The Power Of Talk: Who Gets Heard And Why

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SKIP TO CONTENTHarvard Business Review LogoBusiness communicationThe Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why

We all know what confidence, competence, and authority sound like. Or do we? by Deborah Tannen

From the Magazine (September–October 1995)Scaramanga Photography/Getty ImagesLeer en españolLer em português
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The head of a large division of a multinational corporation was running a meeting devoted to performance assessment. Each senior manager stood up, reviewed the individuals in his group, and evaluated them for promotion. Although there were women in every group, not one of them made the cut. One after another, each manager declared, in effect, that every woman in his group didn’t have the self-confidence needed to be promoted. The division head began to doubt his ears. How could it be that all the talented women in the division suffered from a lack of self-confidence?

Read more on Business communication or related topics Gender, Personal strategy and style, Presentation skills and Power and influenceA version of this article appeared in the September–October 1995 issue of Harvard Business Review.Deborah Tannen is a Distinguished University Professor in the Linguistics Department at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She is the author of 15 books, including You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (William Morrow, 1990), which introduced to the general public the idea of female and male styles of communication.
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Read more on Business communication or related topics Gender, Personal strategy and style, Presentation skills and Power and influence

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