femalenetwork.com

Marni is a flamboyant go-getter—hard-driving, competitive, always on the move. Seventy—even eighty-hour workweeks, tightly scheduled and packed with activity, are not uncommon for this power-suited powerhouse. She’s the top salesperson in the Manila branch of a large multinational insurance company and one of its fastest-rising stars.

Pat, an easy-going, earth-mother type, has managed to reach the same heights as Marni without owning a power suit or keeping a meticulously organized daybook. “I’m not much of a planner,” says this real-estate agent and self-proclaimed people person. “If I ever made a to-do list, I’d probably forget where I put it.” But she always finds time to listen to the concerns of anxious home buyers or worried would-be sellers. Her soft-spoken, unhurried demeanor and uncanny ability to sense what others are feeling pay off handsomely in new business referred to her by satisfied customers.

Marni and Pat are living proof that different people can approach work differently and still succeed. According to career consultants, any style of operating can work in your favor, as long as it’s flexible, in sync with the preferences and personalities of those around you, and not taken to extremes.

We all have work styles—a characteristic way of solving on-the-job problems, sharing information, making decisions—that seem to come naturally to us. Such styles are a combination of habit, temperament, behaviors learned from previous job experiences, and lifelong personality traits. They can be seen in the way we walk, talk, dress, manage our time, relate to coworkers, respond to authority figures, and generally get work done. They’re the personal stamps we put on the jobs we do.

Work styles can help you get noticed. “Styles can’t substitute for substance,” says Colorado-based consultant Debra Benton, author of Lions Don’t Need to Roar: Using the Leadership Power of Professional Presence to Stand Out, Fit In, and Move Ahead. “Competence, knowledge, and ability are definitely necessary.” But being perceived as able, smart, and on top of things is also necessary. And that’s where style, or what Benton calls professional presence, comes in. “If substance is there, success is one-quarter performance and three-quarters presence,” she comments.

One Size Does Not Fit All
You have a much better chance of succeeding if the presence that comes naturally to you “fits” the one demanded by your job. If it doesn’t—and if the gap between the two is wide enough—the stress of striving to be something you’re not can turn you into a monster.

Just ask Cora, a market researcher with a meticulous, one-task-at-a-time style who accepted a position more suitable for a juggler. “The man who had the job before me could keep four projects going at once and, at any given moment, know exactly what was happening with each one,” she says. “Naturally, I tried to do the same.”

Cora worked late, came in on weekends, made list and flow charts, and still couldn’t perform her predecessor’s juggling act. “I’d be working on project A and someone would ask me for a stat from project B. So I’d drop everything to go look for it. But before I found it, my boss would call me for an update on project C, and I’d have to pull the files on that project. It was endless. I began to feel like a ticking bomb that would explode the next time anyone asked me for anything.”

No longer able to conceal her irritation with her boss’ and coworkers’ demands, Cora snapped at them often and spent as much time as she could behind her locked office door. In six months, she’d picked at least one fight with every member of her research team, was barely speaking to anyone…and was as relieved as they were when she was offered her old job back.

Having difficulty fitting in may also be caused by gaps between the way you prefer to operate and a company’s overall work style. Candy, a resource developer and mother of a two-year-old son, discovered this when she recently took a job preparing grant proposals and direct-mail fund-raising materials for the local branch of a national charitable organization.

Candy—whose preference, even before she had a child, was to put in an efficient, intensely focused effort from nine-to-five and “get home at a decent hour”—thought she’d found an ideal situation. Not only was the agency small, “pretty informal,” and near her home, but the work could easily be accomplished during regular business hours.

“What I didn’t know was that nobody at this agency works regular business hours,” Candy says with a sigh. “Staff meetings don’t start until four-thirty. Brainstorming sessions last until seven or eight in the evening. And we’re all supposed to volunteer to be on one another’s event committees, which can mean working an extra twenty or thirty unpaid evening or weekend hours a month.”

When she’s forced to explain, “My son has to be picked up from day care by six,” as she ducks out at five-forty-five, her coworkers—all either single or parents of grown children—don’t seem to care. By opting to be home with her family as early as possible, Candy violates their code of acceptability. Even though she gets more work done in one forty-hour week than many of them complete in three, they think of her as lazy and rarely share information from after-hours meetings with her. “Obviously, my style is radically different from theirs,” she says. “There’s a lot I really like about the job, but I’m already sending out resumes. No way is this going to work.”

“Increasingly, the workplace is filled with people who reflect a vast range of backgrounds, lifestyles, and values,” notes Otto Kroeger, coauthor of Type Talk at Work. Those differences are reflected in our work styles, and says Kroeger, “differences in style can lead to misunderstandings, miscommunications, and resentment,” especially if you fall into the most common, and troublesome, of all work-style traps—assuming that your style is also someone else’s…or should be.

Take Amy, a personal trainer at an upscale fitness center. Her ultraresponsible work style includes such admirable traits as punctuality, neatness, organization, and attention to detail. She takes pride in “doing what’s right even if it’s inconvenient.” Unfortunately, few people, including her generally loose, fun-loving coworkers, are quite as unscrupulous in this area as she. “They drive me crazy!” she groans. The feeling, apparently, is mutual.

With little tolerance for lateness or breaches in protocol, Amy spends a great deal of time nagging fellow trainers about their lapses, grumbling about being “the only one who does anything around here.” Neither action endears her to her coworkers; their reaction to Amy’s constant carping has escalated from irritation to downright hostility. Sometimes, they leave towels in the gym or neglect to put the charts back in the files on purpose, just to aggravate her.

Work styles that put you at odds with the people around you are clearly counterproductive. “Even brilliance and an M.B.A. won’t save you if your work style alienates coworkers, angers your boss, offends customers, or makes it more difficult for people to work together to get their jobs done,” says John Poynton of Clarke, Poynton, and Associates, a Chicago outplacement firm.

“The mistake,” adds Debra Benton, “is rigidly sticking to your way of doing things after you see that your approach isn’t working or feel the tension in the air around you mounting.”

6 Steps to a Work Style That Works for You
As you can see, there isn’t an ideal-for-all-occasions work style. “These days, management seems to be looking for balance and stability in applicants, rather than a specific type,” Benton says. They value employees who can effectively handle pressure, adapt to unexpected situations, and get along with a variety of people while doing the job.

If your work style doesn’t help you do that—if it’s extreme, or in conflict with other people’s, or incompatible with the kind of work you’re being called upon to do—you have several options. You can:

• Leave your present job and hope that things will be better somewhere else. Sometimes, they will.
• Ignore the problems caused by clashing or questionable work styles and hope your performance convinces superiors to do the same. If you’re really good at what you do, this may work for a while.
• Make some changes in your work styles—adapting it to your current situation, expanding it to fit a wider variety of circumstances, or eliminating the aspects of it that work against you. Here’s how:

1. Know yourself. “The behaviors and attitudes that make up your work styles tend to be automatic,” notes New York City psychotherapist Marlin Potash, author of Hidden Agendas: What’s Really Going On in Your Relationships—at Home, at Work, and in Your Family. “We aren’t fully aware of them or their impact, and until we are, we can’t fix the things that could spell disaster for us or capitalize on our strengths.”

To become more aware of your overall style, familiarize yourself with individual elements of it. How do you typically deal with conflict, communicate displeasure, ask for help, respond to criticism, greet people, prepare for new experiences, organize your work space and time? Mentally step back and watch yourself at work. Listen to feedback others give you. Actually ask people how they perceive you. And with each trait you uncover, ask yourself, Is this working for or against me, helping me get ahead or holding me back? If it’s not helping, what could I do instead?

2. Know your coworkers, customers, and superiors. Study the people around you, particularly those you have to get along with, to perform well. What are their preferences, habits, favored ways of communicating, pet peeves? Answer the same questions about them that you’ve asked about yourself. But forget about changing them—your chances of doing so are practically nil. Instead, identify their behavior patterns so you can adapt your own accordingly. “If you know what their predominant style is,” says Don Sedlak, an organization-development consultant in Little Silver, New Jersey, “you can choose more appropriate responses and reduce conflicts and other difficulties.”

3. Know the organization. Its norms, expectations, taboos. For present and potential positions alike, get a clear idea of work styles that are accepted, encouraged, rewarded, and frowned on.

“If you’re applying for a job in another company or department of your own company, get the interviewer to talk about people who’ve succeeded in that company or department,” Benton advises. “Ask someone who used to work there or the person showing you around the building. Come at it from different angles.”

4. Start somewhere. You don’t need a personality transplant or complete work-style overhaul—controlling small, seemingly insignificant actions can positively influence other people’s perceptions of you. Try retiring some of your sabotaging behaviors—the ineffective things you do. Or transfer traits that help you stand out and fit in well in other areas to the work arena. “Everyone is effective in some situations or with some people,” says Benton. “The trick is to recognize your abilities in those settings and start using them in situations where you aren’t as comfortable or confident.”

5. Emulate successful people. “Having a dominant style doesn’t mean you can’t learn and use elements of other styles,” Benton explains. “Few CEOs, for example, are purely one style. More often, they come through effectively by utilizing different styles as necessary.” To do this yourself, start watching successful people. Observe their behavior in a variety of situations, then try on some of their positive traits. These won’t feel comfortable right away and ultimately may not make it into your work style. But be willing to go through the motions for a while.

6. Build tolerance and respect for diversity into your work style. No matter where you go or how much you improve your own style, you’ll always encounter people who approach work differently than you do. And, frankly, that’s as it should be—a variety of viewpoints, methods, skills are needed to design, produce, market, and deliver any product or service. Many a potential crisis has been averted by the person who looked at things differently than the rest and pointed out a problem.

Even so, other people’s approaches can still bewilder, annoy, or infuriate you—so much so that you’ll want to shake them and yell, “Can’t you see you’re going about this all wrong!” That won’t accomplish anything and only leads to ulcers and aggravation. What matters is getting from one point to another.

“The most important factor is why you’re at work in the first place,” says Sedlack. “You’re there to meet the needs of the organization and, by doing that, satisfy certain needs of your own.” To achieve that end, you don’t have to be best friends with your workmates or want to invite them over for dinner. You simply have to get along with them well enough to get your job done.