I want to see a show of hands:

1. How many of you know your own communication style？ Supportive ，Anylatical，Initiating or Direct?

2. Have you ever met someone that you just couldn't get through to? Do you know the reasons？ or you just think there must be something wrong with him or her. 

By researching this project，I find many of my deep-rooted opinions are wrong. Let me share with you one of them.

Use it for all.  While I invented  this phrase on my own. So let me illustrate what I mean with my own personal example.  Your know in this project，I have filled in the questionnare named discover your communication style.  I scored the highest in supportive communication style.  Persons with supportive communication style is calm，approachable，sincere and gentle. They are often seen as cooperative and dependable. They put high priority on close relationship and avoid conflicts.  My first job is to be an educational administrator in an international School in Shanghai which has a flat（扁平化） organizational structure.  My supportive communication style fit quite well in that school and I tend to collaborate smoothly with my colleagues no only from China but also from foreign countries.  And then I move to my second job with the same working content in a state-owned enterprises.  It has a highly hierarchical structure(层级化).  And things start to get wrong.  My supportive communication style appears to be strange and weird in the whole working environment.  My colleague even advises me that you shouldn't be so approachable，gentle and cooperative ，you are supposed to give orders and monitor the whole process，otherwise they won't listen to you. Suddenly I relaize that I have used the same communication style in different situations and organizations with different structures.  So that leads to my second highest score in direct communication style.  A person with direct communication style is results-oriented，decisive and prefer effeicient and structured environment. So I try to mainly apply it in the working place but still encourage others to share feelings and details that can lead to dialogue.

So from my experience，I truly think that first we need to identify our unique communication style，then adapt our communication style to different situational needs or different organizational structures，even different people. Next time when you have conflicts with someone，try to think about could it be the reason that your communication style is different from his or her?  How can you adjust your communication style to make you more flexible in your interactions with others?  Thank you.