MEN COMMUNICATE DIFFERENTLY FROM WOMEN
By KAGHUGONGO VHUMBU WASHINGERESHU
It’s an old age discussion and problem; men and women communicate differently. You have heard it in the best seller from Dr. Gray, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, you hear about it on the talk shows and definitely hear it from males and females alike; ‘‘he just won’t listen.’’ ‘‘She complains too much.’’ It is not all in our minds, there’s scientific evidence that we just don’t talk the same ‘‘language’’. From body language and facial expressions to the way we speak to one another; the different are drastic. According to Dr. Deborah Tannen, who wrote the book You Just Don’t Understand, said that ‘‘Communication is not as simply as saying what you mean. How you say what you mean is crucial, and differs from one person to the next.’’ She goes on to say childhood is where most of our communication skills are learned and boys and girls are from two different subcultures.
There are many ways in which the two genders differs in communication, out of many I am going to look at the best five strategies for our discussion, these big five will come with their examples to easy the comprehension of the topic at hand. The big five are as follows; number one, attitude towards task vs relationships, way of processing information, leadership style, communication style and the last one is, talk time.
Allow me to start with attitude towards task vs. relationship. Our mother, sisters and aunts are people who treasures and values the opinions of others at work place, by doing this, they first build the friendship bridge to connect with those they are around with, so that they can be comfortable to share their ideas or ask others their opinion on the way forward to get the work done. While their male counterparts, are task oriented, the first thing in the mind is to get the work done and how to get it done by any means necessary, they don’t look around to make friendship at first, they focus on the job at hand first, as the work goes on and progress they will get to know each other at the project or place and build their friendship according to the level of each person’s performance. Moving further, we look at how female and male gender processes information? Female always do that by speaking it out loud to themselves, in other word we say they think out loud, this always give confusion to men, men thinks maybe the person is asking for advice or just not sure of what to do, that is why they are asking or sharing the information for everyone to know whether it is right or wrong. This behaviour makes a man to conclude it as a sign of weakness, because you cannot expose your plan for everyone to know it while it’s at a prematurely level or far from a completed idea. Male process their information internal and quietly. Women misinterpret this and think that their counterpart are not ready to share ideas because they got that silent atmosphere when their doing their thinking internally.
Furthermore, leadership style between the two parties is far different from each other; men are task-oriented while women are relationship-oriented leaders. Task-oriented leader are oppressive, direct and controlling, their behaviours are concentrate on performing the job that the work group face and thus similar to those of the initiating the job, and meeting the production goals. These take-charge leadership traits are emulated by men’s characteristics when it comes to communication. As stated above, men are very goal-oriented when it comes to the way in which they approach communication as they use conversation to achieve results, preserve independence, dominance, and maintain their status in the hierarchical social order. Thus, men’s communication style, based primarily on control and power, mirrors their task-oriented leadership style quite perfectly. This aggressive approach is primarily why men emerge more often as leaders than women in the workplace. Female leaders tend to assume more of a caretaker role, possible because of their stereotypical role as a caretaker to their husband and children in the household.
In the second last analysis, we look at the nonverbal communication style. Men and women differ significantly in their propensity use of nonverbal communication, their skills in interpreting it and their meaning. Women are better than men at interpreting nonverbal signal and use it more often than men. Finally, man always talk more than women during meeting and any other work related discussion compared to their female counterpart, this is so because men take communication as an opportunity to exercise their dominance and power. They have got the confidence to expresses themselves wrong or right. Women are always speak less because they are afraid of how people perceive their idea, they are afraid to make mistakes and like to follow or lead from behind. Men use to get more time in talking by forcefully interrupting women whenever it’s their chance to talk in board meeting or any kind; this is caused by the communication different which lead to assumptions of what the other member of the opposite more special women is about to say.
Lastly, women and men need to learn these differences to avoid miscommunication which can result in conflict if it’s not well observed. It’s important that we must learn the big five to help us understand the behaviour of women and women to learn the communication behaviour of men to improve our relationship and understanding of one another.
It’s an old age discussion and problem; men and women communicate differently. You have heard it in the best seller from Dr. Gray, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, you hear about it on the talk shows and definitely hear it from males and females alike; ‘‘he just won’t listen.’’ ‘‘She complains too much.’’ It is not all in our minds, there’s scientific evidence that we just don’t talk the same ‘‘language’’. From body language and facial expressions to the way we speak to one another; the different are drastic. According to Dr. Deborah Tannen, who wrote the book You Just Don’t Understand, said that ‘‘Communication is not as simply as saying what you mean. How you say what you mean is crucial, and differs from one person to the next.’’ She goes on to say childhood is where most of our communication skills are learned and boys and girls are from two different subcultures.
There are many ways in which the two genders differs in communication, out of many I am going to look at the best five strategies for our discussion, these big five will come with their examples to easy the comprehension of the topic at hand. The big five are as follows; number one, attitude towards task vs relationships, way of processing information, leadership style, communication style and the last one is, talk time.
Allow me to start with attitude towards task vs. relationship. Our mother, sisters and aunts are people who treasures and values the opinions of others at work place, by doing this, they first build the friendship bridge to connect with those they are around with, so that they can be comfortable to share their ideas or ask others their opinion on the way forward to get the work done. While their male counterparts, are task oriented, the first thing in the mind is to get the work done and how to get it done by any means necessary, they don’t look around to make friendship at first, they focus on the job at hand first, as the work goes on and progress they will get to know each other at the project or place and build their friendship according to the level of each person’s performance. Moving further, we look at how female and male gender processes information? Female always do that by speaking it out loud to themselves, in other word we say they think out loud, this always give confusion to men, men thinks maybe the person is asking for advice or just not sure of what to do, that is why they are asking or sharing the information for everyone to know whether it is right or wrong. This behaviour makes a man to conclude it as a sign of weakness, because you cannot expose your plan for everyone to know it while it’s at a prematurely level or far from a completed idea. Male process their information internal and quietly. Women misinterpret this and think that their counterpart are not ready to share ideas because they got that silent atmosphere when their doing their thinking internally.
Furthermore, leadership style between the two parties is far different from each other; men are task-oriented while women are relationship-oriented leaders. Task-oriented leader are oppressive, direct and controlling, their behaviours are concentrate on performing the job that the work group face and thus similar to those of the initiating the job, and meeting the production goals. These take-charge leadership traits are emulated by men’s characteristics when it comes to communication. As stated above, men are very goal-oriented when it comes to the way in which they approach communication as they use conversation to achieve results, preserve independence, dominance, and maintain their status in the hierarchical social order. Thus, men’s communication style, based primarily on control and power, mirrors their task-oriented leadership style quite perfectly. This aggressive approach is primarily why men emerge more often as leaders than women in the workplace. Female leaders tend to assume more of a caretaker role, possible because of their stereotypical role as a caretaker to their husband and children in the household.
In the second last analysis, we look at the nonverbal communication style. Men and women differ significantly in their propensity use of nonverbal communication, their skills in interpreting it and their meaning. Women are better than men at interpreting nonverbal signal and use it more often than men. Finally, man always talk more than women during meeting and any other work related discussion compared to their female counterpart, this is so because men take communication as an opportunity to exercise their dominance and power. They have got the confidence to expresses themselves wrong or right. Women are always speak less because they are afraid of how people perceive their idea, they are afraid to make mistakes and like to follow or lead from behind. Men use to get more time in talking by forcefully interrupting women whenever it’s their chance to talk in board meeting or any kind; this is caused by the communication different which lead to assumptions of what the other member of the opposite more special women is about to say.
Lastly, women and men need to learn these differences to avoid miscommunication which can result in conflict if it’s not well observed. It’s important that we must learn the big five to help us understand the behaviour of women and women to learn the communication behaviour of men to improve our relationship and understanding of one another.
Comments
Namibian Sun
No comments have been left on this article