„‚ CONDITIONS THAT HINDER EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

❚❘
TOWARD ANDROGYNOUS TRAINERS
Melinda S. Sprague and Alice Sargent
There has been a recent cultural movement toward androgynous behavior, a movement
that we as trainers have encountered in our own work. More than ever before, we have
been concerned not only with helping women to be autonomous and more supportive of
other women but also with helping men to make more emotional contact with others.
These issues influence every facet of training programs and organizational behavior.
This paper examines the impact of changing sex roles on the following dimensions of
trainer/consultant activities: role models, leadership and training styles, power, the
dynamics of interaction, and communication models.
ROLE MODELS
Current role models in training tend to be the same as role models in other professions,
including politics, management, health, government, and educational administration.
Value is placed on coolness, competitive power, charisma, toughness, resiliency, an
external rather than an intrinsic reward system, logic, and a rational problem-solving
approach rather than an integrated approach that relies on wants and needs as much as
ideas.
To categorize this group of norms as “male” is probably less accurate than to
characterize the current cultural norms in the United States as being divided into
organizational norms and family norms. Stated most simply, men, who are taught to
value a task-oriented, achieving style, have been socialized to fill the needs of
organizations, whereas women, who are taught to be expressive and oriented toward the
development of others as an extension of themselves, have been socialized to value the
family setting as a means of fulfilling their own needs.
Given this emphasis, it is not surprising that women in government, education,
business—or human relations training—have many similar problems to deal with.
Contributing to the difficulty is the fact that the goals of training imply placing value on
helping skills, collaborative power and nurturing, appreciation for the growth processes
of others, vicarious achievement through the appreciation of others’ development, and
expressiveness and emotionality. Yet the execution of a training program requires
presence, authority, clarity of goals, and intellectual skills. Laboratory education
requires not only the critical helping skills but also effective problem solving, the ability
Originally published in The 1977 Annual Handbook for Group Facilitators by John E. Jones and J. William Pfeiffer (Eds.), San Diego,
CA: Pfeffer & Company.
60 ❘❚
The Pfeiffer Library Volume 6, 2nd Edition. Copyright © 1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer