What do you think of me?

Today I am on the tail end of a business trip to Chicago and will be heading home to New York. I have been here for leadership track training. The main concept of the training is that we can apply principles in psychology (i.e. 6 Basic Human Needs) to our diplomatic communications skills. One of the topics that came up late in the day yesterday was the behavioral differences between men and women. Now – I will preface this by saying that all 40+ participants beside my self are from the Midwest (and many of them seem to be come from a conservative background). The last half hour of the day was promoting the generalizations about how men and women behave differently. As a gay man, I found that most of the descriptors for the women described me better. I also thought the way it was presented was both sexist and overly generalized. And yet the instructor continued to call on all the men to support his theories (i.e. we grunt when we walk past one another in the hallway, while women want an emotional connection and so will have short dialogues to catch up). At one point we were talking about how a handshake can tell a lot about a person’s psychology and the instructor made mention that a light handshake from a man could mean “You know,” the instructor said with a wink wink - while all his squirrel trainees laughed. We had started the class with a question about what key questions are we constantly asking ourselves internally – and for many in the room they answered “what are other thinking about me.” Finally, someone asked the instructor what his questions was – and he said that he had grown beyond the “what do others think of me” question to “how can I use the gifts God gave me to be a better person.” BARF – I think he needs to start thinking again about what others think of him…