How to Give Orders Like a Man

In my opinion Deborah Tannen outdid herself when she wrote the essay, “How to Give Orders Like a Man.” This particular story brings up a topic that to my understanding is very important. The essay is based upon two forms of speaking to people, the indirect way or the direct way. At the begging we see an executive woman that tells her secretary to run some chores for her in an indirect way, then the story goes on by explaining that the board of trustees tells the executive that she should talk to her secretary in a more direct way, not implying things, but instead barking orders at her. I completely agree with Deborah when she said that men are more direct towards others then woman disregarding backgrounds, customs or ethnics. In my own case I have seen that men do not “sugar coat” things instead they tell you specifically what they want without thinking about the consequences to what is being said.

At first I personally thought that Tannen was heading towards gender issues when she was writing this essay, but as I kept reading on I realized that she was saying that though direct conversation in some cases is bad we need both forms of speaking. For instance, she puts the example of a pilot and a co-pilot on board, and because the co-pilot was not direct, rather he was indirect when speaking to someone with a higher level then him the results were catastrophic because the plane crashed and some people died. In my opinion it is true that elders or someone with more experience then us has earned respect, but that does not mean that we should always talk to them in an indirect way because there are cases when we need to say something to save someone or to stop a terrible event from happening. Also, I do not believe that anyone is higher then I nor anyone else because no one is better then anyone, so in my opinion if someone talks to me directly I will give them the same thing back whether they have more power than me or not.

In my case this topic is quiet controversial because I find myself battling with both forms of communication. I believe just like Tannen that we do need both, indirect and direct communication, because if people would ask for things all the time in an indirect way many would not accomplish the task. People need a little push sometimes to get something done. For example, we cannot expect a boss to be asking us for things in an indirect way all the time because he would just be reminding us about something that we know we have to do but we are too lazy to do it, so for this reason bosses have to talk to some employees in a direct way so that they only have to mention it once and that’s it. To conclude with, I believe that this essay is very interesting for anybody to read whether it be someone with power or a subordinate.