Understanding the Expressive Behavioral Style

Being aware of your and your employee's primary and backup workplace behavior will make you a better leader. This self-awareness helps you to:

• more quickly engage and motivate each of your employees
• recognize your own strengths and weaknesses
• communicate more effectively with each employee by tailoring conversations to fit their workplace behavioral style.

When someone’s primary behavioral work style is Expressive they blend a high level of both emotional responsiveness and assertiveness. These employees are big picture-oriented and take a look at the overall issue. They can often arrive at a fresh, novel, and creative approach to problems. They are willing to take risks to seize opportunities.

Members of your team with the Expressive primary work style tend to have the following strengths:

• good communicator
• emotional
• passionate
• motivational
• inspirational
• outgoing
• fun-loving

Employees with an Expressive primary style tend to process things in a step-by-step linear sequence and observe and remember specific information. These employees will do better when they have flexibility in their work and how their time is managed. They are open to new opportunities like making decisions on the fly, and can sometimes enjoy working on things at the last minute or on their schedule.

Limitations to this Expressive work style include:

• unrealistic
• not detailed-oriented
• excitable
• impulsive
• becoming bored by routine and details
• can be too talkative
• get bored easily

Leaders with an Expressive work behavioral style are action-oriented, driven by adventure, and prefer acting outside of the typical leadership norms. Because rules are the bane of their existence, they often feel that creativity is more important than the rule books. 

Leaders with an Expressive work style may believe that people perform best when they can establish their processes and ways of work.

If this is your leadership style you will benefit from being aware of how youpra work and how it impacts on your employees. Not all members of your team will feel comfortable or productive managing their own time and work product. These employees will need guidance and structure. Coaching them might seem stressful and a waste of time. However, it is crucial in supporting your employees to reach their potential.

Encouraging your team to define and express their own comfort level related to tasks and workload will create better results. Providing your team with the tools they need, even if it involves detailed structure, will lead to higher productivity.

Conversational management can be implemented in different ways to serve different ways of communicating with their employees.  For example:

Rather than saying, "Just do your job and get it done." (results-oriented and unrealistic). 

Do this instead. "I would like to get this completed by next Thursday.  What do you need from me to help you reach that goal?" (And be prepared to help them with processes and a timeline.)

Rather than saying, "We will get this done even if you think we can't." (Results-oriented and pushing the boundaries of structure)

Say this instead, "I appreciate your input. I think we can achieve this. What do you suggest we do to overcome your concerns?" (Being open to "push back" and reasonable concerns around execution.)

Coaching and motivating employees with an Expressive work style can be challenging. These employees do their best when they create their schedule and processes for work completion. This potentially creates problems integrating with a project team. They are easily bored, thrive on doing a million things simultaneously, and are adept at problem-solving even when they drop the ball. 

Coaching these employees will almost always include giving them some freedom to set the way they accomplish goals while helping them see how other people are on the team.  Encouraging them to listen to other perspectives will support them in integrating different facts into their evaluation. 

Make sure that they are in the correct position within the team. Employees with this Expressive work style add a solid results-oriented "can do" focus. They make excellent motivators and can inspire a team to reach higher levels of performance.

Use their energy and creativity by providing constant challenges and opportunities to solve problems and find ways to get things done. Whenever possible, give them the room to determine their process for accomplishment rather than providing a rigid structure. 

Employees with an Expressive work style can light up a room with their creativity, energy, and ability to motivate and inspire. Put them in positions where their strengths will enable their teams to reach higher productivity and results.