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Leadership Insights
Communication can be tricky. We all tend to communicate in a certain way, so we can think about our Five Paths style as a way to build our self-awareness about how we like to communicate with others.
But to be an effective communicator, you need to be able to adapt to what others need from you. Understanding why we need to adapt our communication style is fundamental to leadership effectiveness. When we communicate in only our own natural style, we’re essentially asking others to translate our message through their own lens—which often leads to misunderstanding, frustration, or disengagement.
Each Five Paths to Leadership® profile processes information differently and values different types of communication. When you adapt your communication style to match someone’s primary paths, several important things happen: You demonstrate respect for how they naturally process information, you increase the likelihood that your message will be received and understood as intended, and you build trust by showing that you’ve taken time to understand their perspective.
Communicating with Each of the Paths
Here’s how to tailor your communication approach for each path:
Critical Thinker – The Leader as Expert
Earn credibility by demonstrating your competence in what you’re communicating about. They need to trust your expertise and reasoning to fully engage with your ideas. Lead with facts, not feelings.
Relator – The Leader as Servant
Build your relationships with others to be most effective. They won’t fully hear your message until they feel connected to you and trust that you care about the human impact. Connection enables communication.
Visionary – The Leader as Designer
Connect what you’re saying to purpose and possibility. They need to see how your message fits into the bigger picture and future vision. Without that context, details feel meaningless to them.
Warrior – The Leader as Example
Respect their time and focus on results. Get to the point quickly, and clearly articulate what needs to happen. They will value efficiency and concrete outcomes above all else.
The overarching principle is this: Meet people where they are, not where you are.
So how can you practice your communication skills in low-stakes settings, so that when you have to communicate effectively in the moment, it comes more easily to you?
Start by reflecting on a recent time when you had to communicate with someone, and you weren’t sure that they fully understood what you were saying or took it the way you wanted them to. Think about what you know about the person you were communicating with. What do you think is their dominant Five Paths style? How would you change your messaging based on that?
Take some time today to jot down your thoughts about how you might communicate differently with this person in the future. If you need some concrete suggestions, use Sophia to help you.
Explore more about how your Five Paths style impacts communication in the Applying the Five Paths to Leadership® Model course.