The key thought behind this book is that everyone has a natural (dominant) style of communicating and that becoming aware of your style and that of those around you will help you to become more effective. It’s a great thought in theory, but I wondered if reading a book could really help me improve my communication.
5 Voices
As the title suggests, the authors of 5 Voices distinguish five voices, five styles of communication: Nurturer, Creative, Guardian, Connector, and Pioneer. Each of these styles (or voices) is described in the book, both with defining characteristics, as well as pitfalls and positive elements.
The idea is that you try to gauge which ones of these profiles fit you best so you can determine which voice is ‘yours’. For me, that turned out to be harder than I had expected. There’s no test, or questionnaire to fill out, it’s all about reading the descriptions and trying to sense what resonates with you the most. There wasn’t a single voice that fit me completely, so I had some trouble implementing the advice as I couldn’t even ‘place’ myself in one of these styles.
The descriptions of these five communication styles are intriguing, especially when you try to fit people you work with a lot into one of them. It really does help you understand where they are coming from, what makes them tick, and what they need from you or from others. In that sense, 5 Voices is incredibly helpful in increasing your emotional intelligence and does deliver on the premise (‘How to communicate effectively with everyone you lead’).
The chapter on setting up a meeting according to the five voices was the biggest eye opener to me. The thought that the order in which you let people speak, according to their style, deeply impacts the outcome was a fresh perspective on leading effective meetings. The idea is that you let the Nurturers go first for instance, because they usually won’t speak up otherwise, because of their naturally quieter voice (and ‘fear’ of being critiques by others).
There were two things in the book I wasn’t enthusiastic about. The first was the war-vocabulary in the last few chapters about ‘understanding your weapons system’ (how you communication style can hurt or help others and how you defend yourself) and ‘the rules of engagement’ (those meeting rules I referred to in the previous paragraph). I get where the authors are coming from, namely the idea that your ‘voice’ can be a weapon that hurts others if you’re not careful, but it was a little over the top for me. Plus, the war/weapons analogy wasn’t done consistently and thus not effective.
The second aspect was the writing style. The book starts slow, but more importantly, it could have benefitted greatly from more stories. Yes, there are many examples from clients (the authors run a consulting firm based on these concepts) who implemented the 5 voices successfully. But examples aren’t necessarily good stories. Because they are written so factual and short, they fail to pull you in as a reader and don’t allow you to connect emotionally with what the writers are saying. That makes the book interesting in theory, but way less effective in impact than it could have been.
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