Researchers have found two simple communication tricks that make leaders sound more convincing.
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Women leaders are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. When women speak assertively they risk being seen as pushy and difficult, but when they smile and speak softly they risk irrelevance. Now a new study claims that a simple communication strategy can neutralize gender bias.
The project began when economist Shanthi Manian noticed that people tend to listen to ‘big talkers,’ but that women are less likely to communicate that way. She wondered if that difference in communication could explain why a growing body of evidence has found that people are less likely to believe statements made by women.
“A person’s success often depends on whether others believe what they say,” Manian wrote in the paper. What would happen if women did start throwing around the kind of unverifiable statements that characterize classic ‘cheap talk’? If women started making claims like “I have exceptional analytical skills,” or “I am a strong leader” would people believe them?
To test this, Manian and her team gave roughly 1000 people a challenging online game to play. Study participants were paired with either a female or male leader who gave players equally good advice about the game. The only variable besides gender was how assertive the leaders’ comments were.
Less assertive statements like, “You probably have better problem-solving skills than I do, but here is what I am thinking,” were tested against more assertive ones like, “If you listen to my advice, I can assure you that my skills and experiences will help you perform well in this game.”
After the participants finished playing the game, the researchers noticed that players more readily followed the advice of the assertive leaders. When they asked the participants about the leaders’ gender, most participants believed that they would follow the advice from a male leader more than a female leader, even if the advice was identical. But that’s not what they actually did.
“It was surprising. We didn’t see actual discrimination: the subjects themselves seemed to respond about the same to men and women,” said Manian in a press release. In fact, the participants found the female leaders just as likable as the male, and they were equally likely to listen to them.
The finding contradicts prior research findings that when people step out of gender norms they face backlash. “The fact that the subjects expected discrimination suggests that it’s hard for people to know when discrimination is going to happen,” said study co-author Ketki Sheth in the press release.
And that reality could be why participants answered the way they did when they were asked whether they would use assertive language if they were the leaders in the game. Both men and women avoided the least assertive language, but when it came to the most assertive language, men were ten percent more likely to prefer it.
Sheth said the results raise questions about why women prefer less assertive language and what price they may pay for that aversion.
Speak quickly
But if the key to success as a leader starts with getting people to believe what you say, then another recent study is worth noting. In that study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers found that people find a quick answer more believable than a slow one. Hesitating at all can lead to the perception that the answer is a lie, even if it’s about something unimportant.
The study involved 14 experiments with more than 7500 participants from the US, the UK, and France. These experiments required participants to rate the sincerity of responses with varying delays of up to 10 seconds. For instance, they might watch a video of someone responding to a simple question, such as whether they liked the cake or whether they had stolen money from work.
The results were clear: if the response was delayed, even slightly, the participants rated it as less sincere. “On the whole, a fast response seems to be perceived as more sincere, while a response that is delayed for even a couple of seconds may be considered a slow lie,” said study author Ignazio Ziano in a press release.
And that could be a big problem in the workplace, especially for those who practice the old advice to ‘think before you speak.’ Ziano gave this example: imagine a hiring manager asking two job candidates, named Ann and Barb, whether they really know the programming language Javascript, as they claim. Ann says yes immediately, while Barb replies yes after three seconds.
“Our results suggest that in this situation, the hiring manager is more likely to believe Ann than Barb, and therefore more likely to hire Ann,” said Ziano.
But there were two times when slower answers were not seen as lies in the experiment. The first was when the answer was socially awkward. If someone hesitated before they told their friend that they didn’t like the cake they made, people believed them. The second exception was when people thought the answer required some hard thinking. In that case, mental effort made a slow response seem more believable.
Two tricks to present as convincing
And that insight provides a useful trick. Because, while it may be true that answering quickly makes us appear more honest, giving a ridiculous answer doesn’t help our credibility at all. So the next time you need to think before you speak, don’t stay quiet. Answer quickly and confidently. “That’s a really good question, and it’s worth some thought. Let me check the data on that.”
And don’t forget to throw in some cheap talk with that quick response. “I’m really strong in analytical thinking, so I’m looking forward to drilling into that.” That is of course unless you work at one of the rare and treasured organizations where humble leadership is the dominant culture.
