Tannen

Tannen, Deborah (1995). The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why Tannin's main ideas:
(1) Any given communication style tends to be associated with a set of underlying ideas about what it is proper and not proper to communicate in social interactions.
a. Tannen argues that in male culture in this country, using communication to establish and maintain social dominance in social situations is seen as a central and legitimate goal. As a result, men are more self-assertive and even a bit aggressive in support of stances. They are more ready to hand out direct orders and unsoftened criticism, and more ready to get into arguments. They are more reluctant to admit weaknesses and avoid any opening that would allow others to put them down. Along with this, men are more ready than women to exploit opportunities to bolster their own position and put others in a one-down position. They accept similar behavior on the part of others without blame or resentment.
b. Women operate by a communicative style that in which it is proper to convey concern for others’ feelings and allow the other to save face. Women are more likely to offer compliments, to soften criticism, and to soften directives and make them less absolute.

(2) The ways in which people interpret the communications of others tend to match the goals, conventions, and considerations that shape their own behavior. What that means is that instead of seeing your communications in terms of the rules, conventions, and goals by which you are operating, they see it in terms of what similar behavior would mean in the framework of their own goals and way of thinking.
In the world of business, women are often denied attention, influence, or recognition at work because there is often a mismatch between the communication style of those in a subordinate position and that of those placed over them. People working under them may misjudge the seriousness of their requests. Employers and supervisors tend to judge the competence of people working under them based on how "self-confident" they seem to be. Those in supervisory positions often interpret deference, readiness to ask questions, and an unassertive style in dealing with subordinates as reflecting a lack of confidence rather than conscientiousness, or care regarding others’ feelings.

Tannen clearly wants those in managerial positions to understand that women ho use a more tactful and modest style are not lacking in self-confidence, and wants women to learn to demonstrate their self-confidence by being more willing to
    - Put themselves in the eye of employers and supervisors,
    - Be more direct in telling subordinates what is expected of them.
    - draw attention to their ideas and accomplishments
    - ask for what they need and deserve rather than waiting for someone to notice.
    - Be more cautious about asking questions or creating openings that allow people to put them in a one-down position.

My comments on this set of ideas:

A. There may be other ways to think about Tannen's observations:
    1. The article does not consider the possibility that people in business may not be talking about "self-confidence" in the sense that Tannen means it. Self-confidence can mean feeling inner confidence in one's ability. What Tannen points out is that many outwardly tactful and deferential women feel no lack of inner confidence in their ability. But self-confidence can also refer to the kind of socially assured style that is part of being socially dominant and that is necessary when working a situation that operates as a social heirarchy. The supervisors who did not suggest women for promotion were objecting to behavior which showed a lack of willingness to adopt a dominant stance when dealing with subordinates. If supervisors believe that dealing with many employees requires taking a stance which is direct, firm, and offers no openings for put-downs, than they might well worry that the women would not be able to give orders or be firm when that was needed.
    2. Tannen also treats communicative style as though people adopted the same communicative style in all situations. Some people tend to operate by the same rules of interaction in all situations. They make requests of subordinates at work in exactly the same manner that they make requests of a friend. After they have children, they may develop the habit of dealing with their friends when they disagree with them in the same way they would deal with their children. Others change their communicative style depending upon the setting and their relationship with the person involved. That is, the communicative styles which they use when dealing with an intimate friend, a colleague at work of similar status, a subordinate, their boss, and their children are different. Part of social competence is adapting your interactive style to the demands of the situation.
    3. In cases where women are effective in using a particular style with subordinates, but supervisors don't see it that way, the problem may be that the supervisor doesn't understand that some people are good at pursuing more than one interactive goal at a time, and are able to find an effective balance between firmness and consideration.
    4. Where the woman is not using an effective approach, there are several possible reasons. Using an effective communicative style requires (a) having the skills to do so, (b) accepting that it is proper to pursue the interactive goals that go along with that style, and (c) having others accept both of those as appropriate in your case. The problem with some of the women that Tannen talks about may be that either (a) that they haven't mastered the style of interaction needed to deal with subordinates at work, or (b) that they define themselves as caring people in a way that doesn't allow them to give orders or hold a firm line, or (c) that they run into trouble when they adopted an authoritative stance. When I was teaching at the University of Nebraska, I found that many students had very different expectations of female versus male instructors, and reacted very badly when I took an unsympathetic line with students who handed in plagiarism or slipshod work. I could not use the same approaches used by my male colleagues in dealing with students, and had to adopt somewhat different tactics.
    5. One problem that I have seen in some women who have tried to be effectual in their work is that they weren't skillful in knowing when to shift their goals and use one style and when another. I have rarely had problems dealing with men at work. But I have run into women who were so intent on being firm that they didn't know when to stop. As a result they got dictatorial or harsh in situations where most men would be kind or deal out nothing worse than a little teasing.

B. Other problems with Tannen's thinking:
    1. Tannen gives the impression that people in positions of authority always give high marks to a high degree of self-confidence. Not true. In fact, one of the reasons why many people are careful to show a degree of modesty is that in many situations over-confidence is seen as a bad sign by those in authority, and with good reason. For example, as a professor, I was aware that over-confidence is just as destructive of good performance as is under-confidence. If under-confidence leads to timidity, over-confidence promotes slipshod work. It also encourages students to argue about their grades rather than using them as a guide to working on their performance. My best students were invariably those who were anxious about how well they had done. They were the ones who handed in papers saying, "I don't think I did a very good job on the conclusion", or "I know I just skimmed the surface; I wish I had had time to read more."
    2. Tannen pays little attention to the fact that different interactional styles have different intrinsic advantages and disadvantages. Rationally, a change in the style of people working in an organization should be a change that promotes healthy functioning in the group. Above all, one should not always pick the people who are hurting as the ones who need to change, and the styles that are treated as acceptable should not always be that of the person with authority. Being in authority should not be an excuse for incompetence.
    3. The article suggests that being considerate and communicating self-confidence are opposites on a single dimension. They can interfere, but they actually represent different dimensions, and to a large extent are compatible goals. The skill often lies in finding ways to coordinate the two goals.
    4. Tannen treats the goal in communication, the strategy used to pursue it, and specific tactics for carrying out a strategy as a package. There is a relationship, but they are not inseparable, and what is often important is to get people to untie the package. There are usually many ways to pursue an interactional goal which have different consequences for other interactional goals. For example, if you don't want to seem bossy or ready to impose, one strategy when making requests is to hint at what you want or offer a suggestion. However, if you don't want people to think that they have a choice when they don't, you can also make it clear that the task has to be done but apologize for any imposition, point to ways to minimize the imposition, or frame your demand in a way that makes it into an unfortunate necessity, an opportunity, a compliment, a chance to help others, etc.
    5. Because Tannen does not make a distinction between someone’s underlying goals, impression-management goals, strategy, tactics, and enactment skills she is ready to take an oversimplified “social skills” view of social competence that has been largely abandoned in recent years. As a result she does not consider whether women have problems because they are (a) pursuing inappropriate goals, (b) don't know what social conventions they need to conform to, (c) are using the wrong strategy, (c) haven't mastered the right tactics, or several of the above. All need attention. There is increasing recognition that people are fairly good at figuring out people's underlying goals, and often care more about people's fundamental goals than their surface manner. People who try to help socially incompetent children now realize that part of what they have to change is children's social goals, not just their social skills.
    6. Tannen treats each dimension that goes into people's interactional style as if there were two choices, and that you had to pick one. In fact, that isn't how it works. There is usually a continuum, and what is optimal in any given situation lies somewhere between the two extremes.
a. For example, in any situation there is an optimum degree of politeness; both too little and too much politeness decrease compliance. If you are underpolite you are at risk for being seen as inconsiderate. If you are overpolite, people may actually judge you as smarmy or wonder where the snag is in what you are asking.
b. Socially competent children neither endorse revenge to a high degree when another child has treated them badly, nor totally exclude revenge from their goals. They endorse revenge in some situations, but only where it is actually called for, and at a level that subordinates it to other goals, such as to be fair and to stay friends with the other child. As a result, when competent children retaliate it takes a form that is harmless (e.g., a joke with a bit of a sting that leaves no one seriously damaged.)

B. Problems associated with Tannen's style of research

2. Much of what Tannen says is based on research comparing men as a group and women as a group. This kind of research has several kinds of disadvantages:

a. It almost always starts by defining groups based on a dimension that is assumed to make people alike (gender) in some respect other than a behavioral pattern of interest, rather than sometimes starting with naturally occurring patterns, clustering people who show the same pattern to determine what they have in common.
b. It focusses on what is average in each group. It doesn't look at the range of variation within each group. It also doesn't tell you where the difference in averages between groups comes from. It may come from a relatively small number of individuals within one of the groups.
c. It emphasizes the differences between groups, and ignores what is shared by the groups which are being compared
d. It fails to communicate how small the average differences usually are in practical terms
e. It reinforces stereotypes which can encourage people to make serious mistakes in individual cases.
f. It encourages people to treat the situation that people need to address as static. In fact, with more and more women in positions of authority, and changes in organizations to adjust to women, Tannin's generalizations are likely to hold in fewer and fewer cases.
g. It is mostly correlational or retrospective research, rather than longitudinal, prospective research over a period of time. Such research is not good at allowing one to study causation.
h. It doesn't study or map out the dynamic that produces and maintains particular styles of behavior. This is dangerous, because unless you understand the dynamic that is involved, it is dangerous to tinker with the situation. Tannen argues that differences in communication style seen among men and women are the result of ancient history. But in fact, some of what she notes in passing suggests that it is partly a response to the consequences of various forms of behavior that men and women have to deal with in their current situation.