Note from Susan and Lynn

How many times have you presented an idea or tried to explain something only to feel like your audience missed the point? We see it a lot, especially when women are communicating in a business situation or with the opposite gender. It’s not that your audience is not listening. It is quite possible that we are not communicating in a way that we can be heard.

We have been working with a lot of women recently on “Communicating with Impact”. This is one strategy in our signature program 5 Strategies to Own Your Career. “Communicating with Impact” changes perceptions, highlights individual capabilities, and brings talent to the surface. It makes a powerful difference for individuals and businesses.

This month we’ll share three things that women struggle with in communicating and give some insight as to how you can begin to do it differently. In our resource corner we highlight a resource from the communications expert and a great practical book for enhancing collaboration.

Enjoy!

Warm regards,

Lynn and Susan

Feature Article

I Can’t Hear You

Women are communicators. We are more likely to process what we’re thinking and feeling through verbalizing it. The research shows that women really do use more words than men: 13,000 a day compared to 7,000 a day. So why do we feel we’re not being heard?

Through years of research and experience working with women in business, we know that there’s a way to communicate that works. You can communicate your ideas and accomplishments in a way that will allow you to be heard and that highlights your unique contribution. If others know what you bring to the table and what you are capable of, you can be recognized for your accomplishments.

We see women commonly struggle with three things when communicating:

1. It’s hard to be concise. Women want to talk about the process. It goes back to cave man days. A woman’s day involved multi-tasking: caring for children, preparing the food, sweeping the cave. There was a lot of start and stop to their activities so the “process” of their day was important. A cave man, on the other hand, was singularly focused and goal oriented: go kill food. To this day, women naturally talk about the process of their day and their accomplishments. The problem is, this isn’t how the business audience wants to hear it. They check out before the punch line comes. They’re listening for the bottom line, the outcome. The woman’s accomplishments can go unnoticed buried in the process explanation.
2. It’s hard to say “I”, especially when a team is involved. There is a way to give yourself credit, and still acknowledge the team’s contribution. When you give a balanced report of the “I” and the “we”, you show your role as a leader and you recognize the team. Both are important.
3. Know How to Identify Your Unique Contribution. We’re accustomed to thinking about the results achieved without communicating our unique contribution to those results. Women often leave themselves out of the picture.

Recently we asked Jessica to write-up one of her accomplishments. She wrote about how she submitted a proposal for approval of a system implementation. The system would automate a process used by one department and they were really pushing to get it done. Jessica could see the benefit to them, but realized that the cost was pretty high and the budget availability was limited.

When Jessica wrote up what she had done, it was clear that she had been thorough in her analysis of the issues (her thought process was evident), she provided a lot of detail in her write up and had identified several benefits that made the implementation viable in the face of the budget constraints. It might have ended there.

But there was so much more about Jessica that didn’t show up in her first draft. Here’s what Jessica told us when we interviewed her about the project:

“When I saw the request to implement the system, I could see the benefit. But I also knew it wouldn’t get approved for that reason alone. I saw a problem and took the initiative to solve it. I knew we needed to identify other benefits to the system implementation. So I took it upon myself to identify other ways the system could change our processes and save more time and money for the business.”

“I saw the problem and took initiative to solve it.” Jessica’s description of how she approached the problem, put in the context of the challenge she faced, allowed her to communicate what she did and to do so in a way that highlighted her capabilities. As Jessica spoke about the project, her communication shifted from being about the process to being about how she personally developed a strategy to get the system implemented and in a way that would provide more benefit to the business.

The impact on the audience is very different. A discussion of process and excessive detail will cause execs to check out. A concise description of how you approached the problem and the outcomes you achieved suddenly puts your unique contribution in the limelight and ties it to the business outcomes. Voila! You now get recognized for what you brought to the table.

When we work with women to Communicate With Impact using our methodology, we see immediate positive differences. If you would like to learn more about the 5 Strategies to Own Your Career, check it out here.

Resource Corner

“Opening Doors To Teamwork and Collaboration: 4 Keys that Change Everything” by Judith H. Katz and Frederick A. Miller

We love this book! Women are natural collaborators so using Katz and Miller’s 4 Keys will help us be even better at it. They begin by reminding us that the “basic building blocks of organizations are our interactions,” and that every interaction begins with the decision to “judge or join”. They remind us that learning begins with discomfort so as a leader we need to “Lean in to Discomfort” and make it safe for our team to do the same. We particularly found the key “State Your Intent and Your Intensity” helpful. We should all be aware whether we’re communicating a “notion” or a “tombstone”. The book is conversational, easy to read and has a practical checklists and stories. We recommend it.

Deborah Tannen

The leader in gender communications research, Deborah Tannen, has a number of communications resources available through her website. Check it out here.

About Susan and Lynn

Susan Hodge and Lynn Rousseau created Women Leading Together in order to provide seminars, workshops, and coaching circles to help career women move forward to create fulfilling careers. Visit our website at www.WomenLeadingTogether.com.

Copyright © 2014 Women Leading Together, LLC

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