Friday 23 January 2009

Managing Woman

I have a new theory about managing woman. I have a fairly big team and in the past tended to treat men and woman the same. I now think that this is a mistake.

You can say pretty much anything to a man and it doesn't matter because they probably aren't listening. More likely they are just waiting for you to stop so that they can speak. This may be a tad harsh but even if they are listening they will have forgotten it 10 minutes later due to our gnat like attention span. Men also don't put a lot of thought into what they say - so analysing our comments for hidden meaning is a wasted exercise.

Woman on the other hand do listen to what you say - and worse - they go away and think about it, analysing every nuance. Then they come back and want to discuss it - long after you can even remember making some throw away comment.

There is probably the makings of a story in that somewhere. In fact check out this short expose - It is very funny and I think it captures my point.

3 comments:

  1. Well, see, we could have a whole lifelong debate stemming from this sort of post, touching on the genesis of gender norms/constrictions/perceptions/structure in our society and the ongoing insidious reinforcement of their illusory foundations...but my brain is already zapped by my mind numbing insurance studying, so I'll just leave this utterly pointless comment instead.

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  2. I did (briefly) consider going down that track but decided to stay with wild generalisations and being shallow and superficial.

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  3. You forgot to add the "painting with a very wide brush" comment.

    ...shakes head...

    In most instances, you're not far off the mark but it's dangerous to generalise with gender comments.

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