Social Styles
David Merrill and Roger Reid built the Social Styles model on a deliberately narrow idea. Forget what somebody is feeling inside. Look only at what other people can observe: how much they push their view into a conversation, and how much emotion they let show while doing it.
Two dimensions, four styles. It is not a personality theory and it does not pretend to explain anybody. It is a practical tool for the moment when you are sitting opposite a customer, a candidate or a member of staff and the conversation is going nowhere, and you cannot work out why.
Two dimensions, four styles
The horizontal axis is assertiveness: does this person tend to ask, or tend to tell. The vertical axis is responsiveness: do they contain emotion, or do they let it show. Neither end is better. Put the two together and you get four recognisable styles.
Position on the grid, not personality. Everything here is behaviour somebody else can see.
Analytical. Asks rather than tells, contains emotion. Wants the detail, the evidence and the time to think. Silence from an analytical is not disapproval, it is processing. Push them for a decision in the room and you will get a no, because no is the safe answer when you have not finished checking.
Driver. Tells rather than asks, contains emotion. Wants the outcome, the price and the date. Will interrupt. Reads the last page of your proposal first. Being brisk with a driver is not rude, it is respectful, and long preamble reads as either waffle or a lack of confidence.
Amiable. Asks rather than tells, shows emotion. Wants to know who else has done this, how it will land on the team, and whether you will still be there in a year. Will often say yes in the room and then not proceed, because agreement was the polite thing to do and the real objection never got aired.
Expressive. Tells rather than asks, shows emotion. Wants the big picture, the possibility and the story. Enthusiastic early, sometimes gone by Thursday. Needs the exciting version and then somebody to nail down the detail, which is usually not them.
Why an owner should care
You sell, hire, manage, negotiate with suppliers and hold difficult conversations. All of that is one person trying to move another person. Most owners run a single style at everybody and then conclude that some people are hard work.
If the four styles were spread evenly, three out of every four people you deal with would not share yours. They are not spread evenly, but the point stands: your natural way of communicating is a minority approach in almost any room. That is not a flaw. It is simply the arithmetic of why some of your meetings go well and some go nowhere for reasons you have never been able to name.
Versatility is the actual skill
The payload of the model is not the label. It is versatility: how far you are willing to move towards the other person's style to make the exchange work. High versatility does not mean becoming someone else. It means adjusting two things, pace and detail, in the direction the other person needs.
Drivers and expressives need pace. Analyticals and amiables need time. Analyticals and drivers want the facts. Amiables and expressives want to know how it feels and who else is involved. That is most of it. You can be a fully recognisable version of yourself and still slow down by twenty per cent, or send the numbers in advance, or ask a question instead of making a statement.
The cost of flexing is a small amount of discomfort for you. The cost of not flexing is the deal, the hire or the conversation.
A worked example
The figures are illustrative. An expressive owner of a small fit-out contractor pitches a £48,000 refurbishment to a finance director who is plainly analytical: short emails, no small talk, asked for the specification twice before agreeing to meet.
First attempt. The owner does what has always worked. Forty minutes, three stories about similar jobs, a lot of energy, one photograph on a phone. The finance director asks for a cost breakdown by trade. The owner says he will get that over. It arrives four days later as a single line item. The job goes to a competitor who turned up with a six-page costed schedule and said almost nothing.
Nothing about the first meeting was incompetent. The work was good and the price was fair. The owner simply presented in his own style to somebody who buys in a different one, and read the lack of enthusiasm as a lack of budget.
Second attempt, a year later, same owner, same personality. Three changes. The costed schedule goes over forty-eight hours before the meeting, so the analytical has had time to check it. The meeting opens with "which line would you like to start on?" instead of a story. The vision, which the owner is genuinely good at, gets four minutes at the end rather than forty at the start.
He has not become a different person. He has moved the same content into an order the buyer can process. That is versatility, and it is worth more than any script.
Spotting the style in thirty seconds
Two questions get you close enough. Does this person mostly ask or mostly tell? And do they let you see what they feel, or not? You will be right often enough to be useful, and the tells are ordinary.
- Email length. Two lines with no greeting is a driver. Two lines with a smiley is an expressive. Six paragraphs with attachments is an analytical. A friendly paragraph asking how you are is an amiable.
- How they open a meeting. Straight to the agenda, or a minute on the weekend first.
- What they do with silence. Fill it, or use it.
- What they ask for at the end. The price, the detail, the timeline, or a reference.
How to apply it this week
- Place yourself first. Answer the two questions about your own behaviour, honestly, and get a second opinion from someone who works with you. Owners routinely rate themselves less assertive than everyone else rates them.
- Map your top ten relationships. Biggest customers, key staff, your bank contact, your accountant. One style each. Ten minutes, on paper.
- Find the two that grind. There will be a couple of relationships that are more effort than they should be. Check whether they sit diagonally opposite you on the grid. They usually do.
- Change one thing for one meeting. Send the detail in advance for an analytical. Cut your opening in half for a driver. Ask an amiable what their team will make of it. Give an expressive the headline before the process.
- Rewrite one proposal in the buyer's order. Same content, resequenced. Price and specification first for a driver or analytical. Outcome and possibility first for an expressive or amiable.
- Brief your team on it. If the person who answers your phone can spot a driver in ten seconds and stop reading them the script, that is worth real money.
The mistake most owners make
They use it as a label and then as an excuse. "He is a driver, that is why we clash." That is the model being used to explain a failure rather than to prevent one. The whole value sits in what you do differently after the diagnosis, and the responsibility for flexing sits with the person who wants something, which in a sales conversation is you.
The second mistake is mimicry. An analytical owner tries to be matey with an expressive customer and comes across as a bad impression of themselves. Flexing is about pace, sequence and level of detail. It is not about pretending to be a different person, and people can tell the difference immediately.
The questions to sit with
- Out of 10, how well do you adapt to people who communicate differently from you?
- Which style do you find hardest, and what has that cost you in the last twelve months?
- Think of the last deal you lost that you thought you should have won. Whose style was the meeting run in?
- Who on your team is diagonally opposite you, and how often do you genuinely hear them?
This underpins the Communication Styles work in The Leader Programme. Owners tend to assume the problem is that other people are difficult. Usually the problem is that everyone is being sold to, managed and corrected in one style, and it happens to be yours.
