Work: when Aspyness and nurotypicals Collides

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Lets get one thing frank me and people don't sometimes get on but I usually try to get on with people.

But recently I have been told by my work training officer that how I relate to people of the oppisite gender could be considerably improved.

The problem seems to be that some of the women in the workplace think I don't listen to them or take instructions from them, where as the men seem to have no problems with me.

However I believe you should talk politely to both genders and I don't think I talk any differently to women than to men.

Now I know I might need to work on this it has come of a bit of surprise that my boss hasn't come up to me personally to tell me of this.

Rather he's related it in writting in a work appraisal document and it was dropped like a bombshell in a recent meeting by my work training officer.

Now some of it was to do with how it was worded personally in the meeting but you know it still affects you all the same.

A couple of my reactions have been confused and embarassed because I felt it was something I personally was doing and angry that I wasn't told before.

Have anyone else had similar work situations like this and how have you dealt with them?

This might be the root of the trouble, what you said about treating men and women equally: That's a great theory and should be the right thing to do (if Aspies ran the world, anyway...), but it can be a problem, because men and women have fundamentally different communication signals they use, and they also have fundamentally different communications they EXPECT from the opposite gender. (Slap me if I'm telling you something you already know here...)

A NT woman will EXPECT you to use different body language, a different tone of voice, and often a different phrasing of a question or comment when asking her as oppposed to asking or telling a male co-worker. If you talk to her, ask her something, or listen to her in the same way you would a male co-worker--which to us Aspies makes total sense--she'll think you're being abrupt, dictatorial, insensitive, mysoginistic, and generally NOT SIMPATICO. (I learned this the hard way.)

There's a lot of information on this. Rather than try to tell you all of it here, I would recommend books on the branch of linguistics that deals with body language, tones, and phrasing differences between the sexes, and even between ethnic groups. Just go to any large bookstore and tell them you want books on body language and communication differences between men and women. They'll have loads of stuff. (NTs aren't so hot on this sometimes either.) With just a little bit of reading, you'll have a tremendous arsenal of knowledge to apply to interactions at work.

That way, next time a woman responds to something with "That sounds like a good idea..." and you want to say "Great! I'll implement it immediately!" you'll be able to translate her response to: "She wants to talk to some other people first and build concensus, because women in groups usually act by concensus rather than unilateral, hierarchical decisions as men do. So I'll need to wait until she does that. Hm. Okay." If you do this, they'll not only have an easier time with you, the women will LOVE working with you. You'll be the sensitive guy.

Hope some of this helps...