Better Relationship Tips For Task Oriented People: Redefine Your Task

This week, I was on the road conducting Bud To Boss training. As I called home on Sunday evening, I found myself unable to listen to my wife telling me about her day. Try as I might, I could not get my mind to focus on what she was saying. I could only think about what I still had to do to prepare for the next day before going to bed. Sadly, this is not the first time I have struggled to have a fruitful conversation with my wife while I am traveling for business. After we ended our phone call and... [Read more]

Conflict Resolution Lessons From A Lifeguard: A Drowning Man Doesn’t Care About You

Communication, conflict resolution, leadership, and parenting can, at times, resemble working as a lifeguard. In all of these situations, you can, like a lifeguard, be in the position of a person approaching someone else when they are under distress because their needs are not being met. Picture a drowning man. He is flailing in the water. He is grasping at everything and everyone within reach. He has little or no visible concern for others. He may, at other times, be a kind, loving, considerate... [Read more]

Get Over Yourself To Develop Effective Communication Skills

Recently, I have been frustrated in a number of conversations when the person I was speaking with asked me a question and then interrupted or hijacked the conversation before I finished my answer. Every time I reached a comma in my thought, they heard a period. As a result, they misinterpreted my message, started speaking, and took off in a conversational direction that left me wondering if we were in the same conversation. I didn’t say anything at the time. Other people were around, and it... [Read more]

Conflict Resolution Tips: People Oriented Individuals with Task Oriented People

  In my last blog post, I gave three tips to help task oriented people resolve conflict with people oriented individuals. In this post, I’ll change the perspective by suggesting three tips that go the other direction. 1) Express what you “think” rather than how you “feel.” If you have a stronger people orientation than task orientation, you likely process interactions with others based on how you feel about them and the situation. This perspective may even apply... [Read more]

Conflict Resolution Tips: Task Oriented People with People Oriented Individuals

I often use the DISC Model of Human Behavior as a tool in my training sessions. One of the key ideas to draw from the model is that about 35% of people are more task oriented and about 65% of people are more people oriented. Task oriented people tend to focus on the task at hand even in the presence of other people. They often view everything as a task. Sometimes, they even view relationships as a task or a project. People oriented individuals tend to focus on relationships and people ahead of... [Read more]