Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

I’ve been reading Dr. Deborah Tannen’s best selling book, Talking from 9 to 5, and I see again the huge barriers we unintentionally erect in the business world… at a time we need wisdom from both genders. While this book is a powerful guide to spotting the verbal games and misunderstandings, it also explains the brain based perspective of why men’s and women’s words differ. They use very different parts of the brain to approach and solve problems at work.

Miscommunications tend to result in a person’s quality work to go unappreciated and under valued. Eventually … this often leads to the best business approaches slipping by unnoticed.

The book holds out much hope though… for leaders in business today… who promote positive and mutually productive professional relationships between men and women. Deborah used her PhD research to hand readers a startling analysis of workplace dynamics… and anyone who ever sat in a boardroom will see why it landed and stayed on the New York Times Best Seller lists.

Deborah looks with readers at the data in this book and lays out the conversations so her readers begin to see patterns that run counter to two stereotypes about male and female styles: “that men are more focused on information and that women are more sensitive.”  What do you think?

She concludes with the insight: “I believe these patterns explain why it is common to hear that a particular woman lacks confidence or that a particular man is arrogant.”  Deborah concluded from here data that:
“Though we think of lack of confidence or arrogance” as individual weaknesses, under-confidence and arrogance are disproportionately observed in women and men respectively, because they result from an overabundance of ways of speaking that are expected of females and males.”

Deborah recognized from her data that: “Boys are expected to put themselves forward, emphasize the qualities that make them look good, and de-emphasize those that would show them in a less favorable light.” She saw “too much of this as called arrogance.”

On the other hand, “Girls are expected to be ‘humble’ – not try to take the spotlight, emphasize the ways they are just like everyone else, and de-emphasize ways they are special.”  According to Deborah… “A woman who does this really well… comes off as lacking confidence.”

Have you seen similar patterns where you work?