Flexibility
Making adjustments to your behaviour and actions in the light of changed circumstances or fresh information.
Most people, despite protestations to the contrary, stick to a fairly narrow band of behaviours. This is entirely understandable, since repeating familiar, and previously sufficiently successful, behaviour patterns is far easier than constantly modifying your behaviour to suit differing circumstances. An argument frequently advanced for being consistent is that it is fairer on other people: they know what to expect and ‘where they stand’. The alternative argument has it that, since people and situations differ, you are better equipped to deal with them if you have a wide repertoire of behaviours to draw on.
Oscillating between wild extremes of behaviour is interesting, but ill-advised and unnecessary. On the other hand, being sufficiently flexible to make small adjustments to your behaviour, providing the chosen mode is appropriate, is likely to be effective. Everyone is able to choose how to behave in a given set of circumstances, although many people operate on the assumption that they cannot choose and so never give the alternatives a moment’s thought. You can choose, for example, whether to:
- talk or listen
- question or answer
- look at the person or look away
- be positive or negative
- be friendly or formal
- laugh or cry
and so on. These are all significantly different ways of behaving and they are open to everyone.
Varying your behaviour is fine, with two important provisos:
- You need to be consistent within a single interaction. Chopping and changing your behaviour within a short space of time is likely to confuse and be unhelpful.
- You need to be open about the way you have chosen to behave. Just a simple explanation will do, such as ‘I’ve thought about this and decided that I’d better shut up and do most of the listening’. It is rare for such declarations to be made – but that is usually because people haven’t given any thought to how best to behave, and therefore have nothing to declare.