Personal Styles & Effective Performance

by David W. Merrill

Tens of thousands of professionals have attended David W. Merrill's acclaimed "Style Awareness Workshops" The improvement of interpersonal effectiveness skills-inspiring better communication, improved productivity, and a more harmonious working environment.
Students preparing for business, management, or sales careers can also benefit from Merrill's techniques, presented in Personal Styles & Effective Performance.
Merrill's approach emphasizes the interrelationships between behavior and social style-encouraging students to consider how their own actions influence responsiveness from others.
Those actions tend to be rooted in one of four primary social Analytical, Amiable, Driving, and Expressive-which readers are invited to compare and contrast with their own styles, as a starting point for potential improvement.
First published in 1981, Personal Styles & Effective Performance continues to be a popular resource for the self-improvement minded. By learning its lessons now, tomorrow's business professionals can have the edge in interpersonal effectiveness-one of the most important facets of a successful career.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 1981

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

READ AUG 2010

Nice piece that distinguishes between personality and behavioral styles. Best quotes, "...at a certain point, others can create so much tension for us that we can no longer focus on our goals or care about the relationship. Instead, we are concerned only about reducing our own tension" (p. 73) which often leads not to changed behaviors but changing circumstances (p. 21). I also liked, "organizations tend to take on the flavor of the individuals with authority" (p. 155).

[Jack Reid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Merrill offers another interesting social model focusing on people's actions rather than their inner feelings. I picked this up for $3.95 at a used book store and didn't realize Merrill wrote it back in the 1980s. While the information isn't too dated, I felt that today's models explain the material better and capture more nuances.

In sum, Merrill advocates that everyone has a personal style based on their assertiveness and emotional focus. People are either assertive or not. And they reserve their emotions (focus on task) or express their feelings (focus on people). He arrives at four types of people that he calls social styles - Drivers, Expressive, Amiable, Analytical. Each style is comfortable with different tasks and ways of communication. But some people are more flexible and comfortable working with other types. Merrill calls this an individual's versatility.

Nothing is new, especially in an age where the DISC is prevalent in work environments. I'm not sure which came first, but it doesn't matter now. I've heard of DISC, and Merrill feels like the newcomer.

The key takeaway is that individuals should add some versatility to their style to work with lots of other people, rather than just those with the same social style. You'll create happier and more productive relationships with more people by adding versatility. Again, nothing groundbreaking and likely why Merrill's model isn't common knowledge, and this book has so few reviews. Altogether not a waste of time but not a book I'd recommend to others.

[Cassidy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for work. It was nice to familiarize myself with the original research that these authors did on social styles and “colors of communication.” The book is a little more dry than I expected, and, of course, being written in the 70s some of the references were dated. Overall, though, I thought this was an interesting deep dive into the system that Reid and Merrill developed.

[Bud · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting system of categorizing behavior preferences developed by two psychologists in the 1970's. This is somewhat less complex than MBTI and easier to describe. It helps explain group dynamics and individual tensions.