Naming Your Communication Style
To describe your communication style, you assign one label to each of the 2 channels you use, speech and writing, and then state both in a single sentence that a teammate can repeat back to you. The StyleSmith method compresses that description into 4 named steps, from observation through to a finished, quotable definition, so a style is described in under 1 minute rather than debated in a meeting.
This page is one Styling Tutorials page in a series that treats style as a system, so the same vocabulary applies across pages. The two sibling questions it answers are how to determine your communication style and how to describe your communication style, and it sits beside the guides on Finding Your Learning Style, Describing Your Leadership Style and Find Your Style Type.
What a communication style is
A communication style is the stable pair of habits a person shows when sending a message, one habit for speaking and one for writing. It is not a personality type and it does not require a test; it is a description of observable behaviour, and it is the 2nd style the StyleSmith method defines after you have named your look. The method's own ordering is the 4 styles in the fixed sequence look, voice, learning and leadership, so communication sits directly after the visual style and before the two you have just linked.
Each style name is built from 3 parts: a channel, a density and an order. The channel names the medium, either speech or writing. The density counts how much information you put per unit of time or per line, and it has 3 levels, low, medium and high. The order says whether you lead with the conclusion or lead with the context. That is the whole unit: 1 channel, 1 of 3 density levels, 1 of 2 orders.
How to determine your communication style
To determine your communication style, you score 6 observed behaviours in each channel and then read the two highest scores, and you can do it in a single sitting of about 20 minutes. No instrument is required; a colleague and a stopwatch are enough. The 6 behaviours you score, on a 1 to 5 scale where 5 is always you, are listed below.
- Conclusion first: does your first sentence state the point, or does it build to it.
- Detail density: do you add 1 example per point or 3 or more, per 1 minute of talk or per 100 words written.
- Question rate: how many questions you ask per 1 minute of talk or per 100 words written, 0, 1, or 2 or more.
- Turn length: do you speak or write in bursts of 1 or 2 sentences, or in blocks of 4 to 6.
- Emotion load: do you mark a message with 1 explicit feeling word or keep it to 0.
- Follow up: do you send 0, 1, or 2 or more messages on the same thread before you consider it closed.
Read the result as a pair, and keep the 2 scores that stand out most. A speech profile that is high on detail density and low on conclusion first reads as an elaborating speaker, and a writing profile that is high on conclusion first and low on question rate reads as a direct writer. Those two labels together are your determined style, and the next step is simply to say them out loud in your own words.
How to describe your communication style
To describe your communication style, you turn the 2 labels you determined into 1 sentence using the template "I am a [density][order] [channel] communicator", and you say it in a way that names what you do, not what you are. The template keeps the description checkable, because anyone can listen for the behaviour instead of guessing at a label. For example, a direct speaker who writes with high detail density would say, "I am a conclusion first speaker and a high detail writer, so in a call I give you the answer in the first 10 seconds and I send the reasoning in a short note after."
Use 1 sentence per channel, not 1 sentence for both, because the two channels usually disagree. A person who is a high detail speaker is often a low detail writer, and the description should hold that difference instead of averaging it away. If a teammate cannot repeat the sentence back in their own words, the description is still doing the work of the 2 labels, not of the person, so you shorten it until it is repeatable.
Style pairs you will meet
Most teams are built from 2 to 4 of the 4 base styles, and the 2 that cause the most friction are the direct pair and the elaborating pair. The table below lists the 4 base styles and the 2 behaviours that identify each, which is exactly the 6 behaviours from the scoring list folded into 2 per style.
| Style name | Speaking behaviour | Writing behaviour |
|---|---|---|
| Direct | Conclusion first in the first 10 seconds | 1 short message per point, 0 or 1 follow up |
| Elaborating | Detail before conclusion, 3 examples per point | 1 long message per point, 2 or more follow ups |
| Responsive | 2 or more questions per 1 minute | 1 message per 1 message, keeps the thread short |
| Structuring | Bursts of 4 to 6 sentences in order | Numbered lists, 1 heading per 100 words |
Notice that the 2 identifying behaviours for each style come straight from the scoring list, so the table is a lookup for the numbers you already recorded, not a second set of facts to memorise.
Stating it to a team and in writing
To state your style to a team, you put the 2 sentences at the top of your first message in the channel and you ask for 1 correction from each of the 3 people who will work with you most. In a team of 5, that is 3 correction requests in the first week, and the 3 corrections you are most likely to receive are about your follow up count, your turn length and your emotion load, because those are the 3 behaviours people notice before they notice your detail density.
In a document, you put the description in 1 line in the header or the first 2 lines of the body, and you do not repeat it on every page, because a style description that is repeated 10 times reads as a disclaimer. One placement, at the point where the reader first needs to interpret your words, is enough, and it stays true for the life of the document because the 2 labels change slowly, on the order of months rather than days.
When the style shifts
Your style shifts when the channel changes, when the stakes change, or when you are tired, and those are the 3 conditions you should expect. A direct writer often becomes an elaborating speaker on a call, because speech gives you 1 minute to correct a misunderstanding instead of 0, and that shift is a feature, not a failure. The StyleSmith method handles the shift by keeping the 2 labels fixed and adding 1 line of context, "in a high stakes review I add 2 or more examples before I give the conclusion", so the description grows to 3 lines instead of breaking.
Recheck the 2 labels every 6 months, not every week, because the 6 behaviours move slowly and a weekly recheck mostly measures your current workload rather than your style. If 3 of the 6 scores have changed by 2 points or more in 6 months, you have changed style, and you update the 2 sentences in one edit, in the same channel where you stated them first, so the correction and the change live in the same thread.