iWAM Team Competencies Breakdown - Affective vs Neutral Communication

Author’s Note: When assessing teams and individual talents, one of the profiling tools we used is The Inventory for Work Attitude & Motivation, or better known as iWAM. With the tool, we can measure your people across 48 competencies, and over this series of articles, we will be exploring deeper into each of the different sets. And because it's easier to reference them against their behavior, we will create fictional characters for each different competency sets. By fictional, do know that they do not reflect anyone in the real world. After all, the focus is their behavior and the psychology behind it, rather than the person themselves. The aim is so you can understand your team members and leaders better, what makes them do the things they do, and from that understanding, develop better work relationships.

COMPETENCY SET: AFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION VS. NEUTRAL COMMUNICATION

Here’s a quick snapshot of Farid, someone who’s an Affective Communicator

• When he presents, he will use lots of graphics, and he is very sensitive to the color, design and fonts of his slides (or the slides of the team, for that matter)
• When he is telling a story or presenting his points, Farid will use lots of gestures and rely on body language to communicate better too.
• He emphasises more on flair when they dress, talk or "behave" at work. Because of that, he has a standard to professional dress codes, and you can expect him to dress well for most occasions.
• Sometimes you may notice that what he said carries lesser facts, which is true, because his emphasis is never on the data, but how it is presented
• He speaks with high energy and probably at a faster pace too
• He displays more emotions, and he is also able to read emotions better

Someone in your team who is like Farid, an affective communicator, is ideal for starting a presentation, or even as the person sent out to network. They usually make good brand ambassadors and networkers because they are good at story telling. They are usually highly visual orientated too.

You probably have seen them: they are the more visually appealing ones. When they talk there are lots of gestures with their hands, and if you notice how they dress, it is also very stylish and flowery. The are like the peacocks in the group, and more of the time, why talk fast too.

Because they are more “animated” in their nature, you will hear that the Farids on your team are regarded as more outgoing, friendly and approachable. They can also express their emotions a lot better too, sometimes just from their facial expression. This works both ways as well, because they are also able to recognise the emotions of others with ease.

The setback is that, when an affective communicator presents or speaks, they often do not go into the facts and figures. Now, while flair and style are important to engage, when it comes to business presentations, the numbers and data matters a lot as well. It’s good to go through their presentations to make sure they have the data allocated, or perhaps include in a separate handout, so those who are more detail-orientated will be able to get the info.

Alternatively, a tag team is also a good idea, which bring us to the Ranjini.

Here’s a quick snapshot of Ranjini, someone who’s a Neutral Communicator

• When Ranjini presents, she will use loads of data, and her slides are usually packed with figures and numbers and stats
• In the handouts they she gives, it’s usually in black and white, loaded with more data
• Rather than emphasising on the looks of things, the Ranjinis of the world emphasise on the validity and weight of the data.
• When she speak, she projects lesser emotions. In fact, you will find that her mostly expressionless.
• Also, because she is less expressive, she is not as good when it comes to identifying emotions of others. As a matter of fact, she may even think that emotions will cloud judgement, and decisions should be made based on rationality, logic and data.

Now, on the other end of the spectrum, you have Ranjini, a Neutral Communicators. If you had been in a lecture before, with a boring lecturer, you will know what we mean. You see, the lecturer may be very knowledgable, skilled and have loads of domain experience, if they are not good at presenting the date, they will bore the crowd too.

Neutral communicators like Ranjini are very effective as the technical experts on the team. A great tag team is to have the Affective Communicator start off the presentation, to draw the crowd in, to paint the big picture. Then, when it comes to the technical, more process-driven section of the presentation, Farid will T up his counterpart, and Ranjini can come in as the technical expert. This not only solidifies her credibility, but also establish her authority as the subject matter expert.

There are cons though. For example, for the Affective Communicators, they may be perceived as all fluff and no substance. They are also easily affected by the emotional expressions of the audience or target prospects. And they may spend too much time on the slides, making it appealing, rather than planning what are the potential questions that will be asked.

On the other hand, for the cons of the Neutral Communicators, they will usually come off as boring, and too detailed in their explanation. Their rapport with most of the crowd will be poor too, unless the crowd are grilled with technical people or neutral communicators as well. Their slides are boring, wordy, heavy data centric, and usually visually unappealing.

So as you can see, there are no right or wrongs to this. It’s just the matter of going with the strength of each individual team member. That, after all, is the purpose of having a team. Also, although the two kinds of communicators may look like duality of then same ruler/measurement, they are not. What this means is an affective communicator can become more neutral, and vice versa. This is useful when it’s solo presentation rather than a group effort.

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