CHAPTER 3 PROOF OF DIFFERENCE

Comedian Mark Gungor explains on YouTube that men possess ‘boxes, compartments and a simplistic filing system for every thought process that can be easily categorised into its appropriate place'. Women, on the other hand, possess ‘a system that mimics a seemingly tangled ball of wire, wound and interconnecting, wrapping around and entwined within a space that is always on and always actively searching for meaning'.

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This deceptively simple (and funny) differentiation is what has made books like John Gray's Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus so popular. In our quest to understand our relationships we look to gender to explain the communication breakdowns, yet when it comes to business we discount the impact of such differences completely. We throw it away, forgetting that it is actually a key to improving not just our personal relationships but our business relationships too.

So why do so many businesses ignore such an obvious factor? Why do many of them even hide from the subject of gender, choosing to homogenise the very people they want to build a relationship with? More importantly, what would happen if we used our gender differences as a competitive advantage?

Every day men and women make different decisions about the most basic of things. Most of us follow a prescribed path that's laid out for us based on which genitals we have. Do we ...

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