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That women speak differently than that men
That men speak more powerfully
Not all men and not all women but the linguas and the studies on this
are pretty convincing
so men speak
more directly
more powerfully
they don't put
phrases like "I think" and "may be"
and women no matter what their education level
speak more equivoquely
i'm not sure about this but I think the answer is
I'm not an expert in this but what I think is
Have you noticed it?
Women don't speak as powerfully
and so there was a jury study
and they look the transcripts of three months for the jury trials in North Carolina
a state in the south
then they asked the jurors
based on these transcripts
how
it affected
which way one of the witnesses that they believe
and it turns out
that witnesses that spoke
more powerfully
were considered more believable
and more confident
and the witnesses
many of them women
who spoke less powerfully
we're not considered to be as believable and as knowledgeable
the fact of the matter is
it was all the perception
because it didn't
really have to do but how much they knew
or how much they saw
or how sure they were
about what they saw
it was all in the manner of delivery
and so what we noticed and what the linguist have noticed is that
men and women talk differently
and Debra Tenant who's a linguist out at georgetown
did this very interesting study
about women in meetings
she would have women you know to keep tape recorder women in meetings at
all levels of their careers
she'd listen to this at the same
thing happened over and over again
and what it was
women would come up with ideas
and then a man would have
say the same idea
and then he would get credit for it
and the reason
it happened
is because when the women
came up with their ideas
they came up with them
in a very timid way
so they'd say well i'm not sure about this, but
I'm thinking maybe what we should do is X
and the men would say
what we should do is X
Now both of them probably had the same amout of confidence
in the answer
but the men were able to state it more powerfully
and then what happens when you ask people in the meeting
who had the idea everybody thinks the me has the idea
because he said it more powerfully
so that thing that you know
that they're researchers have showed us
happen on the witness stand also happens to us at meetings
so one of the things i'd ask all of you to think about the next time you're in a meeting the next time you're to me
or whenever anyone asks your opinion about something
is all of the words that come out of your mouth before the opinion
do you start by apologizing
sorry i disagree with you about what i think it is
why would we apologize for saying our opinion? plane
but we do right
i mean sometimes we apologize for all sorts of things for which we're not
responsible
so think about and watch people
and see if that's true for you that there's a difference in the way that the genders speak
if you are one of those people
that are speaking more powerfully
and with more certainty
and with more confidence
and good for you because that's the kind of speech to get recognized
and on the other hand
that as you listen to yourself and you watch other people
you find that
you're speaking less powerfully that your
that you're putting feelings into your opinion
that you were
you know adding what we call equivocate yours or things that make it may be true
and if you're doing that
lose them
getting rid of them
learn to speak without them
and you know in western linguistics
the wait that we know that something's a question
is that our voice goes up at the end of the sentence right
are you going to the store
right at the same in french
we know it's a question because it goes up
sometimes
we as women
we'll make statements
that sound like questions
dinner's at six
as opposed to dinner is at six
so that's another thing that we can watch about ourselves
are we stating
facts
that sound like
questions
because if we are that's awfully confusing
and when we think about you know moving all this to our negotiation
it's going to make us sound less sure of ourselves so
one of the great things about this is not about understanding the way we speak
is
we have for the rest of our lives to change it to do course corrections
i'd still have to rewrite emails
sometimes about writing email to someone
and then all and emails are great because you actually get the opportunity to edit
them right
we're all looking over your life and put all sorts of equivocal language in it
and i have to take it
out it's tell us what comes naturally
now why do we do it ? I mean are we as a gender just defective
no, the reason we do it
is
there are stereotyped there are ways of behaving
that were all taught men and women
are the
acceptable ways for us to behave
and the women
we're taught that
were supposed to be team players
we're supposed to been looking out for someone else
we're supposed to be
kind
and
and
you know not hurt people's feelings and not be true demanding
anybody feel like that that all
that doesn't mean that's the way you turned out
but and you may have consciously decided that wasn't going to be your entire
personae
but men are taught to be more direct
and to be more confident
to a assert themselves
now does mean everything to do that it doesn't mean that every time a man does
that it's the right thing to do
but we're just working on stereotypes
the thing that I wanted you to understand about stereotypes
if they limit all of us
stereotypes get in the way
for all of us reaching their full potential
show you some research to prove that to you don't have to take my word for it
So here is our agenda for today
questions i hope that we will discuss
now why am I so obsessed with negotiation skills
right why is it so important
when does gender matter?
when does it matter when it doesn't matter
How is our career progress affected by our ability to negotiate
really i mean if we don't i don't think something's difference that happen in
our career
so
i'm very practical person
if there are obstacles in the way
i want to know what they are and then i want to figure out a way around
i have no interest in complaining
and no interest in the lowest mean poor women conversation
because that's just a waste of everybody's emotional energy
i go to the next step
which is
so what are these obstacles
and what do we need to do about them
we just ignore them and really hope everything gets better
i would ask that
now we just wait
we have progress we all of us
and maybe if we
just wait for
good things to happen
what is negotiating?
sort of funny word from me
like brings out the warm and fuzzy feelings
you know negotiation for me as a word that just makes me do a little happy dance
but i'd understand for everyone else they don't have the same reaction to the
word
some women
and some men
when you say the word negotiate they just sort of stand up towards the end up a little straighter
their stomach starts to hurt
and they think
like how could this be a word that makes you do a happy dance when it makes me
wanna throw up
and and some of it is because of what we
think about negotiation
we think about negotiation with what happens in the movies
right which is competitive
combative
that you know i win you lose
it's great for the movies cuz thats really dramatic
and if they found like real negotiations they take a really long time and it
wouldn't be nearly as dramatic
but they find out that a lot of different things happen
the most amazing things that happened
in
many negotiations
isn't instead of people spitting at each other and trying to crush each other
and hoping that the other person makes a mistake so they can jump on it
negotiations actually about people listening
people actually say so what is it so important to you out of this
do you want to get out of this what's
what's most important to you and why
help me understand
can you imagine that being a question in a negotiation
it is the best question you could ask
help me understand what you want
and i will help you understand what I want
and if we are both really clever
we might be able to figure out something that's good for both of us now can you
do that all the time? no
but you can do it way more often than you think
i teach a negotiation class at carnegie mellon university
and it takes me the whole semester
to convince my students
that negotiations are not purely aggressive
events
they're not sports events where you know the last
person to stand wins
it's not like survivor of the last person on the island wins
and sometimes when they get stuck
i say okay
let's pretend this class had a different name
the class was called creative
problem solving
if the class was called creative problem solving
would you be approaching the situation any differently
they say well yes
alright then do it
because negotiation can and and creating
problem-solving can be the same thing
so part of why negotiation for some of us makes us feel like we want to throw
up
is because we have a view of it that doesn't begin to embrace
what it involves
also I'm thinking
negotiation with a small n
and by that i mean
not just
i'm here to talk about my raise
right that's a hard one
i'm here to talk about
you know i think that we need to negotiate the timeline for this next
project
i have put a lot of thought into looking at this time line
and about the amount of staff that's available and
it occurs to me that that's a little equivocal
and i've learned that the
uh...
the timeliness is not realistic
so I want you to consider
adding another month onto this timeline
because then
we will have a better quality products
our world will not die out of exhaustion
and we won't worry about quality control issues because we're working faster than
we should be