In this episode of the Proteus Leader Show, host Erika Andersen interviews Therese McLeod, Director of Building Skills and Knowledge at Proteus, about the Social Style model—a simple, practical framework for understanding and adapting to different behavioral preferences in the workplace. They explain that people fall into four distinct styles—Amiable, Analytical, Driving, and Expressive—each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and emphasize that no style is superior. The core of the model is "versatility," the ability to temporarily shift one’s own behavior to match others’ preferences, which leads to higher productivity, influence, and team cohesion. Through a vivid scenario contrasting two otherwise identical driving‑style leaders—one low in versatility and one high—they illustrate how adaptable leaders foster participation, buy‑in, and better outcomes, while inflexible leaders risk disengagement and conflict. The conversation concludes with concrete, actionable advice: listeners should observe the next five people they interact with for cues about relationship‑vs‑task focus and communication pace, then adjust their own speed or style accordingly. Listeners are directed to ProteusLeader.com for deeper resources on the Social Style model.
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You're listening to the Proteus Leader Show with Erika Andersen, where you'll get practical tools and insights for leading and managing and staying ready for the future. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a firm that focuses uniquely on leader readiness. A nationally known executive coach and bestselling author, you may already know her as one of the most popular leadership bloggers on Forbes.com. Ready for something you can use today? Here's Erika.
Welcome to the Proteus Leader Show. We are thrilled to have you. So today I'm here with my colleague, Therese McLeod, and we're going to talk about one of the toughest things about managing and leading other people is that not everybody is wired like us. Sometimes you look at somebody who works for you or with you and you think, what planet are you from? So learning to operate well with lots of different kinds of people is key to success in today's work world. And Therese and I are going to talk about a great, simple model that you can use to help you create strong relationships with a wide variety of people. So Therese is our Director of Building Skills and Knowledge here at Proteus. That's the training part of our business. And she spent 2 decades working in leader development. She helps our clients ensure that their employees have the skills they need to get ready and stay ready to lead. Now, this model that she and I will be talking about today is called Social Style. We've used it for 25 years at Proteus as a tool for team development and executive coaching. And Therese, you are a master trainer in social style.
I am.
And you certify other people to teach it, and you've taught the model to over 1,000 managers. That's 1-0-0-0. And you also advise our clients on how to integrate social style into their leadership curricula. So you've had a lot of experience with it. So why don't you go ahead and give us a little insight into the model?
So Social Style is a simple, practical model for understanding how to work well with people who are very different from you.
Okay.
Have you, have you ever noticed that with some people that you work with, it's effortless? Every time you interact with them, it's productive. It's like you're on the same wavelength.
Yeah.
And then there's other people where it's the exact opposite. Those interactions feel like hard work, even when you share the same goal.
Yeah.
It just feels like you're always in some sort of conflict.
Yeah, sandpaper.
It is, yeah. And oftentimes the interesting thing is that social style is the explanation for what's happening. Like sometimes our behaviors are a match or a mismatch with others, and that mismatch can be a source of frustration and mistrust, misunderstanding, and at its very worst, poor results.
So how about an example of that? Sure.
So think about the people you work with. Some people complete tasks really fast, some more slowly. Some like to gather a lot of information before acting and deciding, and some just want to act quickly. Some are really friendly, right? They start each conversation with a little warm-up that's kind of personal. And then there's others who just want to get right down to the work, the task. They're more reserved, even formal sometimes.
Yeah.
And that can explain some of those behavioral differences. So there are just 4 social styles. It's pretty simple. So there's amiable, analytical, driving, and expressive. And the great thing is that no style is inherently good or bad. It's not like you won the social style lottery and just happen to have the winning style. There are strengths and weaknesses to every style.
So each of those 4 styles are characterized by different behavioral preferences. Prefer to behave in different ways.
Exactly. Exactly. The heart of social style is something called versatility, and it's your ability to make temporary shifts in your behavior when working with someone who's different than you. So, for example, if you're more slow-paced, it means just being able to speed up a little bit faster when you're with someone who's naturally faster, and vice versa. And when you, when you're more versatile with people who are different style, Like, great things happen. You're more productive, you're more influential, people basically want to work more with you.
Okay. So it gives you a lot more choices.
It does, yes. Okay.
Okay. So talk about some applications.
Sure. So here's just a couple. One is that we, we use it to help salespeople sell appropriately to customers of various styles. Teams can use the model to make best use of all their members' strengths and to better integrate people when they're new to the team. Anybody in any situation can use the social style concept to begin to see him or herself as others see them, which is really, really valuable. And then to behave in ways that create productive relationships with people of every style.
Okay, that's great. So since the Proteus Leader Show is for leaders and managers, how does learning social style help you manage and lead better?
Sure. So the key to it all is when you're able to adapt or flex your behaviors to the preferences of others, you're basically a better leader.
Ah.
So teamwork gets better, miscommunication and conflict decrease, and you can be more influential and persuasive.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, it's as simple as people are more willing to follow a leader who's versatile.
Yeah.
Let me give you an example. So imagine 2 people, 2 leaders. And let's assume everything is equal about them. They're from the same company, same years of experience, and they're like rock stars when it comes to the technical part of their job. They're also both driving style. And they have members on their team that are of a different style. Some are amiable, analytical, and expressive. So let's play with the only difference between these 2 leaders is versatility.
Now, Tad, before you go there, say a couple of things about driving style people. What would their default setting be?
Yeah, their natural default would be to move and talk fast, to be direct, real logical, not show a lot of emotion, kind of get right to it.
Got it, got it.
So one of these driving style leaders has high versatility and then the other has low.
Okay.
So now imagine that you're watching them lead their team meetings. And let's play first with the low versatile boss. So knowing his default setting is to move fast, go quick, get to conclusions, that's how he leads the meeting. So it's quite fast, not a lot of small talk. He's telling others what to do, and he really doesn't ask any questions to get different points of view.
Hmm.
Now, he might notice that no one else is speaking up, but that need to move fast just keeps him plowing through to the end of the meeting, and he might even end the meeting early.
And feel very good about having done so.
Oh yeah, save some time, right?
Yeah.
And if you followed him around for the rest of the day, you would notice some, some things. Like one being that he probably operates that way in every interaction regardless of who he's interacting with. His boss, his peers, customers, his direct reports. Now let's play around with the high versatile boss. This one, again, also driving style, still feels that same need for speed, but she adapts her behaviors to the different styles in the room. So she might start by speaking fast. That's again our natural pace, but she notices everyone's heads are down, so she decides to slow her rate of speech and she pauses, and she might even say something like, all right guys, we've got to make a decision here quickly, but I'm open to hearing different points of view. What do you hear? Or what do you think?
Mm-hmm.
And she can pause and she, she looks around the room and waits to hear voices. And it's absolutely slowing her down and she feels that. But the, the return on going slower is that she now has people contributing and voicing their opinion. And oftentimes when you get the whole team to participate in a decision, there's more buy-in and she can actually go faster. When she has all that buy-in.
And just based on your description, I want to work for her.
Me too.
Me too.
It's hard to work for a boss who's low versatile.
Yeah. Okay, let's move on. So let's get practical here. Can you give us some ideas about how our listeners can use what we've been talking about, this model, to improve working relationships?
Absolutely. So here's an easy thing for our listeners to do right after they listen to this podcast. So the next 5 people you talk with today, notice just 2 things. First, their focus on relationship versus task. So how do they approach their conversation with you? Do they want to go right down to business or do they want to have a little bit of personal conversation? Then take a notice about pace. How quickly or slowly do they talk and respond to you? Are they faster or are they slower?
Oh, that's great. That's great. And then what do you do when you notice that difference?
You slow down. In fact, I think we're a good example for our listeners, Erika. So you're naturally faster paced than me, and I realize that I want to have great interactions with you, so it's worth my effort to speed up a little bit.
Yeah, I think we've been kind of doing neck and neck here on this. You're definitely moving at my pace, which I know knowing you is faster than you usually move. That's a great example because it feels really comfortable to me.
Oh, good. Good.
Okay. Well, this is a wonderful, I hope, kind of little crash course in this. I know I speak for you, Therese. We really feel like we've barely scratched the surface of this approach, but we wanted to keep to our commitment to keep our Proteus Leader podcast short and sweet. So if you'd like to explore this in more depth, you're more than welcome to go to ProteusLeader.com/leadership. And you'll find a lot of great tools and information about social style if you want to explore this more. So thank you so much, Therese. This was really fun. And thank all of you for being here with us. Have a great life and we'll talk again soon.
We hope you're feeling better equipped to create the career, the business, and the life you want. For more insights and tools for leadership and management, Join us at ProteusLeader.com. Have an excellent day, and thanks for listening.
