Why Being Yourself Is Not Enough in Communication
Who Am I and Who Do I Want to Become?
Most of us feel a certain apprehension in social situations — such as
passing an exam, speaking in public, or going out on a date. This apprehension
reflects our awareness that, in any social situation, we are going to be
judged. Others will form an impression of us. In some cases, this impression is
critical to our goals:
• To get a job or a promotion
• To sell our products or services
• To pass an exam
• To make the other person like us
These judgments are highly relative. They depend on who we are (or pretend
to be), on who our interlocutor is, and on what the necessities of the
situation are.
This leads us to a more fundamental set of questions:
Who are you?
Who do you pretend to be?
Why is this important?
Roles
Whether we want to or not — whether we are aware of it or not — we all
switch between roles during a normal day. Imagine receiving five phone calls,
one after another. You are called by your boss, your seven-year-old daughter, a
telemarketer, your mother-in-law, and a customer with whom you hope to close a
deal.
Now imagine that all five calls were recorded. Do you really believe that
your voice, phrasing, and attitude would be exactly the same in all of them?
Most certainly not. You would observe that you assumed a different role in each
conversation. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Within a single profession, you already play multiple roles: towards your
supervisors, your colleagues, your clients, and society at large (for example,
when giving a television interview).
Towards your boss, you are a supervisee; towards a new colleague, a mentor;
towards a client, a trusted advisor; towards a reporter, a subject-matter
expert.
Before working on your communication, you should strive for clarity about
which roles you occupy and how you want to be perceived in each of them. Based
on this clarity, you can then develop appropriate communication styles for each
role. Only after that does it make sense to start measuring and training
concrete communication skills.
Working on your roles is not a trivial task.
Let us consider a piece of surface behavior that many people would take for
granted: a waiter (or waitress) should be friendly towards restaurant patrons.
We could discuss what “friendly” means in different cultures or social groups
and how friendliness can be expressed in very different ways. However, there
are situations in which friendliness itself is inappropriate.
A Restaurant Where Rudeness Is on the Menu
There are restaurants where unfriendly service is not a mistake — it is the
concept. One such example is Dick’s Last Resort, a restaurant chain in the
United States known for hiring and training staff to be intentionally rude to
customers. At Dick’s, servers do not merely take orders; they bark sarcastic remarks,
tease guests, write playful insults on oversized paper hats, and deliberately
violate the norms of polite service. Napkins may be tossed onto the table,
questions answered with mockery, and customers openly ridiculed — all as part
of the experience.
In such a setting, a waiter who behaved politely, warmly, and deferentially
would not be fulfilling their role. In fact, both management and customers
would likely judge this behavior negatively.
This example is admittedly extreme. But consider a more everyday situation:
a friendly employee at a fast-food drive-through who initiates a five-minute
empathetic conversation with a long-time customer while a queue of cars is
building up behind them.
Time is a limited resource. Being especially friendly to one customer often
means having less time for another. Differential treatment can easily elicit
feelings of injustice. Similar dynamics exist within organizations, where
complaints frequently arise that certain colleagues receive preferential
treatment.
Roles and Leadership
The same logic applies to leadership. In fact, almost all of us occupy
leadership roles at some point — whether towards a new colleague, an intern, a
junior employee, or even within a client relationship.
In the management literature, you will find a wide range of leadership
styles, for example:
• Transactional leadership
• Transformational leadership
• Charismatic leadership
• Servant leadership
• Authentic leadership
• Ethical leadership
• Democratic leadership
• Autocratic leadership
• Laissez-faire leadership
• Participative leadership
Which style suits you as a person? And which style fits your position, your
team, and your organizational culture?
These questions cannot be answered abstractly. They require reflection on
your roles, your values, and the expectations attached to your position.
Self-Discovery
Your roles
Make a list of the roles you are currently occupying. For each role, briefly
describe how you want to be perceived by your interlocutors.
Do not worry about getting this perfectly right. You can — and should —
revisit and update this list periodically.
Your core values
Beyond role-specific impressions, you likely hold personal and
organizational values that should permeate all your interactions, regardless of
your role.
These values may stem from your religion, your upbringing, or the culture of
the organization you work in. Clarifying them is an essential step toward
coherent and authentic communication.
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Gerhard Ohrband is a psychologist from
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