Effective teamwork and group communication are essential for your professional and personal success. In this course you will learn to: make better decisions, be more creative and innovative, manage conflict and work with difficult group members, negotiate for preferred outcomes, improve group communication in virtual environments, develop a better overall understanding of human interaction, and work more effectively as a team. Our goal is to help you understand these important dynamics of group communication and learn how to put them into practice to improve your overall teamwork.
6. Communication and Gender
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From the course by University of Colorado Boulder
Teamwork Skills: Communicating Effectively in Groups
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From the lesson
Module 3
Module 3 is all about conflict, difference, and diversity. We’ll learn how groups can have a good fight and how you can choose the right words in a dispute…as well as how to negotiate with others when things get difficult. We’ll also explore why difference and diversity are so important for group communication, and how understanding the concept of identity is critical for our involvement in groups. And we’ll pay special attention to communication and gender, one of the most significant aspects of difference and diversity for groups to understand.
Meet the Instructors
Matthew A. Koschmann, PhDAssociate Professor
Department of Communication
Hello again, and welcome to our final video of module 3,
where we're learning about conflict, difference, and diversity.
Key dynamics of group communication we [LAUGH] need to understand better.
Last time we looked at the important concept of identity and
group communication.
That communication is central to how we construct and
maintain our identity, and understand the identities of others in our groups.
Now we want to go deeper, and examine one of the most meaningful parts of our
identity that influences our communication with each other.
The concept of gender.
Gender is also one of the most significant aspects of difference and diversity and is
sure to be a crucial feature of your group experiences and your group communication.
Gender is absolutely fundamental to how we interact with other people.
In our society, it's virtually impossible to communicate meaningfully without some
underlying notion of masculinity and femininity guiding our interactions.
This is so pervasive that we simply take it for granted.
But it becomes apparent when our underlying assumptions about gender
breakdown are challenged.
And we realize how difficult it can be to interact with each other
when we lose a common understanding of gender as a basis for our communication.
This idea [LAUGH] was famously depicted in a popular Saturday Night Live skit from
the 1990s, featuring a fictional character named Pat, whose gender is ambiguous.
The skit aired about a dozen times over a few years and
portrayed Pat's awkward encounters with people in a variety of common situations.
But whatever we might think about this skit and
it's humor, it made an important cultural point about human interaction.
Attributions of gender are critical for successful communication.
So much of our communication with each other depends on understanding people as
male or female, and interpreting their behavior as masculine or feminine.
But where do our understandings of masculinity and femininity come from?
And what is the relationship between our biological sex and
our more cultural expressions of gender?
How we answer these questions directly affects how we make sense
of the actions of our fellow group members, which in turn,
influences our subsequent interactions with each other.
Therefore, understanding this nexus of identity, gender and
communication is essential for successful groups and effective group work.
So let's dive in and learn more.
Men and women are clearly different, [LAUGH] especially in terms of biology and
physiology.
In our culture, we have taken these physical differences and
derived a variety of social conclusions and implications about how men and
women should function in our society and relate with each other.
Nowhere [LAUGH] is this more prevalent than in our norms and expectations for
how men and women communicate, or [LAUGH] miscommunicate.
The Battle of the Sexes, the stuff of so many sitcoms and romantic comedies.
The main idea here are that men and women are so fundamentally different species, so
much that we're basically from different planets.
And [LAUGH] it's all we can do to try to understand each other and
make sense of these alien life forms that we must interact with.
Thankfully, an entire industry of books and videos and
seminars has emerged to help navigate this confusing territory.
Of which the most famous contribution is the book Men Are from Mars,
Women Are from Venus, which poignantly captures this overarching narrative about
male female communication differences in our culture.
Even if you've never read these books,
surely you're familiar with the basics tenets of this narrative.
Things like language and communication matter more to women than to men.
Men communicates to get things done.
Women communicates to make connections with other people.
Men talk about things and facts, women talk more about people,
relationships and feelings.
And so on goes on narrative.
Although this narrative my resonate with some of our experiences and
even is though it is perpetuated throughout our entertainment culture,
is it actually true?
And perhaps more importantly, is it helpful for
understanding how to communicate better with other people in our groups?
Despite our important biological and
physiological differences, do men and women differ so
fundamentally in our communication that we are essentially from different planets?
Speaking different languages?
Doomed to work in groups filled with miscommunication and misunderstandings?
I don't think so.
I want to offer two related responses to these issues.
One, research shows that men and
women are actually remarkably similar in a lot of our communication behavior.
And two, where there are communication differences,
it's better to explain these differences in terms of socialization.
First, an extensive body of empirical research shows that men and
women are much more similar in their communication behavior
than the narrative of Mars and Venus would have us believe.
In her book, The Myth of Mars and Venus, Oxford University linguistics professor,
Deborah Cameron, describes how the Mars Venus narrative breaks down in so many
ways, when we scientifically study the communication behavior of men and women.
And University of Wisconsin psychology professor, Janet Shibley Hyde
published a groundbreaking article called The Gender Similarity Hypothesis,
that compiled hundreds of studies over 20 years, showing that there are many
more similarities than differences in the communication behavior of men and women.
Let me just mention one example from this research.
The common sense idea that women talk more than men.
Yes in some situations women clearly do tend to talk more than men.
But in other situations, when we compare apples to apples, and
observe actual interactions, study after study shows that men and
women talk about the same amount in similar situations.
In fact, [LAUGH] in some situations, men actually talk a lot more than women and
tend to dominate the conversation.
Have you ever listened to talk radio [LAUGH] about sports or politics?
Been in a corporate board room?
Or watched the late night talk shows?
It's almost all men talking.
Is this really all that different than this?
Sure, we'd often talk about different things.
But, we all have a human, not necessarily a gendered
desire to express ourselves in the company of others, who share our interests.
When we look at the data, [LAUGH] not the sitcoms, and
romantic comedies, we actually see more similarities than
differences in the communication behavior among men and women.
But it's also true that we do see some communication differences among men and
women in our daily lives, especially in our groups.
After all, [LAUGH] the sitcoms and
romantic comedies aren't just making stuff up out of thin air.
They wouldn't be popular if the scenarios about male-female differences they display
didn't resonate with people's experiences.
And the people who write these books, they're not idiots.
Surely there's something to the idea that men and
women are very different in their communication behavior.
Though it is true that when we systematically,
not anecdotally compare men and women, many of the differences fade away.
But in practice, we often do see clear differences.
So how do we explain this?
Rather than jumping too quickly to the Mars Venus myth to explain differences
we do see, I think it's more insightful to realize that when men and
women communicate differently it's often because our
culture socializes us into different roles, norms and expectations.
Which becomes so
pervasive, that it just seems like it's in our blood, it's in our DNA.
Even aspects of our communication that seem so
natural, are often deeply influenced by our cultural experiences.
And the environments we were raised in.
A key example of this is what scholars call linguistic style,
the way we talk, our characteristic patterns of speech.
Remember it's not just what [LAUGH] you say, but how you say it.
Your linguistic style.
Linguistic style involves all kinds of stuff like directness or indirectness.
Pacing and pausing, word choice, humor,
figures of speech, stories, questions, apologies, turn taking.
All the subtle negotiation of signals we use when we interact with each other.
And this is one of the main areas we do see clear communication differences
between men and women.
But is linguistics style part of our DNA?
Are these communication differences genetically determined and
unchangeable, like our eye and skin color?
Georgetown University linguistics professor,
Deborah Tannen wrote a great article about all of this called, The Power of Talk.
Where she explains linguistic style as a set of culturally learned signals
by which we communicate what we mean, interprets other means and
evaluate each other's behavior.
She also argues that communication is fundamentally ritual.
That we speak in ways our culture and subcultures have conventionalized.
With certain norms and expectations for how men and women should communicate.
And this is the key point, from a very early age men and women, boys and
girls, are socialized into different conversational rituals.
In general, girls tend to learn conversational rituals
that focus on the rapport dimension of relationships.
While boys tend to learn conversational rituals
that focus on the status dimension of relationships.
Conversational rituals have rapport, are marked by a linguistic style of
cooperation, getting along and making sure no one gets too far ahead or falls behind.
On the other hand conversational rituals of status involve ways of talking
that distinguish oneself from the group that showcase knowledge and
expertise and that minimize challenges from others.
We see these differences on the playground [LAUGH] and
we continue to see them in the conference room.
But it's not just that boys and
girls demonstrate different linguistic styles when they play with each other.
More importantly, our culture teaches them, however,
indirectly, that this is how they are supposed to communicate.
We are socializing to much of our communication behavior
based on what is expected, reinforced, rewarded or
punished by the very social environments that we're a part of.
When our culture tells us to be a man or that's not how a lady should act,
we are learning the accepted social implications of our biological sex.
All this influences the kind of communication behavior we
are comfortable with.
And shapes our expectations for
the linguistic style we expect from other people.
It shows up in countless subtle ways in our interactions with others.
How we use I or we to attribute credit in a situation.
Whether our initial response to people is a question, or
a statement, an attempt to understand or an attempt to correct.
Whether we interpret assertiveness as confidence, arrogance, or being bossy.
How we make sense of interruptions.
And what people think of us when we interrupt them.
Our sense of how often how you and others should talk in a meeting.
Whether you inadvertently start many of your sentences apologetically with,
I'm sorry but or end your sentences cautiously with an extra so.
Whether [LAUGH] you are more direct or indirect with your criticism and
how you interpret all these things when done by other people in your group.
And this is especially challenging for women because so many of our professional
contexts assume or even prefer masculine norms of communication.
So women face a dilemma,
if they conform their communication to masculine rituals of status,
they risk violating expectations and being accused of being pushy or bossy.
But, if they follow the expectations for how women are supposed to talk, then they
risk perpetuating the distinctions that often exclude women in the first place.
This is tricky.
There is no easy way to overcome the powerful and
entrenched cultural norms that socialize us into our communication behavior and
what we come to expect from other people.
But realizing that our linguistic style is much more the result of
socialization processes than a genetic determination
is an important first step in adjusting our expectations and
interpretations of the communication behavior of the people in our groups.
So, what does all this mean for our understanding of group communication?
You will have countless interactions with members of the opposite sex.
And your interpretations of those interactions are likely to be gendered.
You will make sense of those interactions based on cultural notions of masculinity
and femininity which in turn will affect how you respond and
your subsequent interactions with each other.
All of which are the basis [LAUGH] of successful or unsuccessful group work.
We need to think much more critically about how we understand the communication
of our fellow group members and how cultural notions of gender
are influencing our interpretations and responses.
We get in trouble when we believe the cultural myth that men and
women are different species from different planets,
who will never understand each other.
And we get in trouble when we essentialize our communication differences, by reducing
our social expressions of masculinity and femininity to our biological sex.
That men and women are supposed to communicate in certain ways or
are only capable of communicating In certain ways.
That they are going against their nature if they communicate differently.
Instead, we need to realize that men and
women are remarkably similar in much of our communication behavior.
And that most of our remaining differences are because men and
women are socialized into different linguistic styles in our culture.
Yes [LAUGH] this is more difficult than simply
following the cultural script about the battle of the sexes.
I [LAUGH] never said it would be easy.
But this is what we need to do if we want to improve our group communication and
create better group experiences and better group outcomes.
Yes, we could just keep saying things like, that's women for
you, what are you going to do?
Or well that's just how men are.
And we can keep having the same complications and
the same bad group experiences.
But I want to do better.
And I expect you do too.
So let's develop a better understanding of gender and
communication to enhance our group work.
Let's begin by appreciating our similarities and admitting that we would
likely communicate in a similar fashion if we were in other people's situations.
And let's resist the temptation to reduce people's communication behavior
to a straightforward consequence of their biological sex.
Okay, that concludes module three and
our focus on conflict, difference and diversity.
We know conflict is inevitable.
So we looked at how groups can have a good fight and
stay focused on constructive conflict about ideas
rather than spiral downward into dysfunctional interpersonal conflict.
We looked at how asking a series of questions
can help us choose the right words in an argument.
We cover the basics of effective negotiation for
those situations where you and your group members
have to reach consensus on a single decision or a single course of action.
If there are many different ideas and interests among the group and
not everyone can get what they want.
Then we transitioned to the topic of difference and diversity.
Exploring why difference matters, and what difference matters we should attend to.
We explored the concept of identity, because so much of effective group work is
about how everyone understand themselves and others in relation to each other.
And we concluded with this lesson on communication and
gender because gender is such an important feature of our identity.
And probably the most consistent factor of difference and
diversity you will confront in your groups.
Next up in Module 4, we'll turn our attention to group communication and
technology, an increasingly prevalent aspect
of the modern landscape of group work we must understand.
I'll see you there.
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