By: O.L. and Sway Buckley
Conflict tends to stem from miscommunication.
-According to Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ) Communication Style Expert Robyn Ginese.
The University of South Florida echos the thought with their article: Understanding Personality Types: Communicating Effectively in the Workplace
We can learn a few lessons as married entrepreneurs from this article.
The first recommendation is to use a strengths assessment. We prefer these over a personality assessment because the strength assessment points out your spouse's strengths more than anything else. As a marriedpreneur couple, it's easy to overlook strengths and fit in a pre-conceived mold that was never meant to be forced on. It's freeing to be aware of your strengths and encourage your spouse in their strengths.
The next lesson is not to pigeonhole your spouse in the highest strengths and overlook other areas that support those strengths. We've learned early on that strengths during one season of life can look significantly different in a different season. But if you look close enough, you will see the strengths were there all along. This helps communicate with a spouse with an opposite personality because you can better understand the thought process.
In short, awareness on this level promotes higher emotional intelligence, which only adds to the thoughtfulness in communication.
Another lesson this article shares is the importance of encouraging social interaction. As marriedpreneurs, this can be applied by having non-business conversations. It gives you more to talk about than 'office talk,' and it only enriches your communication.
We are implementing these tips on our marriedpreneur journey and will share them with you in real time. We intentionally work on communication skills like this during our daily legacy meetings. They allow us to improve our communication regardless of our personality differences (trust and believe we have many).
If you'd like support implementing daily legacy meetings, start with our free Marriedpreneur Operating systems. Download it right here.
Here's to living purposefully, powerfully, and profitably in sync,
O.L. & Sway
O.L. is a former banker turned real estate consultant and entrepreneur. Sway is a former CEO of a staffing firm she started on her dorm room floor to pay for college. Together they co-own Marriedpreneur Life Consultancy, equipping married entrepreneur couples with high-level systems to scale without strain. They're the co-hosts of The Marriedprenuer Life Podcast, which was praised as one of Wedding Wire's top relationship podcasts. Learn more at MarriedpreneurLife.com.