Do you have behavioural flexibility?

Behavioural flexibility is the ability to be able to change your behaviour if you are not achieving the intended result or outcome. As an example, if you are communicating with a colleague about a work matter and if they look puzzled then for some reason what you are communicating is not being understood. So what should be done? You need to change your behaviour so that the other person can understand what you are saying or talking about.

Behavioural flexibility requires you to have the ability to notice whether your communication is understand through sensory acuity. Sensory acuity is about noticing minute changes that occurs in the other person’s physiology and that those changes have meaning. Minute changes occur in someone’s skin colour, skin tonus, breathing rate and location, lower lip size and eyes being focused/defocused or pupil dilated to undilated.  Other important changes include the other person’s voice tonality such as tone, tempo timbre or volume.

By having sensory acuity enables you to be a more effective communicator. By noticing changes you can then be flexible in your behaviour to produce better results.

To illustrate behavioural flexibility the following situation occurred at Albany Airport in July of this year : 

A business person arrived at Albany airport from Perth. After waiting at the carousel for over 15 minutes and most of the people had left the terminal he realised his luggage was missing. He went to the baggage claim area and said very fast “I am here on business and need my luggage for an important business meeting, I want to know where my bags are?” Baggage handler said “Hello (talking slowly)”. Again the businessman repeated himself and the baggage claim officer just said “Hello and yes?” The coin then dropped with the business person that his communication was not being conveyed to the baggage handler. So he slowed down his speech and said “G’day mate, how has your day been?” Handler said “not bad”. The business person then proceeded to mention that his luggage had not arrived and he required some assistance. This time the baggage handler mentioned he could help him.  By realising that his communication was not getting through, the passenger from Perth talked slower and “copied” the other person’s communication style, which resulted in achieving the outcome he desired.

In this real life example, the business person noticed through sensory acuity that his communication was not achieving the intended result. He changed his communication style and matched/mirrored the style of the baggage handler. By having behaviour flexibility he was able to produce the intended result of learning the location of his bags.