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The Power of Talk: by Deborah Tannen The head of a large division of a multinationa reasonable approach. But my field of research, socio- s, suggests otherwise. The CEO obviously formance assessment. Each senior manager stood thinks he knows what a consident person sounds up, reviewed the individuals in his group, and va like. But his judgment, which may be dead right for was running a meeting devoted to uated them for promotion. Although there were some people, may be dead wrong for others. cut. One after another, each manager declared, in you mean. How you say what you mean is crucial, effect, that every woman in his group didn't h and differs from one person to the next, because us- the self-confidence needed to be promoted. The di ing language is learned social behavior: How we vision head began to doubt his ears. How could it be talk and listen are deeply influenced by cultural ex that all the talented women in the division suffered from a lack of self-confidence? perience. Although we might think that our ways In all likelihood, they didn't. Consider the many into trouble if we interpret and evaluate others as women who have left large corporations to start f they necessarily felt the same way we'd feel if we their own businesses, obviously exhibiting enough spoke the way they did. confidence to succeed on their own. JudgmentsSince 1974, I have been researching the influence about confidence can he inferred oaly from the way of linguistic style on conversations and human re people present themselves, and much of that pre- Deborah Tannen is University Professor and a professor of inguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She is the author of 15 books, inclading You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation William Morrow, 1990), which introduced to the gen months. He said he uses this rule: If the person al public the idea of female and male styles of com- making the proposal seems confident, the CEO apmunication. The material in this article is drawn from often has to make decisions in five minutes about matters on which others may have worked five proves it. If not, he says no. This might seem like a Talking from 9 to 5 (Avon Books, 1995) PHOTOS BY CHRSTOPHEE MAKOS Copyright C2000. All Rights Reserved