Adapting to others is a very important aspect of life. Without being able to adapt to others, you’ll only be friends with people like you. While I’m sure that you think you’re amazing, everyone is just not the same as you. If they were the same as you, life would be boring. You don’t want clones running around! A variety of people is good. I know that I have to have different people around me to keep me balanced. Sure, I get along easily with people that are like me, but easy doesn’t do much for me.
When someone new enters your life, if you are anything like me, you don’t necessarily know how to act. You want to be yourself, and you should be yourself. But, what part of you best connects with this person? The serious part? The goofy part? You may interact with one person much much different than the other people in your life. In my opinion, this is normal. How do you adapt then?
Observe: Watching what someone else does is one of the most important ways of learning how you need to adapt to someone. Something that I watch for is what they talk about. Do they talk about their kids, their pets, or their spouse? Do they talk mainly about their work? Do they talk primarily about people, or do they talk about tasks? Observing people will give you a lot of direction so you can best adapt to them.
Ask Questions: Through observing people, you can start to ask questions. If you talk about your pet a lot, then next time I meet with you it would be appropriate for me to ask you about your pet. I may not care a lot about pets, but it is important to you so I’ll adapt what I talk about to something that is important to you. If you are more focused on people than tasks, I’ll also know that I should ask you what you were able to complete in the last week. I need to ask you people focused questions!
Care: Without caring, you may as well not even try to do anything with people. When you care about the other person, it becomes natural to adapt to them. If I care about you, and you like cats and are people focused, and I like dogs and am task focused, I need to adapt! I won’t talk to you about my dog and everything I was able to do, I’ll ask you about your cat, and talk about people you know. I might say, “Hey – I saw Billy last week. He was doing great and said hi!” if you are people focused. If you are task focused, I might say, “Hey, how are you doing on project X? Any exciting developments?”. When I care about you, those questions are so much easier to ask and to hear the response comes natural. You must care.
Get Educated: Without understanding DISC, I wouldn’t be able to adapt to people the way I am able to. By understanding the difference between a D, I, S, and C – I’m able to adapt to people. I don’t need to put people into a box, but I can communicate based on what your default behavior is. For instance, if you are a high I – you will be people focused, enthusiastic to see me, and most likely be outgoing in general. When I know you are a high I, I know how to adapt to working with you because of what I’ve learned about DISC.
Try: If you don’t try, you won’t get anywhere. Pay attention to people, know what is important to them, and adapt to them accordingly. Putting forth an effort will be noticed, when you try to adapt to others.
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