That's Not What I Meant!

Rating:
Summary: How to listen
Review: This is my favorite of Tannen's books. It makes some simple but important points about why people have trouble communicating. They talk differently.
My favorite comment was about people having different tolerances for pauses after the other person stops talking. For some people it is 10 seconds. For others it was nano-seconds. I wanted to encourage a quiet friend to talk. I found that by counting silently to ten after I finished talking before starting again, made him realize there was a gap to be filled there. An easy trick but I learned a lot from him and Tannen.
This is the book to give to friends and relatives, rather than her others that beat the differences between men and women into the ground. Simple but with a sweet and useful message.