You can't read minds, but...

CAMBRIDGE -- We've all been there.

Locking horns with a colleague who focuses on the nitty-gritty instead of the big picture, or who likes abstract ideas but ignores details. Impatient with a friend who speaks painfully slowly, or who talks too quickly and too much. Frustrated with a spouse who is overly sensitive, or who can be blunt and unemotional.

In the workplace, social settings, and family situations, effective communication is key to productive relationships. But different personality types communicate in different ways, often causing communication breakdowns when opposing styles clash. Marriages chafe. Friendships falter. Work product suffers as office mates conflict.

That's why Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., a fast-growing drug-development company headquartered in Central Square, is putting its entire 1,100-person work force through SpeedReading People, a program with New England roots that teaches techniques for rapidly identifying other people's personality types -- and then tailoring your communication style to match theirs.

The goal of the training is not to manipulate other people or become a human chameleon with an ever-changing disposition, but to learn to adapt the way you interact with others to their temperaments. The benefit is improved personal and professional relationships, enabling managers to delegate more effectively, bosses to better motivate their employees, coworkers and family members to interact more harmoniously, and people with very different personalities to quickly establish rapport.

"This is not about being disingenuous," said Bink Garrison, a senior vice president at Vertex. "It's about being aware of behavior that will be counterproductive in an interaction with the other person. You just modify your behavior in the name of better interpersonal interaction."

SpeedReading People LLC was founded in 2004 by Paul D. Tieger, an author of several books on personality type and a former jury consultant. The private company now has seven employees, with offices in Natick and Hartford, and its clients range from law firms to hospitals to software and financial services firms to the US Coast Guard.

The one-day program teaches participants to watch for behavioral clues -- such as energy level, pace of speech, sentence structure, body language, and word choices -- that hint at a person's personality and communication style. Some people are harder to read than others, and no one clue is foolproof. So participants are taught to treat the clues as a "working hypothesis" that will evolve with future interactions.

A person who speaks in long, complex sentences and focuses on future possibilities, for example, is probably intuitive, a description based on the Jungian model of personality types. When dealing with such a person, emphasize the larger picture and avoid too many details. A person who talks in short, concise sentences responds precisely to what is said, and uses down-to-earth speech is probably a so-called sensor. Sensors are best reached by avoiding theories and stressing concrete benefits.

In many ways, consciously or not, all of us make these subtle tweaks in our communication styles all the time. But we often do this by trial and error, and only after repeated personality conflicts that finally force a new approach. SpeedReading People aims to make this process instinctive and immediate, so we don't reach a point of exasperation before realizing that our method of communicating is at odds with someone else's.

"It's tough, it's an art, and most people learn through the course of their lives and personal interactions," said Rob Toomey, a former Boston lawyer who is vice president of SpeedReading People. "We're just helping them learn it earlier and easier."

The program also cautions not to assume that someone you have trouble communicating with is simply dense or difficult. That can lead to what Garrison, of Vertex, calls "unconscious incompetence," or unproductive interactions that inhibit progress and workplace success.

At Vertex, which is hiring new employees at a rate of about one person per business day, innovation is critical to the company's mission of developing drugs that treat devastating diseases. That means its workers must be able to communicate effectively with each another, since poor communication impedes innovation, Garrison said.

For Dean Wilson, a chemistry research fellow at Vertex who recently completed the SpeedReading program, the training has already had workplace benefit.

During a conversation with a coworker about a major change to a complicated laboratory process, Wilson, who describes himself as a theoretical thinker, realized that his detail-oriented colleague seemed to want a more step-by-step explanation.

"I was having a discussion on a very high conceptual level with a person who really needed a lot more detail and a more linear progression of ideas," recalled Wilson, 39, who has worked at the company for five years. "So I essentially conveyed the same information but in a completely different way -- from the details up instead of from the top down -- and I think he gained a much better understanding of what I was getting at."

Many other behavior-training programs focus on helping participants identify personality types, particularly their own, but few emphasize the practical application of this knowledge. By having participants watch video interviews, role play, and use online tools, SpeedReading People teaches not only how to categorize other people's temperaments, but how to communicate more effectively with them.

Some personality types are obvious. Extraverts tend to be high-energy, outgoing, talkative people, so it's beneficial to communicate verbally with them and keep the conversation lively. Introverts tend to be reserved, private, quiet, and introspective, so it's advantageous to communicate with them in writing first if possible and give them time to reflect.

Other communication differences are more nuanced. If you have a coworker who frequently questions your decisions, he may not simply be an aggressive jerk; he may be an intuitive thinker who loves debate and wants to understand your thought process. Be assertive with him and avoid taking his remarks personally.

If you have a boss who rarely smiles and never seems to break out of work mode, she may not be socially inept; she may be a so-called sensor-judger who doesn't like to combine work and play. Be formal and direct with her.

Behavioral clues are best picked up in face-to-face interaction , which isn't always practical in this Internet era. But even a highly detailed e-mail or a terse, clipped phone call can offer insights into another person's personality. And those insights are helpful in both personal and professional contexts, no matter what your family life or work situation.

"It's basically important for anyone for whom relationships are important," said Toomey, "and if that doesn't capture everyone, then there's something wrong."

Sacha Pfeiffer can be reached at pfeiffer@globe.com.