It is commonly understood that the way men and women communicate is very different. The female brain allows women to excel at making emotional connections with people, verbal transactions and multi-tasking while the male brain allows men to be very spatially aware, task-orientated and focused. But what does this mean for our relationships with others?
I believe that its generally easier to communicate with the same sex, everyone likes people who live up to their expectations of how one ought to behave in a particular situation, and both men and women wish the opposite sex communicated more like them.
Armed with this information it should be possible to catch ourselves out when we find ourselves getting frustrated with the way someone else communicates. Our awareness of this same frustration in others should help us with our method of delivery.
Here are some suggestions for using a combination of action-oriented language (masculine) and emotion-oriented language(feminine) to make yourself understood. Instead of saying ‘can you quit messing up my workshop !’ try combining a description of a situation and how it makes you feel, for example, ‘when you clean up my workshop while I’m out with the boys it makes me feel like you don’t respect my personal space’. Iinstead of saying ‘can you stop leaving the freakin’ toilet seat down you worthless moron!’ try avoiding personal attacks and focus on cause and effect by saying something like like ‘when you leave the toilet seat up and I have go pee in the night I fall into the toilet bowl so could you please try to remember to put it down’.
Accepting alternative ways of doing things is essential to all our relationships. When we find ourselves getting annoyed it is important to sit back and ask ourselves ‘am I being gender biased?’, ‘do I have expectations of this person to behave in a particular way because of social conventions?’ and ‘how can I understand the message without criticizing the method?’
Recently I was talking to a friend about his lecturers at the University of Sydney. One of his favourite lecturers was a man who spoke at length about his many achievements in the industry, who addressed the class with confidence and control, and who used a lot of pictures in his slide show to support his ideas. This lecturer conformed well to the masculine conventions of university lecturing.
My friend’s least favourite lecturer was a woman who barely referred to her successes in the industry, spoke very softly and used a lot of text in her slides. My friend’s main complaints about the woman were that she didn’t seem to have enough experience and that her method of delivery made it necessary to read her slides while trying to listen to her speech.
I tried to imagine myself in the same lectures. I realised I would either find the male lecturer a bit arrogant for going on about his achievements, his approach a bit brash, and his slide show a bit simplistic or I would love him for living up to my expectations of a university lecturer.
I would either like the female lecturer because of her humble, less assuming, less in-your-face approach, because I have no trouble listening and reading at the same time and because I would find her nerves endearing or I would hate her for not living up to theconventions of the situation which suggest that she should lecture more like a man.
Whenever we find ourselves criticizing the way someone makes themselves understood we can avoid a lot of heartache by listening to the content of what they are saying, by breaking down the cues whereever necessary, and by focusing on the message instead of the method.
Image courtesy of Augusto Lopez-Claros
This made me think of the best male communicator I have ever witnessed and the best female communicator. Male: Dr Michael Carr Gregg had a very masculine approach but his subject matter was so ‘maternal’ for the want of a better term. He spoke about the mental wellbeing of teenagers and how to better understand and care for them. Male directness, solution oriented yet nurturing.
Female: Kay Cottee, about her solo navigation of the globe. Masculine tenacity and pioneering spirit with a feminine approach to detailed story telling.
They were both excellent and I think possibly so because they broke any gender stereotypes.