The Great Connection: Arnie Warren’s Business Fable of Bob Hathaway and the Four Behaviour Styles
The Great Connection is a story that reveals the key to professional relationships. It tells how Bob Hathaway learned to connect with others... and with himself. Anyone who wants to improve their social, personal and professional skills can be guided by its simple principles.
Author: Arnie Warren
Title: The Great Connection
Format: English paperback (Pallium Books)
Scope: Business fable about communication and behaviour styles
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0965514846 (ASIN 0965514846)
Four Styles
Anyone about to enter the world of work should know this story, which describes four main styles of behaviour: dominant, influential, steady and conscientious. Each has advantages and drawbacks to keep in mind.
Listening to Lead
The book stresses the importance of knowing how to listen in order to lead, and of understanding what truly motivates people. It is a look inside each person that helps us understand and improve ourselves.
The Story Behind the Story
Arnie Warren was a radio interviewer who hosted a talk show on KMOX in St Louis, and he said that Bob Hathaway, the book’s people-pleasing broadcaster, was largely himself. Among his guests was the psychologist Robert Lefton, whose work on behaviour styles opened Warren’s eyes in his fifties; after years of trying to write a textbook, a friend told him he was a storyteller and should write a story instead. The result is a short parable in which Bob learns from a wise mentor, Doc Crater, in scenes set around St Louis, including one at the top of the Gateway Arch.
The DISC Model
The four styles in the book, dominant, influential, steady and conscientious, are the DISC model, which goes back to the psychologist William Moulton Marston’s Emotions of Normal People (1928); Marston, incidentally, also created the comic-book heroine Wonder Woman. DISC profiles are widely used in business training to help people understand their own preferences and those of colleagues. They are a practical communication tool rather than a rigorous scientific theory of personality, and they work best as a starting point for conversation, which is exactly how Warren uses them.
Getting People to Talk
The book’s most useful section, drawn from Warren’s experience as an interviewer, explains how to get someone talking so that you can understand their style. He suggests opening with "Tell me about...", listening for details you can follow up, using brief reactions rather than interrupting, pausing to let the other person say more and summarising at the end. He then proposes acknowledging the person’s style with simple first-person statements, "I can see that you love detail", which make people feel understood.
The Reviewer’s View
The original review called it a book for anyone entering the world of work, and that is fair: its lessons on listening apply as much to family conversations as to meetings. Warren died in 2008, and this remains his best-known book.
Listen, Adapt, Acknowledge
Warren sums up his method in three steps. First, listen, using the interview techniques above, until you have a sense of the other person’s style. Then adapt: speak to a dominant person briefly and in terms of results, give an influential person warmth and recognition, offer a steady person reassurance and time, and give a conscientious person facts and detail. Finally, acknowledge their style in a way that shows you have understood them. None of it requires changing who you are; Doc Crater’s lesson to Bob is that knowing your own weaknesses frees you to rely on your strengths.
Ideal Readers
Young professionals, managers, salespeople and anyone who feels that their conversations at work keep going wrong. It can be read in an evening and returned to before an important meeting.
Who Is It For?
Written with enthusiasm, hope and optimism, it is a short, easy read for anyone who wants to become a little better every day. The Spanish edition, La gran conexión, is also available, but here I link the English original.
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