Developing Qualities to Achieve Complimentary Cohesion
Adaptability, insight, and influence are indispensable qualities for achieving success in the workplace. Adaptability enables individuals to navigate the ever-changing landscape of work by embracing new technologies, processes, and challenges with agility and flexibility. It allows professionals to adjust their strategies, acquire new skills, and thrive in dynamic environments. Insight, on the other hand, empowers employees to gain a deeper understanding of their work, industry, and stakeholders. It involves the ability to analyze data, identify patterns, and make informed decisions that drive positive outcomes. By combining adaptability with insight, individuals can anticipate trends, anticipate challenges, and proactively seek innovative solutions.
Influence plays a vital role in the workplace, as it allows individuals to effectively communicate their ideas, inspire others, and lead teams towards common goals. The capacity to build relationships, collaborate, and persuade others is essential for fostering a positive and productive work environment. This blog will explore these three qualities in relation to complementary cohesion, how one processes the environment, how one advances ideas to reality, and how one influences others.
Insight
What is insight? It is the ability to read a person, situation, or yourself, in order to assess the underlying variables to help you better understand those variables and determine what course of action to take. It is a critical, foundational ingredient in building block skills like problem-solving, conflict management, and relational influence. Leaving it undeveloped is simply not an option.
Insight is a foundational skill necessary in at least 90% of day-to-day activities that involve doing anything with anyone. Some would argue that insight is a gift. You either have it or you don’t. However, if you aren’t gifted with insight, you can develop it. You must work to develop it if you don’t have it, or if that skill is not well refined. Without it, you simply cannot meet your full potential.
Adaptation
Adaptation is a skill requiring insight. In order to adapt, you need to be able to read the situation or other people involved well enough to figure out how to change your response to meet their needs. Adaptation requires flexibility.
Regardless of whether the work being done is changing, or the company has redirected their course, individuals must take steps to remain competent and committed. People must learn to think on their feet and respond to the unexpected circumstances that change presents. The worst thing about doing this is that it rarely comes naturally for anyone. People are creatures of habit, and experience builds who they are. Change is hard, but embracing it passionately is even harder. Everyone involved must believe each person will contribute to the best of their ability. Choosing to respect one another is at the core of success.
Influence
So, if insight is required for adaptability, and adaptability is required to build influence skills, then both are essential to build one’s “relational” influence. This logic makes the full development of the influence skill also dependent upon the development of a person’s insight and adaptability. Restated, the development of solid influence is in fact, directly related to how relational one can get when influencing another, or how well they can adapt their language to the other person’s preferred methods, which requires insight.
Complimentary Cohesion
Complimentary cohesion refers to a culture where individuals are encouraged to embrace and celebrate their differences, leading to a sense of inclusivity, mutual respect, and positive energy. In such an environment, people feel valued, respected, and appreciated, leading to higher morale and increased productivity. Achieving Complementary cohesion requires the full usage of all three of these foundational skills: insight, influence, and adaptability.
Those simple steps are:
1. Spot/notice that there is a difference.
The first step to influencing others in a way that builds complementary cohesion is to notice that something is different in that person’s approach, as compared to your own. About half of the population consider themselves to be similar to others. Those that fall into this category are likely unassuming and approachable. With little or no arrogance, they go about their business feeling like they identify with the world.
The other half consider themselves to be unique. They know others are different, and they are usually proud of these differences. This first step will then be to conceptually prepare for people to respond differently, and not be surprised when they do.
2. Know what that difference is.
Insight into self and others is key to this process, as is the ability to check any biases at the door. Individuals must be attuned to the behaviors that tell them about the people around them, and be able to accept them for who they are in order for this to work. People must be very aware of the self aspects they bring to the table — another key ingredient for the success of this process.
So, how does one know what the difference is, once they know that a difference exists? It varies by person. The greater challenge is for someone that feels similar to others. That person will need to look for clues about the “Big Three.”
- Evergreen/Consistent – With a focus on procedure and history?.
- Changing Leaf/Evolving – With a focus on end result and future?
- Tree/Alone – By one’s self?
- Forest/Together – With others?
- Cautious – With caution?
- Direct – With directness?
3. Plan a connection to adapt to that difference.
So, once a person knows what is different, it is time to plan how to respond to that difference. The guiding rule of thumb is to try to speak their language. Remember that strength of method is important. The stronger an individual is in a particular method, the harder it will be for them to fully adapt.
Evergreen/Changing Leaf
If you are an Evergreen, or that person who is process-oriented, detail-savvy, and organized, you will sense that there is a difference if you are working with a Changing Leaf, and vice-versa. The Changing Leaf talks in bigger pictures, focuses on things that haven’t been tried, and talks in terms of end results. The Evergreen needs and wants structure and details. They will expect that from others and their natural tendency is to provide that for others. And the Changing Leaf needs and wants a big picture overview. They will expect that from others and their natural tendency is to provide that for others.
Tree/Forest
The Tree/Forest difference is more of a factor when people are working together. When a give and take is necessary to get the project done, a failure to adapt here may create judgments that get in the way. So, adaptation here is more about helping others relate in ways that service the needs for advancing one’s thinking. When people adapt by helping others meet their needs, they will build a fully collaborative group around them, allowing everyone to participate. Without it, people will gravitate toward others who have their same needs. This leaves out half of the people who should be involved.
Cautious/Direct
This one is the most easily spotted. Cautious people will have their feelings hurt by Direct people, quite often. Direct people will become frustrated by the ambiguity in the Cautious message. This one creates the most damage, because an inability to convey your message makes it impossible to do anything with another person. Whether you are teaching them, selling to them, servicing them, or just living with or around them … without being able to communicate, the relationship will deteriorate.
Therefore it is critical to develop a more “middle-ground” approach. Every person must work hard to move toward the middle in order to be more effective with others, and it is critically important to recognize that this becomes much more difficult under stress. Adapting is simple. Once you have spotted and identified the difference, begin immediately to develop a strategy to talk their language.
The first three steps will lead to better insight, and improved adaptation. In Step 4, you will put these all together to build true relational insight with those around you.
4. Keep trying.
If influence is the ability to convince someone else of something (education, sales, service solutions, etc.), relational influence is the ability to do so by knowing the audience and tailoring a specific language to talk the language of the audience. This enables people to connect relationally with the other people, in order to get things done together. It is necessary for the impact to occur. When dealing with an individual or smaller group, it is important to be able to easily spot, define, and respond to the “Big Three,” whether you naturally have insight or not.
5. Develop a common language so that others will be doing the same (it’s a lot easier that way).
Utilize knowledge of these simple steps to open up dialogue about whether or not the adaptation attempt worked. This dialogue will also lead to a better relationship, in which coworkers can talk about and maybe even enjoy their differences.
6. Laugh a lot!
Learn to laugh about your differences and understand why you go about the same task so differently. The common language we share allows us to laugh at these differences and allows us to build a strong foundation.
Together, adaptability, insight, and influence form a powerful trifecta that fuels professional growth, promotes resilience, and propels individuals towards success in their respective careers. The characteristics are interdependent, and there is a method to get better at them, thus strengthening them all, if we understand how they relate with one another.
Communication is the core activity of work. And when people communicate well, they get things done. Our proven Inter Face Methods™ system helps you build deeper understanding, trust, and communication among your employees and customers.
EDGES’ Inter Face Methods™ is a short online tool to give you numbers to confirm and define your hunches about the differences on your team. Using this online tool gives you and those you work with or live with a common language a way to recognize and leverage your differences. Harness the power of diverse behavioral styles. Think about your methods of interacting with your world. Are you detail-oriented or visionary? Do you think best with others or alone? Are you direct in your message delivery or more cautious? Visit our website for more information.