Do you know Rackham’s Communication Behaviours?
Interested in how these translate into leadership style?
Heard of Push vs Pull Leadership Styles?
Here, red10 ‘s Kirsten Campbell explains Rackhams Push vs Pull Leadership Styles including when to use which.
This article assumes you know about Rackham’s Behaviours already
This is an advanced article that requires you to know about the 11 Rackham Behaviours – read on only if you know about the colour coded Blue-Green-Red behaviours already.
At red10 you will find Rackham’s Communicating Behaviours intrinsic to much of how we communicate and behave.
But why do we hold these so closely?
Is there more to it than us just being nice?
Equality is great place to start….
When we introduce the 11 Rackham Behaviours they typically make sense and stick!
We encourage you to Go Rackham Green, as this is what is typically light for most people and modify our use of Blue behaviours that are typically overdone.
We then invite you to see if you can experience what it is like to dial-up your Rackham Green behaviours up to 50% of the time and dial down your Blue behaviours to 50% of the time. In other words half the time about you and half the time about me. When it comes to valuing Equality that’s kind of hard to argue with right?
What’s the impact on results when we consciously dial up or down?
So what can happen when you dial-up or dial-down in either direction?
It turns out quite a lot, the impact over time on bottom-line results can be significant. Enter the Push and Pull Influencing or Leadership Styles!
What does Push Style look like?
Push Style when it comes to Communicating Behaviours looks like 60% of the time using Blue behaviours and 40% using Green Behaviours. This style is recommended when 2 key factors exist:
- Time is short
- Risk of rejection is low
The style is what we need in the face urgency and emergency ie the building is on fire.
This will get you the outcome you need and fast. It comes with a big watch-out when this becomes the default style of the individual Leader. We all know long-term impacts on people, clients and profits when Push is over-used.
What does Pull Style look like?
Pull Style, when it comes to Communicating Behaviours, is the other way around and looks like 60% of the time using Green Behaviours and 40% Blue Communicating Behaviours.
A very subtle shift but a very different outcome. Over time, Pull style used consciously and constantly tends to yield the better returns. This dialling-up of the Green Behaviours is causal as it includes more people more of time that leads to increased engagement, greater responsibility and ownership of the way we do things around here and the results we get. Isn’t this exactly what so many organisations desire?
The wisdom of knowing the difference and impact being able to do both
Ultimately a style that knows to use Pull style predominately and can pivot into Push style when the situation requires (most likely labelling this shift making it easier for those around to get on board) is a solid Leadership Style that influences with ease as it is led by the way we communicate.
When we look back on the Leaders that had a positive impact on us, I suspect it is partly because they listened to us with genuine interest and knew how to motivate us to make great choices and deliver on them, they were probably a Pull style Leader.
What is your Leadership Style?
What is your Leadership Style? Are you able to achieve 60% of the time communicating in Green and 40 % in the Blue?
You might feel like you know where your intention is but are your words matching that intention?
If you would like to enquire more about this and get tangible data on your actual communicating style and where to go from there, contact the red10 team. We take delight at going on this fruitful journey with our clients.
