How likely is it that all women on your team(s) lack the self-confidence needed for the next promotion? I assume your answer is “not very”. And yet this (oldie but goody) HBR article starts off with a division head whose senior managers told him exactly that.
Turns out some of this can be explained in differences in linguistic styles, i.e. personal speaking patterns. These include features as directness or indirectness, pacing and pausing, word choice, and the use of such elements as jokes, figures of speech, stories, questions, and apologies.
And also pauses – which is why Germans in Switzerland (where people tend to speak a bit slower and give others longer pauses to take their turn of the conversation) are seen as pushy and Germans tend to find the Swiss a bit shy. The US-centric example given in the article is NYC vs. Detroit.
And these speech patterns do not just vary regionally but also have a gender dimension, especially when it comes to the relationship component of language – briefly summarized, girls learn from an early age communication rituals that focus on rapport, while boys learn rituals that focus on status. Little boys do not mind having a leader for their group, while “bossy” starts being a negative attribute for girls really early on (leading to rituals that tend to minimize or downplay status differences).
Btw this could also explain the stereotype that men do not ask for directions: They are more acutely aware that asking questions potentially signals lower status.
For me the take away of the article is to really pay more attention to spotting communication rituals – hard to do from the insight but a great lens is to analyze differences you spot when interacting with friends or colleagues from other cultures. And that might then also give you some insight into to which degree what to you just feels “natural” is also a particular ritual which might not be shared universally.
I remember one interaction with a British guy I dated. I wanted to go on a weekend trip sailing trip and asked him how he felt about it as he would not be able to join. He said “do what you think is right”. Being the direct German, I took this at face value – and learned a painful lesson that the British linguistic style tends to be more indirect than the German one and what he really meant was “I do not want you to go”
Source: https://buff.ly/3AxSpBE
Dr. Eva-Maria Hempe 