How much time do you spend listening to the other half of the species Homo? Let me ask this a bit differently…Guys, how much time do you spend listening to, paying attention to, women talking to themselves, to each other, to other males and to you? Ladies, … well I don’t need to ask this question because studies show that women pay a lot more attention to male chatter than the reverse.

This is not surprising for so many reasons, many cultural, many anthropological, many evolutionary and all of them survival based.

And those reasons are pretty much the same reasons men (generally speaking) don’t spend a lot of time listening to women.

I’ve written about the power of voice before (Sing Me to Sleep That I Might Learn Thee Loves Me, Sing Me a Little Song and I Love the Way You Say That) and am constantly astonished that so little is taught on the subject.

Why are all those women listening to men regardless of what men are saying? It comes down to what might be called eavesdropping and that’s not exactly correct. Women listen to men to gather interesting tidbits of what KM experts call tacit social data, not explicit actionable data.

The differences are significant and meaningful in many contexts, marketing being one. Women listen to men to learn (basically) how to navigate male and gender-neutral social networks. They may or may not pick up a juicy tidbit or two and that’s truly secondary. The fact of the matter is that women always listen and learn, not just about “how to” but also about “why and when should you”.

Men, on the other hand, have completely different set of neural patterns to work with. They will listen attentively when it comes to “how to” but usually need lots of coaching and mentoring to figure out the “why and when should you”.

A woman might ask for help with something she’s already quite capable of doing and will do so in order to establish social ties. A man ask for help with something? Especially something he’s suppose to already know how to do? Again, whoa!

The amusing piece of this is that the most successful men (regardless of field) are those that have learned to listen as women listen.

It all comes down to paying attention. You are listening, aren’t you?

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Have you read my latest book, Reading Virtual Minds Volume I: Science and History? It’s a whoppin’ good read.