Behavioural Styles
The behavioural styles model plots people on assertiveness and responsiveness to give four working styles - Driver, Expressive, Amiable, Analytical - so teams can adapt how they communicate instead of assuming everyone works like they do.
Assertiveness runs up one side and responsiveness along the other, boxing people into one of four named styles.
Reach for this when…
- Two capable people keep misreading each other as either pushy or vague.
- A presentation lands well with half the room and falls flat with the rest.
- New team members need a fast, shared language for working preferences.
How to run it
- Introduce the four styles: Driver, Expressive, Amiable, Analytical.
- Have participants complete a short self-assessment.
- Show the matrix and place each person on it.
- Pair up and discuss how the styles differ in practice.
- Discuss how to adapt to each: pace for Drivers, big picture for Expressives, safety for Amiables, evidence for Analyticals.
- Practise the adaptation in role-play.
A worked example
Situation. Lin Yu-ting managed engineering at a medical device manufacturer in Taichung, Taiwan, and her detailed six-page project updates kept losing the sales director in the first paragraph.
Applied. Mapped on the matrix, Lin was a clear Analytical; the sales director was Driver, high assertiveness with little patience for detail.
Result. Lin cut updates to a three-line headline with the detail attached rather than leading with it. Meetings that used to run long started closing in ten minutes, with the same information landing.
The catch
The four boxes are a rough sort, not a fixed identity - most people flex depending on context and stress, and pinning a colleague to one quadrant forever becomes its own kind of stereotyping. It also says nothing about competence: an Amiable isn't less capable, just differently paced.
Adapt your style to theirs first; asking them to adapt to yours is usually where this breaks down.
Origin: David Merrill and Roger Reid