Communication Styles

Communication Styles

I think good communication skills require a high level of self-awareness. Understanding your personal style of communicating will go a long way toward helping you to create good and lasting impressions on others. By becoming more aware of how others perceive you, you can adapt more readily to their styles of communicating. This does not mean you have to be a chameleon, changing with every personality you meet. Instead, you can make another person more comfortable with you by selecting and emphasizing certain behaviors that fit within your personality and resonate with another.

There are four basic styles of communication:

·         Aggressive: By aggressive communication individuals express their feelings and opinions and advocate for their needs in a way that violates the rights of others

·         Passive:  It is a communication style in which individuals have developed a pattern of avoiding expressing their opinions or feelings, protecting their rights, and identifying and meeting their needs.

·         Assertive: In this style of communication individuals clearly state their opinions and feelings, and firmly advocate for their rights and needs without violating the rights of others. In contrast to the previous style of communication the assertive communication is born of high self-esteem.

·         Passive-Aggressive: is a communication style in which individuals appear passive on the surface but are really acting out anger in a subtle, indirect, or behind-the-scenes way. So they usually feel powerless, stuck and resentful.