Four Ways Women Can Influence Men

This is a guest post by Lisa Whittle, an author, speaker, and blogger. She is also active on Twitter and Facebook.

Becoming the first ever solo-female author under the acclaimed George Barna literary imprint intimidated me. Can I influence men? Can I play in the boy’s field? I had all these thoughts when I was offered a contract for this new writing project।

Until this time, my “tribe” consisted mainly of women. Although I am a strong woman, I was not sure I could adapt my leadership style in order to connect with men. Thankfully, I have.

In the intervening months, I have learned four tactics:

1. Understand men’s need for brevity. I learned very quickly in working with men that I would need to find a way to say a lot in a few words। (You might think that being married, I would have already known this.) But the reality is that females tend to be wordy. Men cut to the chase. If I was going to be successful in influencing men, I needed to respect their need for brevity.
2. Connect to a universal need. While we do not share gender, we do share many other human needs। We both search for significance. We both have a need to define ourselves outside of our roles. We both desire to be loved and appreciated. Connecting to a universal need is an important aspect of influence—with both genders. But it is especially as it relates to women influencing men.
3. Don’t apologize for your growing influence. More than ever, women are becoming influencers in less traditional venues. The church is even using women in a vibrant, new way. It is an exciting opportunity for women to use their unique voice to share truth. Men who embrace this will benefit, just as the women who embrace it will. But first, women have to own their growing influence, without apologizing for it.
4. Show them truth from your life. Regardless of their gender, when women offer truth from the wellspring of their own life experience, it resonates. Truth is truth. Therefore, being more intentional about sharing our life experiences is a way to expand our influence and connect in a meaningful way.

Women have been influencing men for years, in society as well as in the home. But it is my conviction that in the coming years, I believe this will only grow. The key for women is to learn how best to translate that influence to reach both women and men.

When that happens, everyone wins.

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A Responsive Person

Unresponsive people drive me crazy। I hate sending an email to someone and then waiting days to hear anything back. (Admittedly, I have sometimes been guilty of this myself.) This is particularly maddening when you don’t hear anything at all.

Recently I was interviewing candidates to be my virtual assistant. One of the questions I asked was this: “Do you consider yourself a responsive person?” For me, this is अ मुस्त हवे अत्त्रिबुते. Naturally, everyone says, “yes.” However, you can tell a lot by how they answer the question.One virtual assistant replied with a very smart question of his own: “What is your definition of responsive?” Brilliant. I suddenly realized that I had never really stopped to define this for anyone who worked for me. I assumed there was one standard and everyone knew it.

The truth is that I don’t need to demonstrate the level of responsiveness to everyone. Furthermore, I don’t need everyone I interact with to demonstrate the same level of responsiveness toward me. What I do need to do is express my expectations.

Here are four actions you need to take to make sure your expectations and those you deal with are calibrated।

1. Define how responsive you are going to be. Segment your contacts. Who is your inner circle? What about the next level out? What about acquaintances? What about complete strangers? I have a different standard for each. I don’t think I need to tell them; I just operate by these standards.
2. Determine how responsive others need you to be. If you acquire a new client, a boss, or a business partner, ask them to clarify their expectations. How quickly do they need you to respond? Does it need to be immediate? within a few hours? within 24 hours? in a couple of days? Ask them to be specific. This is an implicit contract.
3. Express how responsive you want others to be. Take the initiative to clarify this with your direct reports, business associates, and vendors. It will result in less frustration for both of you. It also provides the necessary accountability to make progress on your various projects.
4. Be proactive when you can’t respond in a timely manner. If the other person has to follow-up, it’s a good sign your expectations are mismatched or you dropped the ball। Instead of waiting for them to ask again, contact them. For example, “I just wanted to acknowledge that I received your email. I am traveling this week, so it will likely be the end of the week before I can respond.”

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What Really Keeps a Marriage Together?

For the last eight months I’ve been seeing a thirty-something male client who is a month away from his divorce being final। He is relieved that this painful experience is almost over, but he is also very sad. He’s grieving the marriage that he wanted to have—the one that he wishes they would have had together.

By the way, this tells me he is dealing with his divorce in a healthy manner. I never trust anyone if they tell me they have no sadness about their marriage ending and that they are simply glad that it is over. Marriages are investments and we are always sad when an investment goes belly up.

So he sits down a couple of weeks ago and right off the bat tells me that he has a question that he desperately needs answered. He tells me that his future depends on it, and that he is afraid because he isn’t able to answer this question.

He asks me what “type” of love keeps a marriage together since their kind obviously didn’t do the trick. I remember sitting for a couple of minutes before answering.

In that time I considered my own marriage of almost 18 years, the countless couples I have seen as a therapist, what messages the Church and my upbringing taught, and the dozens of books I’ve read on the subject over the years। I surprised myself by sharing with him the following ideas.

First, I told him that I used to think that agape was the most important kind of love for a marriage. But no longer. This Greek word suggests that a spiritual love is the number one priority—a love that is sacrificial and focused on commitment more than feelings or your own needs. After all, haven’t we all heard more sermons than we could count where this was the bottom line?

Don’t get me wrong, I told him, agape is very important in keeping a marriage together. But not the “most” important kind of love. Many couples have intact marriages but no relationship at all and are living under the stoic belief that happiness isn’t even a possibility.

Secondly, I said that eros is really wonderful but that it doesn’t “keep” a marriage together either. We all love passion. We all want there to be chemistry. We all dream about great sex that will keep us interested over the years.

Our culture is so sex-obsessed that we are easily convinced (especially early in a marriage) that the lucky ones can’t stay out of the bedroom. This is the secret to a long relationship.

Don’t get me wrong, “feeling” in love with your partner is very critical। Too many accept a relationship that is boring and no longer has any passion. Eros can be restored and must be worked at over the life of a marriage.

By this time he knew where I was going. I found myself telling him that based on my marriage and the successful ones I’ve seen over the years that philia was most important. Committment and chemistry are ingredients you don’t want to leave out of the recipe but without friendship you can’t bake the cake!

To be friends with your mate means:

• You respect her.
• You treat her like your equal when your upbringing and your own selfish ways try to convince you otherwise.
• You talk about how you feel and think about the good and bad of your life together.
• You even risk conflict by being more honest than you are comfortable with because it builds intimacy into your marriage.
• You plan and dream together because life is too complicated to just wing it.

In other words, you treat your partner like your “best” friend।

Sadly, like so many people, what my client never had with his former wife was friendship. He said nobody ever told him it was the most important thing! In fact they even had the other two ingredients the majority of the time.

As our session continued, a big smile came over his face as we continued to talk about how exciting it could be to have a best friend in your wife. He said he was growing hopeful as he sat there thinking about this new possibility for the future.

I hope what I told him is realistic and not too pie in the sky. All I know is that next month I will have been married 18 years to my best friend. Thank God for friendship!

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