Communication Styles of Japanese Female Managers (part 1): Research at a Foreign-Affiliated Information Technology Company

Abstract

This study reports the preliminary findings of an exploratory study on the communication styles of Japanese female managers. It enumerates the results of semi-structured interviews with two male and four female employees in a foreign-affiliated company in the information technology sector in Tokyo. With regard to age, the respondents ranged from the 30s to the 60s, and served or had served the company as a manager or had work experience with female managers. The data were analyzed using a constructivist version of the grounded theory approach. The following three findings are notable. First, female managers do not flexibly attune their verbal codes based on the gender of their communication partner, but rather on the formality of the situation, their colleagues’ personalities, and how close they are to a colleague. They tend to be more careful in particularly decoding the nonverbal messages of their subordinates rather than those of their superiors and are sensitive towards what their subordinates think about their task. In lieu of the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, female managers try to achieve high LMX by motivating their subordinates, welcoming their subordinates’ opinions, and collaborating well as a team to ensure they can achieve their professional goals and increase productivity. Second, female managers might possibly have to put energy and time into achieving high LMX to guarantee a stable evaluation of their communication styles and performance. In case they cannot attune their communication styles to their subordinates’ respective personalities, or accomplish high LMX, they let their power and authority speak for them. This may lead to low LMX. Third, the evaluation of communication styles of female managers depends on various factors, such as their colleagues’ attitudes toward work, their familiarity with female managers, and their prior experience of communicating with female managers.