Identify your staff’s behavior styles to communicate with them

Approximately 50% of employees leave their jobs because of their managers, according to a study by the market research firm Gallup, released April 2. And what employees increasingly want is open communication.

But communication is as unique as each employee. That’s where understanding your employees’ individual behavior styles is helpful.

Those styles, outlined in Practice Makes Perfect: A Complete Guide to Veterinary Practice Management, and adapted from the Center for Educational Development and Assessment, “Communication Styles,” include the Driver, the Influencer, the Analytical, and the Relater.

Each style has its own preferences. Those preferences include the types of questions they like to ask, how they react to pressure, their potential weaknesses, how best to deal with them, how they like to be measured, and what their priorities are.

Practice Makes Perfect: A Complete Guide to Veterinary Practice Management explains all of this and more in a handy one-page at-a-glance chart, preceded by in-depth information related to each style.

If you can understand employees' unique behavior styles, not only can you reduce employee turnover. You can also communicate with them in such a way that you engage and motivate them to do their best.

Photo credit: © iStock/ozgurdonmaz

NEWStat