UpDate - Vol. 11, No. 20, Page 7
February 20, 1992
Conference speaker; Awareness is key in man-woman communication

     How many times have you been in a group of people and a man
tells a joke about something, like a handicapped person, and all
the men fall on the floor laughing while all of the women roll
their eyes and look at each other and say, 'That's disgusting!'?"
     Chances are if you're a man, some of the things you think are
funny a woman might consider sick. Humor is just one of the many
areas in which men and women communicate differently.
     That's the word from Rene Shepley Ragan, president of Shepley
Resource Systems and one of the speakers at the upcoming 1992
Delaware Women's Conference.
     Her talk, "Don't Misunderstand Me!" focuses on men and women
and their communication in the workplace and at home.
     "What men and women find funny, how they react to humor and
the ways in which they use humor are very different," she
explained. "Men often use humor to communicate. They can use it to
really zap someone, but with humor they don't have to be held
accountable. A male boss, for example, might say to an employee,
'If you ever do that again, we'll skin you alive.' Everyone laughs,
but the message gets through. A woman boss, who might be much more
concerned about an employee's feelings, would seldom use humor that
way.
     "Men use humor, like sports, to bond. Men tell jokes, remember
jokes and use them more in conversations. Women are much more
likely to talk about family and personal things when they bond. Men
don't always want to know the personal stuff. A man can be quickly
accepted into a group if he is a good storyteller."
     Shepley gives talks through her own consulting firm and
seminars on communication skills and team building for Insight
Institute, where she is executive vice president. She calls the
material she presents "mini enlightenments."
     She doesn't ask those attending her seminars to change their
minds or behaviors; she leaves that up to the individual. Her goal
is to present information to help make people aware of where
members of the opposite sex are coming from.
     "We need an awareness of these differences," she said. "I hope
I give those who attend the seminars some food for thought."
     Shepley said she first noticed gender as an issue in
communication five or six years ago when she was struck by the
differences in the questions male and female managers asked her
during her seminars.
     "Men most often wanted to know how to communicate to produce
more. They were more interested in the bottom line.
     Women were much more focused on relationships. They wanted to
know how they could make an employee's environment more conducive
to producing more.
     "Now, it's been exciting for me to see this issue, along with
diversity, become a global concern."
     Competition is another area of communication that men and
women view quite differently, Shepley said.
     "People are always thinking of ways to motivate their
employees to succeed," Shepley said, "and traditionally, for men,
a great motivator is competition. They like to set goals and be the
first to reach them. While women compete with themselves
internally, competition creates anxiety in women employees who
don't like the concept of having to put someone else down to get on
top."
     That feeling is a continuation of traits first noticeable in
childhood, Shepley said. Researchers have observed that young girls
pick their best friends for a team, while young boys traditionally
pick the best athletes for their teams and tell their friends,
"Sorry...no offense."
     It also has been observed that when girls first participate in
team sports they are more prone to pass a basketball to a friend,
rather than to the team member in the best position to take a
winning shot at the basket.
     Boys, on the other hand, are more driven to win and more
likely to pass to the person in the best position to score points.
     "Women compete differently," Shepley said.
     "With all of us viewing things from our own perspectives it
can get frustrating. If we don't stop and think about men's
perspectives, we can get irritated and think, 'Why do men do things
like that?'"
     It is Shepley's hope that those who attend her seminar will
come away with a clearer understanding of why members of the
opposite sex do the things they do.
     "If we can look at the opposite sex from their point of view
and compare that to our own perspectives we may be in a better
position to deal with our own feelings," she said.
     The 1992 Delaware Women's Conference will be held from 8 a.m.
to 4:45 p.m., Saturday, March 7 in Clayton Hall.
     Registration fee of $30 includes four workshops, lunch,
refreshments, free health screenings and admission to the keynote
address by Madeleine Kunin, former three-term governor of Vermont.
     Registrations will be accepted until the conference is filled.
Financial assistance and child care are available.
     The conference is sponsored by the Junior League of Wilmington
Inc., the Delaware Commission for Women, Wilmington Women in
Business and the YWCA of New Castle County.
     It is supported by the University, the Du Pont Co., the
University, the Bank of New York and the Women's Bureau of the U.S.
Department of Labor.
     For reservations or more information call, 577-2660.
                                        - Beth Thomas