Black Belt Dojo

When's a blog not a blog...

...when it's a book.

I've been reading David Ferrabee's collected blogs 'People Power'.  He's taken two years' worth of blogs and pulled them together in handy sections and it's a pretty good read.

I have to admit to be sceptical about it as a concept but it works pretty well.  That's probably because his spare writing style makes it an ideal dipping book - lots of short chunks with ideas and reflections - an ideal commute read.  It's not really a 'how to' sort of book - more a series of interesting thoughts about what makes IC work well and the life of a consultant. 

So on my highly recommended list (does that earn me a drink David?)

Liam

Men and women from the same place after all

I admit to having been completely taken-in by the whole Men are from Mars/Women from Venus thing - not that I ever read the books of course.  I didn't really argue with the whole "women are more sensitive and men like talking about hunting" hypotheis.

Although If I thought about it I guess there is plenty of evidence around me to challenge the universal truth of these arguments.  I know plenty of men who are sensitive and intuitive communicators and I even know one or two women who can drive tractors.  And we all know plenty of women who say little, don't listen and don't seem to have a need to create an emotional wall of chatter around them.

But a series of articles this week has made me think about all this gender difference stuff again.

Writing in her new book, Deborah Cameron, is quite blunt about the evidence behind the theories about all the recent noise. 

She says...it's not only untrue, but many of these writers must have compeleytely overlooked the wealth of scientific evidence that says "THERE IS NO NOTICABLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOW GENDERS COMMUNICATE".

Apparently there are as many communication differences within genders as there are between them.  And where differences have been observered they are often clearly situational or cultural.

But it does raise the question about why the Mars/Venus myth is so popular - a question that she suggests some answers to - not least is a need in society to compensate for changes in gender roles in the last 30 years.

There's no doubt that men and women don't have the same tastes or views that they might have done in the past.

I don't know enough to have a firm opinion either way but I have always felt very uncomfortable with people who rush to grab an easy psychological label and use it to provide a complete explanation of the world around themselves.  For example I'm always very nervous when people start telling me their Myers Briggs Type indicator or that they are an Introvert with Analytic tendencies or something.

Us Scopios are prejudiced like that (and we recycle our old jokes...)

It's very easy to grab a ready-made cloak and decide that it defines not just yourself but also those around you.  It saves you having to listen properly or indeed apply any of that tricky emotional intelligence stuff...

So, I'm off to knit some lace doilies....

Liam 

One to watch

Terry MacKenzie is guest-blogging over on the Melcrum blog. Terry heads up internal communications at Sun Microsystems and I've mentioned her on here before because I find her an entertaining and thought-provoking conference speaker and I'm always interested to hear what she has to say.

I also think Sun are doing good things on the social media front. Even if you're fed up of the general hype, here's an example of a company using social media tools for real and having some good results.  See this article about CEO Jonathan Schwartz talking about his blog. And see Terry's own blog - she's one of around 10% of Sun's workforce who have one.

And by the way, if you're still in the 'what the heck is RSS and I know what wikipedia is but I still don't really understand what a wiki is' camp, do try these short videos from the CommonCraft blog. Yes, it's the second time I've mentioned them recently and no, I'm not on commission, but we showed them at Black Belt last week and people found them incredibly useful.

Sue

PS And no, I really didn't post this at 5am. I'm back overseas for another workshop. I shudder to think about my carbon footprint. Holidays in the UK for the next ten years for me, I think. 

Geek?

You know, I never intended to get into this game - communications I mean. I sort of fell into it. So, I'll be honest, sometimes a feel a bit of a fraud. As if I've forged my membership to an exclusive club and someday I'll be spotted. Now the point of this blog is not my paranoia. It's just that the other day I was called a 'geek', a communications geek at that. The person in question said that I was so fascinated by the detail of communication theory that I had become detached from the reality of what it means for your average Joe. I was compared to an IT geek, mesmerised by technological capability, but completely unable to see why someone's computer crashing was annoying and not fascinating. Hmm... I still can't work out if it's a compliment or not.  What do you think?

October's guest blogger

October brings us a fresh guest blogger in the form of Deborah Gogarty from Wincanton.  Debs runs IC and was one of our earlier Black Belters.  People may well recognise her from her avid use of things like Melcrum’s Communicators’ Network  –  She’s always on the look-out for new ideas and we’re looking forward to her blogging this month…

Over to you Debs...

Liam