Interview
‘SOCIAL STYLE’
THE VALUE OF
T
he TRACOM Group is The Social Intelligence Company that uses SOCIAL STYLE®, Behavioral EQ®, Adaptive Mindset for Resiliency® and Adaptive Mindset for Agility® assessments and courses to help people create amazing relationships and build high-performing organizations. TRACOM contends that most leaders recognize that their organization’s success is built on the capabilities of their people, but they often don’t understand how to maximize that potential in today’s fast-paced world. They invest in functional skills or generic leadership training without ever considering how to develop the full potential of each person. Social Intelligence is the realization of this true potential in individuals, teams and entire organizations. TRACOM enhances organizational performance with interpersonal skills-based development solutions covering the core aspects of the individual: Behavioral Style, Emotional Intelligence and Mindset. By focusing on these three elements, they say, each person can learn to thrive in the workplace, even in the face of rapid technological shifts and organizational changes. David, you are the author of the Social Style & Versatility Facilitator Handbook. Why was this written and what led to the development of it? Social Style and Versatility are critical
26
/ ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA FALL 2018
Enterprise Minnesota’s Abbey Hellickson interviews renowned HR expert David Collins about how giving employees better leadership skills might just cause them to stick around, too.
and interlinked skills in today’s world. When TRACOM first started, we focused on helping organizations identify top performers to hire or promote. Over time we discovered four patterns of behavior in people, and we named these patterns “Social Style.” All the research we’ve done shows that each one of those four Styles brings unique advantages and challenges when it comes to communicating and working with other people. People are far more predictable than most of us realize, and when we understand what others’ preferences are, we can adapt our behaviors and approach to meet their needs. The best part of all is that all four of the styles
can be effective in any role. It’s not your Social Style that matters; it’s how you use your Style that makes the difference. The biggest indicator of people’s performance is a concept called Versatility, which can be described as how well people adjust or adapt their behavior to the preferences of those they work with. In other words, how well they take the time and energy to approach another person in a way that he or she would like to be approached. It was over 50 years ago that we discovered that people who demonstrated Versatility by adjusting their behavior to other people’s behavioral preferences were consistently ranked as the highest performers. Over time, we found that those skills were not necessarily innate in people, but they were trainable; we realized that we could absolutely change people’s lives by giving them skills to work better with people. That’s really how we became a training and development company, and it was the genesis of how Social Style has become the most popular interpersonal effectiveness model in the world today. The book we wrote, the Social Style & Versatility Facilitator Handbook, is designed to pass along all of the knowledge and real world experience and insights we have gained to the thousands of Social Style instructors and facilitators all over the world.