Emotional Intelligence

Chapter 8Ask it: Communicating with influence and purpose

I recall watching a documentary on television with my husband some years ago that referenced the book The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine. The program cited that on average women speak 20 000 words per day and men only 7000. They made jokes about how by the time a male and female return home from work, the male has likely spoken his 7000 words for the day, while the female still has 13 000 left to go. My husband glanced over at me with a look on his face that said it all.

Interestingly, the author of the book later deemed this to be an unreliable study. A further study was done by The University of Texas and The University of Arizona where they recorded nearly 400 university students for up to 10 days between 1984 and 2004. They found that gender didn't play that big of a role in words spoken, with women speaking on average 16 215 and men averaging 15 669. That amounts to about 15 words every waking minute! The highest recording was a male with 47 000 words in one day (nearly one per second) and the lowest recording was also a male with 500 words.

Either way, these studies show that words are our main form of communication and while they have been around for as long as humans have, words are still repeatedly noted as being the main thing that either makes or breaks any form of relationship.

Highly successful organisations usually list communication as playing a key role, while organisations that are struggling or not ...