Ep 114 Are Female Speakers Seen Unfairly as Mean April 23, 2016

Are women speakers sometimes unfairly seen as mean.

Speaking? The show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

So this is a question that comes from one of my female regular viewers and listeners, Debbie Tudor writes in and says, though perhaps not PC, I know speaking is different for men and women because I have found that response to me being firm reads as being mean, whereas in a man he would come across as intense or forceful. Can you give gender specific tips? This is an issue that's been in the news a lot lately with some of the presidential candidates and it does come up from time to time. Specifically, men are seen as forceful and women are seen as something that rhymes with which and we're going to keep things polite here, folks. This is a family friendly, office friendly program. But I'm going to address that in explicit, although G rated terms in just a moment.

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So yes, of course there are some double standards in the world. There are times when a man can do something and is seen as forceful, strong. A woman does it and people are complaining. Who is this again? Something that rhymes with which I'm not condoning that. I am pointing out that that is a phenomena. There is sexism in the world. How do you deal with that? If you are a woman and you're trying to present the way you want to present and you want to be as forceful as possible, but you don't want to evoke all sorts of negative images. Well, for starters, let's point out some outliers. There are a number of women who have a whole range of styles and are still successful. Ann Coulter is extraordinarily aggressive, forceful, and a lot of people love her. She makes seven figure income forcefully delivering opinions on current events, government politics. Her style doesn't seem to have hurt her. It seems to have actually helped her. I don't think it's true to say a woman can never be forceful without being attacked and seeing her career ruined because Ann Coulter is a case study. Now some of you don't want to be Ann Coulter and that's fine. But also keep in mind that Oprah Winfrey has her own style. Now she's not seen as someone as cutting or negative or nasty, but she's certainly no pushover. She has strong opinions. She can't be forceful in her own way. She's certainly a force in the media. And who has been more successful than Oprah Winfrey, when you look at the most successful communicators in the world, many of them are in fact Oprah. In fact, I don't know anyone we can really say is a more successful communicator than Oprah. She's a billionaire. She communicates by speaking. She's had the most successful talk show, at least in the English speaking world, the United States particular, for the last quarter of a century. So I don't think it's quite fair to say that across the board women are discriminated against when they speak in a knee jerk fashion. Of course there is discrimination. And of course sometimes that plays itself through the lens of communication, communication analysis, but not always. I'm going to analyze this through the lens of the 2016 presidential campaign and I'm going to do it in a way that I pretty much guarantee you is going to offend everyone, regardless of your politics. So let's delve right in. Hillary Clinton. I do think that, number one, there is a lot of sexism in the world. Number two, that Hillary Clinton is specifically subjected to a lot of sexist attacks. There are people who simply hate her because she's a woman and she is a strong, confident woman. So now I've offended, let's say, the whole right side of the audience. I'm now going to offend the entire left side of the audience. I do think that criticisms of her yelling, of speaking too loudly, of coming across too harshly, are actually fair. Now I do think that Hillary Clinton, Senator Clinton, Secretary Clinton, has improved dramatically as a speaker, as a communicator from when she ran in 2008. In 2008, she did have the tendency to yell to be, I think, to loud. Again, I'm not saying that as a sexist way because I make the exact same criticism of Al Gore, the former vice president and the Democratic nominee. In 2000. He had this awful habit of yelling. Now some of you could say, well, T.J. what about Bernie Sanders? He yells some too. Well, yes, he does. And a lot of people don't particularly like his speaking style. I don't find that Bernie Sanders is an especially effective or charismatic speaker, but certainly he has a message that appeals to some people. And as of the time of this particular production today, in the middle of April, he's still doing well and is still in the presidential campaign. But with respect to Hillary, what she does is she tends to speak too loudly. My fellow Americans, today we are going to do. And the problem with speaking that loudly is in the medium of television is it's Right there in your face, it seems like someone's yelling at you. It's not pleasant. It makes you monotone and it can make things unpleasant. And it's very different, for example, than how Bill Clinton speaks. Bill Clinton might occasionally raise his voice, but then he'll whisper. Most of the time he's using a completely conversational tone of voice. And that's what I believe is the most effective thing to do for presidents and presidential candidates. That's why I think while a tremendous amount of criticism of Hillary is purely sexist nonsense, the aspect of criticizing her about how she speaks, I think is fair game. Now, why do I say some of the criticism is purely sex? I mean, I know people who say, TJ I love Joe Biden, I'd vote for him for president, but I'd never vote for Hillary Clinton because she's so, so much more extremist. Well, ideologically, they're exactly the same. Anyway, this show is not about politics. I know you don't really want to hear my opinions about politicians and their policies, and I frankly don't want to hear yours either, to be brutally honest. So. So I'm going to try to minimize that. And let's just focus on the communication principles here. Now, with respect to Debbie, and this came up the other day in a different episode about women being older and being victims of discrimination on the basis of age, levels of attractiveness and gender. And I used the example of Judge Judy. And now Judge Judy is also someone who can be very harsh in her criticism. She's quick to tell people to shut up, that they're full of nonsense, that they're idiotic, very, very harsh. In some ways, you could say that she's rude. Yet is Judge Judy viewed harshly or unfairly? Well, no. She has the number one rated talk show in the English or not the whole English speaking world. But in the United States at least, she is, to my knowledge, the most highly paid talk show host in the country. She makes about a million dollars a day. They produce a whole lot of shows when she is in production and she only works four or five days a month and she makes $50 million a year speaking harshly. So this is a nuanced view, and I realize this isn't going to please everyone. Yes, there is sexism in the world. Yes. In many corporate environments, some women can do exactly the same thing that men do, and they are judged more negatively. I do think that if a woman running for president spoke the way Donald Trump did, calling people idiots, fools, imbeciles, that that woman wouldn't get very far. She would be written off as some sort of uncouth, just abomination. But you know what? There are a lot of people who feel exactly the same thing about Donald Trump. You have to look at the context. But I don't think that any woman even running for a narrow niche party could speak like Donald Trump and be successful. So certainly there are some differences. But when you look at the most successful communicators, certainly of the last quarter of a century, Oprah Winfrey, female, nobody's idea of a pushover. You look in the last 10 years, the most successful female communicator on the television world, Judge Judy. And she is in fact very harsh and she is rewarded for it. So, Debbie, I do appreciate your questions. Thanks so much. As always, we take all of your questions here in the program. This program is nothing but answers to your questions. So feel free to email me tjediatrainingworldwide.com or post the questions on Twitter. TJ Walker.

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