Professionalism
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Women Voters React to a “One-Up” Move
January 16, 2008
Last week, while voters in New Hampshire cast their ballots, I conducted an afternoon presentation in Denver, dashed to the airport, flew to Los Angeles and raced to my hotel room to hear the primary results. The final vote surprised me just as much as it stunned all the political pundits and apparently Senator Clinton’s staff. Hours before the polls closed, it sounded as if Senator Obama would win the primary and quickly clinch the nomination. Instead, Senator Clinton pulled out a major win.
Interestingly, I was in L.A. to facilitate a presentation on gender and communication in the workplace. Initially, I had been invited to speak by a law firm’s women’s group. Several of the firm’s male lawyers, however, had asked if they could also attend. In the end, my audience was almost evenly split.
Referencing research undertaken by Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor from Georgetown University, the group and I discussed several differences in the way in which men and women communicate. In general, Tannen notes, men speak in a manner that establishes hierarchy, with the male speaker on top. Tannen refers to male “one-up” moves—often unconscious efforts to have the last say in a conversation. In contrast, women seek to build consensus. As such, women often speak in terms of “we” rather than “I,” apologize, and make self-deprecating jokes, all in an effort to establish that the woman speaker is no better than anyone else.
After the session ended, several women participants stayed and asked about my reaction to Mrs. Clinton. In particular, the women lawyers were interested in my sense of the scene that had taken place at a diner in which Mrs. Clinton’s eyes had apparently welled up and her voice cracked. They wanted to know whether I thought this had been the moment that had turned the tide in Senator Clinton’s favor.
I speculated that the tide actually changed course the previous Saturday during a New Hampshire debate. The debate’s facilitator had asked Senator Clinton why so few voters reported viewing her as “likeable.” Wisely, I thought, Senator Clinton made a joke of the question. “That hurts my feelings,” she said with a smile, adding that she understood why so many viewed Senator Obama as likeable.
Then, for whatever reason, Senator Obama felt the need to add his two cents: “You’re likeable enough, Hillary,” he said. It was a classic “one-up” move. And I believe hundreds if not thousands of New Hampshire women responded to it in a less than positive way.
I don’t know of an organization in this country that is not interested in attracting and retaining its best employees—no matter what their gender. Those organizations that are troubled by the loss of some of their best and brightest women just might want to start by looking at how the men and women in their workplaces communicate with each other.
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