Nearly all jobs could benefit from honing skills about how to influence people. Most of us have taken a personality profile, or perhaps a training course along with it. There’s DISC, Myers Briggs, Insights, Colour Code, etc. We often leave these training classes with this information at the forefront of our minds and think a little bit deeper about communication styles. However, like most information delivered in training, that wisdom gradually withers and we are back to our old ways. In this case that means we communicate with people in a manner that is comfortable to us and usually the way we would like to be spoken to, rather then how it will best be received.
For individuals who have ever received or given developmental feedback around communication styles, or perhaps a cold caller looking to further fine tune communications to more receptive recipients, I’ve been playing around with an excellent tool to make it easy and front of mind to consider the recipient both in verbal and written scenarios. This could mean prepping for a call, a meeting, writing an email, etc.
Crystal
By providing a short sample of writing (or analysing LinkedIn profiles or e-mail language) Crystal can tell you with surprising accuracy what type of person you are dealing with. A profile includes the following:
Personality (what comes naturally and what motivates this person)- Communication Style (tips for in person and email)
- Working together (how to build trust and tips to work together)
Once you are connected with someone not only can you see his or her profile but pages of insight around
- Working Together (communicating, working on a project, working on a team, managing change, giving feedback, giving instructions, encouraging and motivating, managing a stressful situation)
- Sample email templates (by type) with feedback around your personal edits
What’s also pretty nifty about Crystal and what really differentiates this product is you can view this information in LinkedIn and Gmail and it sounds like they are working on integrations to CRM and other APIs to display this information in different apps.
I wanted to talk a bit more about the help with email as this is where I find this pretty neat.We all have spell check so consider it a ‘style check’ by personality. You can see some brief emails in the LinkedIn window. They have a few based on some standard communications. Very cool. HOWEVER, there’s something even more nifty. When you open up the desktop app to see the full profile you can actually live edit the templates (or paste your own email) and it will provide suggestions on how to improve your language for this particular person.
The free version allows you to look up 5 people a month and other plans start at $19/mo. No point not giving it a try! Click here
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