The act of information exchange from either one person to another or a place to another defines communication. Communication categories include visualization verbal, written and non-verbal forms of communication. Verbal communication is one-on-one use of words and the use of media such as the television as a mode of communication. Non-verbal method of communication refers to those that do not use words as a form of expression and instead use gestures and body language as forms of expressions. The written forms of communication use materials which contain information as such magazines and the internet. Lastly, visualizations refer to types of communications that use visual arts such as graphs and maps to transfer information. Notably, communication is a complex phenomenon with abroad scope of both language use and other forms of communication (Burton &Dimbleby, (2002). It requires people to comprehend its different contexts such as cultural influences, individual personality, gender and different conversational styles which influence how people say things, who gets heard and why.

In workplaces, majorly, communication plays a significant role in the entire organizational hierarchy from the seniors to the subordinates. Events in organizations such as interviews, meetings, group work participation, promotions, and job recruitment are some of the instances where communication plays a vital role for the participants. For example, during a multinational corporation meeting, there was a performance assessment where senior managers reviewed people in their specific groups. The head of the larger division oversaw the session as every senior manager reviewed their subordinates to examine them for the promotion slots. After all, reviews, because in all groups consisted of women participants, none of them got selected for the promotions (Tannen, 2019). The head of the division questioned the senior managers concerning the ordeal, and the managers responded that no woman exhibited enough confidence to qualify for the promotions.

It is clear that there is more to communication than just expressing oneself. Judgments based on a person’s confidence get inferred by the way individuals present themselves. In the above example, it shows that men and women have different linguistic styles of expressing themselves since communication is mostly learned social conduct. The manner in which people speak emanates from growing up particularly with peer interactions. Children prefer playing with their fellow sex mate peers consequently causes the difference between male and female linguistic styles (Tannen, 2019). Previous research studies display that as girls learn communication rituals that primarily focus on rapport context in relationships, boys, on the other hand, learn rituals concerned with status dimension. Girls tend to employ the downplay ways which emphasize they are all the same by balancing the needs of others and theirs.

Boys, on the other hand, focus on emphasizing on their social status. They do not call those within their group bossy, like girls, for displaying and emphasizing their social status. In their social groups, boys with high status are those that tell others what to do, display knowledge and ability to negotiate social status within the group and challenge others. Ability to issue orders is among the practices that ensure the high social status gets achieved and maintained. All these explain why women and men possess different conversational styles (Tannen, 2019). Concerning this, the men that got selected for promotion might have displayed confidence while expressing themselves while the women practiced their cultural ways of communication by downplaying their abilities and knowledge. Therefore, comprehending how women and men talk is the complex context of cross-cultural ways of communicating.

Managers in organizations understand the role communication acts entirely to negotiate authority. Formal authority mainly emanates from one’s position whereas actual power is negotiable. Managers acknowledge that communication skills are required to negotiate for authority since it either reinforce their efforts or undercut them. Hence, the placing of people within an organizational hierarchy depends on the linguistic style used as a mode of expression. A study showed that men on a regular basis interact with their superiors more frequently compared to women. It is noticeable that while women downplay their accomplishments by few interactions with their bosses, men tend to find it easy to brag on their success stories (Tannen, 2019). Such linguistic styles put men at an advantageous position when it comes to expressing themselves, minimizing doubts by displaying confidence.

An excellent example of such a situation occurs between two co-workers participating in a focus group. A multinational company organized the focus group which aimed at assessing a recent policy which aimed at implementing flextime. During the group meetings, the members organized themselves to form a circle where discussions took place. Most suggestions came from a particular lady in the group named Cheryl, whereas a man named Phil made lengthy in-depth elaboration of these points. To assess the value of communication styles within the focus group context, the researcher sought the answer to who was the most influential group member from the participants. Two of the women, named Cheryl while two of the men mentioned Phil and only one of the men acknowledged Cheryl (Tannen, 2019). It is evident that the women rather than the men accurately evaluated the group’s contribution.

Since Phil adopted Cheryl’s points and elaborated them further, made him receive credit for making these suggestions. The reason behind Phil getting more acknowledgment compared to Cheryl is due to his communication skills that men find easy to navigate through their gender norms which allow him to get more comfortable in group involvement. Situations like this in the workplace should get addressed as abilities and knowledge of women not only get undervalued but also underutilized. On the other side when women find themselves in superior positions still practice these linguistic norms to issue orders. For instance, a female manager who supervised a marketing director’s report assessed it and saw the need to make adjustments (Tannen, 2019).However, instead of pinpointing the significant weaknesses of the report the manager cited the strengths of the report and ended up slight pinpointing on minor changes.

Later on, the marketing director who was male focused on the few minor mistakes on a light note since he got praised for his work regardless of it being faulty. When the manager evaluated the report once again, she viewed the significant mistakes of the report which called for the marketing director to redo the report. Notably, women based on the social norms concerning their linguistic styles place the needs of others above theirs which made the marketing director think she misled her when she said the report was okay but needed minor changes (Tannen, 2019). The cross-cultural dimension of communication styles gets viewed here is evident as the marketing director did not share the manager’s assumption. He assumed that the main idea was what she initially said which brought about the element of miscommunication.

Ritual opposition is another context of communication that helps in the determination of who gets hired. Compliments, apologies, and praise are some of the ritual aspects of women’s linguistic styles. Those who are not accustomed to such, men mainly, find mitigating appreciation with criticism, getting challenged and objections find these hostile environments natural.  Women, find this confrontational technique as personal attacks which eventually they rarely survive. Verbal opposition levels put women at a less advantaged position to get hired for jobs they qualify for as they appear insecure to fight for their ideas, abilities, and knowledge. Besides individuals in superior positions within the organizational hierarchy are more than often chose people who display similar communicative styles.

Conclusion

It is essential to note that language not only communicates ideas in different styles but also negotiates relationships at the workplace. Therefore, managers or superior individuals within organizational hierarchies should use critical skills to create more awareness with the different communication styles which vary from person to person. Factors such as geographical, ethical, gender and socio-cultural influences contribute to cross-cultural linguistic techniques. Devising better ways to pinpoint these differing styles will ensure talents of people with diverse linguistic forms get acknowledged. It promotes better organizational performance and speeds up the rate of achieving both short term and long term goals.

Reference

Tannen, D. (2019). The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/1995/09/the-power-of-talk-who-gets-heard-and-why

Burton, G., &Dimbleby, R. (2002). More than words: An introduction to communication. Routledge.

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