Page 188 - Free Yourself From

Making Your Words Count 171

you for fear of your reply. The result is that you may seem unap-
proachable.
I recently had lunch with a woman who was in a tough situation.
She was the only woman executive in her organization and felt that
to be heard she needed to learn to be very direct. She worked with
admirals, engineering types, and other men whose style was more
bottom line and get to the point. So she felt, to be heard, she also
needed to adapt to that style. But she was noticing that with this
new, bolder style, she wasn’t fitting in. It turned out that people did-
n’t know how to respond to her, so they didn’t. As we explored her
patterns, she realized that she was creating what seemed like a stand-
off between her and the men in conversations, and she decided that
she might have much better luck by backing off a little. She actually
found that, to her amazement, she really didn’t need to be strident to
make her point or to avoid appearing meek or not confident. She
was okay as long as she was direct and not blunt.
To determine whether you are over-directive, be open to how
others react or respond to you. You may have something very impor-
tant to say, but people may be tuning you out, may react defensively,
or may not be sure how to respond to you—so they don’t.

Here are some examples which illustrate being blunt versus being
direct:

Blunt: These times don’t work for me.

Direct: I have a packed day. We need to look at next week.

Blunt: This report was totally off track.

Direct: I had a different expectation of what this report was going
to be, so we need to talk.