Module 6 · Adaptability & different people · Lesson 1 of 8

People differ — observe the individual

Categories give you a starting guess at most. The person in front of you corrects it.

6 min read · Level: Beginner · Free — no account needed to read

The idea

People differ in age, background, culture, experience, communication style, confidence and much more. Knowing that can help you ask better questions. But a category — “older people”, “engineers”, “people from the city” — is at most a starting guess about an individual, and often a wrong one.

The skill is observation: how does THIS person talk, what do they respond to, what makes them comfortable? Watch, ask, and adjust. The person in front of you always outranks any generalisation about people like them.

Why it matters

Adapting to individuals makes you easy to talk to; stereotyping them makes people feel unseen, even when the stereotype is meant kindly.

See it happen

Lamia assumes her new manager, who is much older, will prefer formal emails and dislike messaging apps.

The first reaction

She writes long, formal emails for every small question, which seems the respectful choice.

With the idea

She asks how he prefers to be contacted. He says quick messages are fine for small things. Their work gets much easier.

What changed

Asking the individual replaced a guess based on a category.

Easy to get wrong

• Treating a generalisation as a fact about the person in front of you.
• Refusing to adapt at all, as if one style should suit everyone.

Try it now: Observe the individual

1. Pick someone you talk to often.
2. Write three things you have noticed about how they like to communicate.
3. Write one thing you have assumed about them that you have never checked.

Questions to think about

• What assumptions do people make about you based on a category you belong to?
• Whose communication style have you never really paid attention to?

Your challenge this week

Ask one person how they prefer to communicate — calls, messages, meeting, detail or summary.