Female Communication Style - Get it Working for Your Business!

Dr Jennifer Peck, published author and lecturer in Linguistics and Cross-cultural Communication, discusses how the linguistic styles of both men and women can benefit your business.

Chances are your organisation’s communication culture rewards a traditional Australian one – competitive, individualistic and getting straight to the business in hand. It’s a style many men are adept at in the business world, but it is also a style that increases stress in the workplace, stifles valuable female talent, and alienates potential customers.

If Australian businesses are to survive and expand in our increasingly global market, senior management needs to consider the possibilities of a different type of workplace – one where the culture is both inclusive and productive for all staff.

• Prepare in advance -  let the chairperson or another woman know you want to be heard.

• Hand the floor to another woman.

• Refuse to be silenced or have your turn taken. Keep talking or say "You interrupted me". 

• Have someone other than the speaker point out what's going on. This makes it evident that the behaviour is unacceptable.

• Establish a mentoring program for women.

• Introduce workshops or seminars that strengthen communication skills such as reducing stress and conflict.

Make Meetings Work

Meetings where employees are working together are more productive and efficient than those working at cross-purposes. But at the linguistic level, what’s really going on in your organisation’s meetings?

Samantha Hunt*, a senior female manager of a large firm, completes her male colleague’s sentences regularly. “John will say ‘You can’t read my mind, so don’t tell me what I was going to say.’ I find it very confrontational, especially in meetings,” says Samantha.

Unlike many men who are encouraged to be individualistic and competitive from an early age, women are taught to be collaborative and inclusive. This difference is apparent in their communication styles. Women will often complete sentences for other people, showing understanding of the topic and empathy with the speaker. But some men, like John, feel that it’s invasive and will often silence the speaker, making it difficult for her to speak again.

Similarly, women also use more indirect speech than men, using words like maybe or perhaps, as a way of including team members in decision-making. In a business culture that favours the traditionally male communication style, if a female introduces a suggestion with “Perhaps we might ...” or “I don’t know about this, but maybe ...” her male colleagues are likely to interpret this as uncertainty or lack of expertise. In fact, it’s another valuable team-building strategy that can open the floor for an inclusive and constructive discussion.

Senior managers need to consider encouraging women who are attending meetings to let the chairperson or another woman know that they want to contribute and be heard before the meeting. As an unobtrusive yet effective way of opening the floor to a speaker, the chairperson or another female can say “I know Sue has some ideas about this” and hand the floor over to her.

Alternatively, women can adopt the dominant male style and refuse to be silenced or have their turn taken, although they may be in danger of being labelled aggressive, rude and dominant themselves. It may be better for someone else to point out that the speaker was interrupted. This is often easier than for the recipient of the tactics and it makes it evident that the behaviour is considered unacceptable.

Develop Female Talent

Organisations report that one of the biggest financial drains is in recruiting and retaining staff. Young women in graduate programs drop out of organisations with traditional, male-oriented communication cultures, and women in middle or senior management levels leave when they are in the best position to repay the employer’s investment. It could be that your organisation is not valuing its staff’s diversity and consequently losing key staff of both genders.

Many men would be more comfortable using indirect and collaborative strategies, but there are penalties if they do. They can be seen as avoiding the point, extremely hesitant, insecure – or worse – effeminate. For example, after spending all weekend working on a tender, a male colleague commented to Graham,* “This is a big job. You must feel under a lot of pressure to win it.”  Exhausted, Graham shook his head, replying “Yeah, it’s been really worrying”. He quickly added, “No, no, not worrying, I’m not worried, it’s a challenge.”  Men are expected to conceal any sign of ‘weakness’.

Valuing diverse communication styles means businesses need to understand and work with these differences to achieve the desired results. Take problem-solving, for example. A mixed-gender group tackling a problem can often leave the men thinking and saying of the women, “Get to the point” or “Can’t you stay on track?” This is because women’s talk doesn’t have a clear linear structure. They cover a range of topics and, what can look like ‘gossip’ to the men, can often be productive problem-solving to the women.

And where women share turns at talking and often talk at the same time, men frequently compete for a turn to talk using repetition and emphatic speech. Such conflicting linguistic styles often make it difficult for women to be heard. In business, speaking is an important way of advancing your status, and women in many organisations don’t have the same status-enhancing opportunities as the men.

Establishing a mentoring program can help both men and women understand and appreciate the differences, with both parties learning from each other. In this way, women’s valuable skills don’t have to be given up but can be capitalised upon.

Attract Customers

It’s not only women employees that organisations are failing to attract and keep. In an environment where women are globally recognised as having huge purchasing power, key business could be lost because of the way your organisation communicates with its female customers. And who best to understand your female clients than your experienced female staff?

Modern Western women’s communication style – focussing on relationships, being indirect, and avoiding disagreements – is very similar to the way business is communicated in many non-Western cultures. Developing and building on business relationships is becoming increasingly important in the new global economy. Could your organisation be missing opportunities to expand its markets by not capitalising on these ‘soft’ skills?

By raising your employees’ awareness of different communication strategies, Australian business can develop a workplace culture where the stresses of conflict and dominance-oriented communication are reduced or eliminated, where women can use their ‘soft’ skills to grow the business in the current global market, and where the potential of both men and women can be identified and developed.

* For privacy reasons, names have been changed.

Dr Jennifer Peck is a published author and lecturer in Linguistics and Cross-cultural Communication. She currently works with organisations to promote Best Practice for Diversity and delivers education programs that advance both customer service and workplace equity. She is available for consultation and can be contacted on 07 3369 5881 or email jenniferpeck@bigpond.com