Discover the four key “languages” of communication in the workplace and everyday life: P, E, I, A. This presentation, based on the works of Ishaq Odysseus and David Merrill, offers practical tools for understanding and managing diverse communication styles. Learn how to collaborate better, make decisions more effectively, and avoid conflicts by tailoring your approach to different personality types. Enhance your team’s efficiency with these simple yet powerful insights!
Transcript
P a e I.
It’s my short term for this presentation on what are essentially four languages that are spoken in the workplace and also at home, everywhere you can think of. Consider them as worldviews or languages. So this is a way to understand if you’re in another country, or if you go to another. I’ve been living in Central and Eastern Europe for the last 5 or 6 years, traveling around the world in Central, Eastern Europe, North and South America, and so forth. One thing I try to do whenever I go to another country is learn to speak some of the language. If you have something really important to communicate to somebody else, wouldn’t you try to learn the language? I mean, that just makes all the sense in the world. And yet when you go to work every day or wake up in the morning with the people around you, it’s very difficult to realize that they are from a different world. They often speak a different language. In fact, in relationships, that’s often why you’re drawn together. There was something about that other world that was interesting or attractive to you. In the workplace, in a team of 7 or 8 people, you can have all kinds of different worldviews, especially today in virtual teams or global teams. So this is a very simple and powerful way to alert people and wake your team up to the presence of different ways of viewing the world, different ways of making decisions and everything, even if everybody looks the same and came from the same neighborhood.
Okay, this is actually adapted from some great work by Ishaq Odysseus. His book on solving the mismanagement crisis is a classic. I urge you all to get it. It’s still in print. It’s a great book. Also, from David Merrill who created this concept of social styles. I took their matrices and sort of created my own version of this, but I want to give credit to these two guys who really gave input to me for my particular model. Here we go. These are now taking some of Barry Johnson’s work about polarities that need to be managed. These are four polarities that are almost always present any time you’re trying to make a decision with other people. If you’re in a relationship, you know what I mean when I say quite often in a fight, it’s never about what it’s about. The fight is really not about leaving the toilet seat up or whose turn it was to walk the dog or something. It’s usually about, do you really love me or something like that? Quite often in the workplace, the argument appears to be about something, but quite often it’s at least to some extent about one of these four polarities here. The first one is how fast are we going? How fast should we go when confronting this situation? Some people are more comfortable moving quickly, moving faster.
Other people are more comfortable moving slower. This is not good or bad. In fact, during the day you might move back and forth on this, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. But where is your home base? Where would you feel most comfortable? I’m a little bit faster. I’m over here somewhere on the faster side. I like to feel the wind in my face and making a decision. I like to move quickly most of the time, but not all the time. The second polarity is do you focus on the big picture or on details first? Now if you’re at work, you have to do both. At some point, you need to understand the big picture and you need to be into the details. But which one draws you? Which one do you need to have before you can pay attention to the other one? I had a work colleague for many years, Mark Joel, a fabulous guy. We were very different here. I needed to have the big picture before I could get interested in the details. And Mark actually discovered the big picture by going into the details. Fabulous. I can do my own PowerPoint slides, which is very detailed work, but I have to understand how it fits into the big picture.
The other polarity is do you focus on process or on output most? Now it’s very important to remember that everybody wants to produce results. It’s not about if you focus on the process, you’re not interested in results. These people are saying the best way to get the result is to have a well-thought-out process and follow that process. People over here say, you know what? Yeah, process is great. We’ll get to that in a minute. But really, the most important thing is to know what’s the target, what are we trying to accomplish. We’ve got to keep our focus on the mission, focus on the target. Again, where’s your home base on this? And the final polarity has to do with what about structure? Does structure make you feel free or does it make you feel constricted? Some people feel relaxed as soon as they know what the job description is, as soon as they know what the expectations are, as soon as they know the shape of the job and what’s happening, then they can go, okay, now I can get a little bit creative. As soon as I learn the scales on the piano and learn the song, then I can start playing some jazz. But I need that structure first. Other people feel if there’s structure, they feel trapped. It’s like, I don’t like that. I want to be free to do my own thing.
So these four polarities are moving and flowing and ebbing in any meeting, especially where you have people who have different places on the polarity. So you have all this going on in the room, and here you are trying to have a meeting where you make a decision and you have all this conflict and stuff coming up, and sometimes it doesn’t go away. The reason it doesn’t go away is because it’s about this and not about the issue that you’re talking about. So let’s take a look at how to speak four languages that come out of these polarities. First of all, here they are. The first one has to do with how fast do people go? Do they want details or the big picture? Do they want to focus on the process or the output? Are they comfortable with structure or unstructured? So these are the four languages. The first one is the P, the pusher-producer language. When you or someone else is in this mode, remember you can speak these off and on all during the day, but one of them is really comfortable. One of these languages is your mother tongue. You think in this language; you default to this language, and another one is really, really hard, your last resort, like “Como esta usted?” or like Polish for me. When you’re in the p language, you’re after action, speed, results.
Let’s go. Structure speed. No, don’t you know? Let’s get it going right now. Let’s go. If we were in business and our business was the hole-digging business, all the P’s in the room would have shovels in their hands. Let’s go, let’s dig. Come on. What are you waiting for? Grab those shovels. Let’s go. Let’s dig some holes. There’s another language, which is the E language, which is the expressive entrepreneur-experimenter. This language is all about, can you see the possibility? Imagine everybody having their own hole in the ground. Wouldn’t that be exciting? These are the cheerleaders. These are the people that want you to be inspired about that hole in the ground. They don’t want you to just dig the hole; they want you to want to dig the hole in the ground. This is very, they’re the visionary motivator, inspirational kind of people. People in this language don’t care so much how you feel about it. Just dig the hole, okay? They want you to really like digging the hole. This other language down here is the I language, the integrator or the interpersonal language. These are the people that are more concerned about relationships. They want to know how we are working well together while we’re digging our holes. How do you feel about your shovel? Do you like your shovel? I’m kidding.
But it’s like the most important thing to them is the team and how we’re working together. They will be the first people to become aware of a conflict or something that’s unresolved in the group. They’ll be the ones to call that to everybody’s attention. The fourth language that emerges here is the A language, administrator or analytical. These are the people that want to make sure they will say, hold it. Put your shovels down. All right, you guys, you E’s stop cheerleading and inspiring people. I’s stop crying over the teamwork. Okay, just take a second here. We have something to say to this project. First of all, why are we doing this project? Is there any research that’s done about how many holes we should dig, about where we should dig them? What are you going to do with the dirt that comes out of the holes? Anybody thought about that? What about shovels? Why are we using these shovels? Has any research been done about these? Do we know these are the best shovels? Listen, guys, we have a lot more study and research to do before we start digging holes. Now, you have to understand that while some people may feel upset with each of these languages, each one is trying their best to contribute to the ultimate success of the initiative.
P’s are action-oriented. E’s want people to feel motivated and inspired. I’s are interested in teamwork. A’s are interested in process and so forth. The A’s want to make sure that we don’t do something stupid. The P’s want to make sure that we don’t get bored and just slow down. E’s want to make sure that we don’t lose our spirit and want to give up. I’s don’t want to have a lot of conflict that’s not getting resolved. So each of these languages is listening and looking and noticing different things going on in the initiative that you’re involved in. Now let’s take a look at this. What do people need to hear about in order to be interested? Let’s say you’re going in to talk to somebody on your team or to your boss, and you’ve got to persuade them about something. It would be really, really smart to figure out which language does my boss use and how should I go in and talk to her or him? If I’m going in to talk to a P, a boss that’s really action-oriented, they’re most interested, first of all, in what this meeting is about. What does it cost? What does it do? Very concrete specifics they want to know before you show up how much time it’s going to take. They don’t want to waste any time. When you go in to talk to somebody that’s a strong P language person, you want to get down to business right away and make sure that what you’re proposing links into their goals and objectives. They are very direction and purpose-driven. They want to know, what are we trying to accomplish here? Make sure that what you’re doing, they make sure they see the connection between what they’re trying to accomplish and what you’re proposing to them, and move quickly. If you’re going in to sell your idea to an E, they need to see the possibility. They want to help create it. They want to. In fact, one of my clients years ago in a financial services company, the CEO was off the scale E, a visionary, hired a bunch of people to do all the analytical work around him, and he was sort of an oxy. He was a mutant in that world. He had some people working on a proposal to create a new product, a new financial product. And he told these two guys to come and talk to me before they came to make their presentation. So they came to me, and they said, John, Paul said we should talk to you before we make the presentation. They had books of data, pages after page after page. They were going to go in and give that to Paul. I said, oh, guys, I know you spent months on this. They said, yeah, we have, for six months. I said, please don’t take this to Paul. Well, why not? I said, well, because Paul will not read it. He will listen for five minutes and then he will have another meeting or something will come up. What should we take him? I said, take him the idea, the big idea behind all this research. Keep this in your briefcase. Take him the big idea and about 4 or 5 bullet points and then stand by, make space for him to help create. So they came out of the office, and a few hours later they came by my office. I had an office in their building and they knocked on the door and they said, thank you, John, Thank you. I said, why? They said, well, we walked in, we told him what the big idea was, and then he grabbed a magic marker before we could even get into any of our bullet points. He ran up to the whiteboard and said, okay, now what if we did this? How about this? Everything he put on the whiteboard was in our proposal. So they went into him the next day with this fabulous proposal. He thought, oh, this is amazing how fast you guys worked.
The point is, if they had gone in with some A language to talk with an E, it would have been the end of the world. Now, if you’re going in to talk with an I, slow down. It’s all about relationships. The HR director in that particular company was this fabulous guy. He just wanted to visit. We would talk. Sometimes in a one-hour meeting, we would spend half an hour, 45 minutes talking about his kids, my kids, his sailboat, where he went on holiday, and all kinds of really fascinating life stuff. The last 10 or 15 minutes, we’d focus on decisions that had to be made. It worked like a charm. He was actually Native American. In that culture, everything happens inside of the relationship. It’s all about trust. Without that trust, you can have the best idea in the world, and nothing’s going to happen. Every time we got together, there was a little bit of reestablishing that connection, that personal connection, that trust with him. If you’re going in to talk with an A, an analytical, administrative type person, slow down. Just like with the I, slow down. The I wants to know about the relationship before we get started. The A needs to know about the process. Show me the steps. Is it precise? Is it fair? Does it have principles? The two worst things that can happen to an A are making a mistake and violating some fundamental principle.
So when you walk into an A to talk to them, don’t expect to have a decision made during the meeting. Okay, now what I’m going to do now is I’m going to stop this for just a minute. I’m going to fade to black. If you have a few minutes, talk about where you see yourself on this particular grid. I like to put it on the floor, you know, and have the different four quadrants on the floor. It’s really fun to go and stand in those quadrants and say, this is where I think I am. Look around and see if you see any surprises. Anybody that should be in another place and have a conversation about what is your primary language, what is your mother tongue when it comes to the language that you speak in your workplace? I’ll come back on in just a second. Great. I wish I could have been in the room there to see where you are. Did you find any people that were a surprise to you? Sometimes people say, what are you doing over there? I experience you over here. Well, the reason is that under stress, people sometimes go to a different place. For instance, where do you go if your particular language isn’t working? When you’re under stress, where do you go? Do you go here? Do you go there? Do you go to the other place? This is because what is underneath everything is, for the P, it’s direction.
If direction feels threatened, they feel threatened. For an E, if inspiration is threatened, they feel threatened. For an I, if the relationship is threatened, they feel threatened. For an A, if the process or the principles are being threatened, they feel threatened. So you might want to take a look and say, where do you go when pressure is on? Where do you go when one of these things is either threatened or not being met? What is your backup language? Take a minute now. If you’re standing on the floor, go stand in that particular language and see what you have to say to each other. Okay, we’re going to skip the third language. It’s interesting, but I’m trying to save some time for you. We’re going to go to the last language. So which is your last language? Let’s go back here now and take a look at this. Which is the thing that you have the hardest time focusing on? What is your last resort? Is it pushing? Is that the hardest thing for you? Being telling people what to do, inspiring people with possibilities? Is that the hardest thing for you? Slowing down and looking at the relationship? Is that harder? Is it harder for you to stop and look at paragraph 14 of the manual and so forth? Look at the administrative stuff. Take a minute now to say, in fact, it’s good to go stand in that quadrant and stand in your last resort language. If you’re standing now in your last resort language or thinking about your last resort language, I want you to contemplate the possibility that this is your growing edge. This is a muscle that needs to be strengthened. It means that there are times when what is needed by the people around you, by the mission, the organization, the team, maybe even by yourself, is something from this language. Some small sentence, some tiny bit of awareness or effort in this last resort language is worth a lot. So you probably will find that the people you have the most difficulty getting along with are either in your particular language, so you’re competing, or they’re in the one that’s on an angle because you have the least in common with them. Practice stretching into that last resort language. Look for opportunities to do the thing that comes the hardest for you in any particular language. All right. Let’s go forward here. What’s underneath it? Direction, inspiration, relationship, process principles. Now, this is a simple way that I sort quickly when I meet people.
I don’t even think about it now. It’s just automatic. But this is how I typically try to figure out what language they’re speaking. All right, first of all, I’m looking for speed when they’re talking to me. Are they talking fast? Are they talking slow? Do they feel, do they seem like they want to get down to business quickly? Do they want to visit? What’s the pace of the conversation? How fast or how deliberate do they seem to want to move and otherwise do they go? Are they more cautious? Do they seem like they want to go slower? Do they want to take more time? So first I kind of sort in terms of speed. Then the second sort that I make is on the focus. Do they focus mostly on tasks, on concepts, on procedures and processes and things like that, that sort of the hard stuff of what we’re about? Or do they focus on people and feelings and some of the what are called softer stuff? I think it’s some of the tougher stuff. So if you make a sort this way and a sort that way, you can kind of figure out quickly which language to speak. Then when you do, do your very best to frame, plan for the meeting so that you can plan. How would a person that speaks that language, what do they need to see
plan.
How would a person that speaks that language, what do they need to see? What do they need to hear? How do I need to be with them so that I can communicate what’s so important? If you have something important to communicate, it’s the responsibility of you to go and speak in the language of that other person.
By the way, if you’re going to be sending an email or a communication to a large number of people, here’s a little tip: start with a P paragraph or sentence. You know, push. What is it about? Be very specific. Then go to an E paragraph: imagine the possibilities. Next, go to an I paragraph: this is who we are, relationship stuff. And last of all, put down the details because the P’s are only going to read the first paragraph, then they’re going to hand it to somebody else or throw it away. The A’s are going to read the whole thing and will be looking for typos and so forth. So this is a real simple way to make sure that your large-scale communications get read by and listened to by as many people as possible. That’s P, E, I, A. Remember, it’s my compilation of some work from Ishaq Odysseus and from David Merrill. You will see attached to this video are a couple of pages that are more specific in terms of specific behaviors that have proven to be helpful or not helpful when you’re communicating with these different languages. You might want to give them a try.
In summary, understanding these four languages and the polarities they represent can significantly enhance communication and collaboration within your team. By recognizing and adapting to different communication styles, you can ensure that your message is effectively received and understood by all members of your team. This not only fosters better teamwork but also drives productivity and success within the organization.
So, as you go forward, take these concepts and apply them in your daily interactions. Practice speaking in different languages depending on the context and the individuals you are communicating with. Be mindful of the polarities and where you and your colleagues naturally fall. This awareness and adaptability will be invaluable in creating a harmonious and efficient work environment.
Thank you for taking the time to engage with this presentation. I hope you find these insights useful and that they contribute positively to your professional and personal interactions. If you have any questions or need further clarification on any points, please feel free to reach out.
