It's a Matter of Linguistics

Some articles are timeless. Deborah Tannen, author of many books including You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, wrote an article in 1995 for the Harvard Business Review that is still relevant today and was recently highlighted in Harvard's Management Tips.

Dr. Tannen suggests that the differences between people’s linguistic styles impacts upon how their ideas are accepted/rejected within a company. For example, if the speaker acts modestly, they may downplay their certainty about future performance, rather than minimizing doubts about the future. The outcome can be that the speaker is seen as lacking confidence and therefore competence. As a result, the speaker’s ideas get rejected.

As evidence, Dr. Tannen reports, The CEO of a major corporation told me that he often has to make decisions in five minutes about matters on which others may have worked five months. He said he uses this rule: If the person making the proposal seems confident, the CEO approves it. If not, he says no. This might seem like a reasonable approach. But my field of research, socio-linguistics, suggests otherwise. The CEO obviously thinks he knows what a confident person sounds like. But his judgment, which may be dead right for some people, may be dead wrong for others.

In her article, Dr. Tannen mentions a number of other linguistic styles and possible unintended consequences. I found some related not simply to differences between men and women but were relevant cross genders with implications for all managers. For example, Dr. Tannen found that the practice of giving positive feedback before negative could lead to the person receiving feedback thinking the negative points aren’t that important. Now that’s interesting. An awareness that this misinterpretation can happen can help a manager adjust their ‘linguistic style’ to assure they are not misunderstood. For example, touch lightly on the positive items relative to the areas needing improvement. Require the person receiving the feedback to repeat back the areas in need of improvement and spend some time discussing steps to improve performance.

In summary, Dr. Tannen suggests that the way to avoid misunderstandings due to linguistic styles is to hone awareness of different styles in your team; develop flexible approaches to meetings, mentoring, and performance evaluation that minimize the impact of differences; and adjust style to those of individuals with whom you interact.

Judy Warner

The article appears in Harvard Business Review in Sept./Oct 1995 and can be ordered from HBR .