You say tomato; I say ToMAHto.
Men hear 10,000 more words from women than they seem to want to hear.
Women await the 10,000 words they need to hear from men.
Maybe what's missing from that conversation is listening: ( patience, compassion, more patience, understanding, tolerance, repitition...discretion in battle choices...).
I'm not particularly good with any of these. Ask my wife; Ask those in the company. I tend towards impatience, bluntness. Oh and a smidgen of sarcasm. Maybe you've detected that tone in my blogs. (Or maybe you haven't....:))
On the other hand...I'm learning. I'm swimming to shore. I've seen seagulls in this metaphor.
Take for instance our It-Guy Extraordinaire.
We have the same problem. He speaks in Tech-speak; I speak in user-speak. About 5000 words separate us now. Used to be well over 10,000.
We're making progress.
We go 'round and 'round while we figure out who's not saying what the other one needs to hear. Either I'm not explaining what I'm not hearing...or I'm not hearing what he's explaining. After a few years of WWE-like steel-cage matches...we A. knew we were both at fault and we were both right, so what difference did it make; B. knew ultimately most of the time we were able to communicate; C. trusted and respected each other; D. Knew we had to figure this out as the company's too small for this to hide...kinda the remote-island model for developing communication skills.
We both learned to listen, be patient, listen again, be patient, lose that patience with discretionary wisdom...SMILE...and now we're down to a gulf of 5000 words. Maybe 4999.
I guess my point is...you say tomato, I say toMAHto. ( Honestly, I say it right: It's tomato...but I'm willing to accept you say toMAHto and it means the same as the correctly pronounced...toMAHto. Just don't throw it...)
Some links to the the recent research on the gender-speaking, volume, issue: here, Science, Univ of Pennsylvania, Church of the Customer. There are more. I just can't find them. Michelle Miller, at Wonder Branding, has a post on You Say Gray Matter, I say White Matter that offers a nice bridge on this subject. Basically, it's the neural pathways that differ between us. Thank goodness. SportsCenter gets boring after 4-5 hours.
Comments