Successful Communication in the Workplace 1 Leslie Knope of Parks and Recreation: Successful Communication in the Workplace November 28, 2016 Leslie Knope 2 Introduction According to Genderlect Styles, a theory by Deborah Tannen, women traditionally communicate for relationship while men communicate for power. In order to work past oppression in the workplace, women have had to adjust their communication style to communicate for power vs. relationship, but often receive negative attention for it. Are male communication styles for power the only way to gain success in the workplace today? The television show, Parks and Recreation, shows a good example of a character, Leslie Knope, who exemplifies both types of communication: communicating for power and relationship. She takes a lot of time to invest in her friends and usually, as a comedic element of the series, wants everyone to like her and everyone to be happy, but this usually causes more harm than good. She learns throughout the series that her success comes from her care for her friends and her town while commanding power to stand out as a leader in order to rise in politics. Can success only be gained when we communicate for power instead of relationships? I will look to answer the question of how television series, films, and the media depict “successful” communication practices for women in the workplace by analyzing the character of Leslie Knope in Parks and Recreation. My literature review will discuss how the media portrays women, and what truth these depictions hold for women in the working world. Literature Review A large portion of research done on this topic discusses how prominent female roles in our media are scrutinized, and how positive female roles of women in power are generally underrepresented. For women in positions of power, especially politics, women can come under fire by the media, and often struggle with competing identities. One qualitative study focused on a journalist’s photography session of a female Prime Minister of Finland. The photographer was trying to create a script of neutrality for each of the candidates, but the Prime Minister’s makeup artist tried to create a conflicting script of gentleness and beauty for the Prime Minister (Huovinen & Weselius, 2015, p. 11). As a woman, the Prime Minister felt conscientious about her appearance and how the media would scrutinize how she looked, but this conflicted with the photographer’s job of capturing an expression of neutrality, the same as her competitors. This Prime Minister knew that as a mother, even though she does not exploit her children as part of her political campaign, her audience knows she has children and that maternal quality can help her reputation. The Prime Minister and her makeup artist wanted to take advantage of the “motherly” gentle script for this photo shoot. It is not the Finnish Prime Minister’s fault that these qualities are focused on for female leaders. Television shows have also not exemplified an accurate representation of women in the workplace. A study of Dutch and American television shows revealed that “For every three men in fiction programs broadcast in the Netherlands, there were only two women” (Emons, Wester, & Scheepers, 2010, p. 44). Not only did they find women lead roles underrepresented in these television shows, but they were also underrepresented in the workplace in most shows. Age was also present in this study, showing a younger demographic of females and much older males in these shows. This reinforces the idea that women are to focus more on physical appearance and should be younger and more youthful looking than men. Leslie Knope 3 A comedic, mockumentary style television show, The Office, uses “excess of hyperbole” and the understanding of office culture to laugh at the overly heightened conflicts of race and gender that occur in the office (Birthisel & Martin, 2013). Although this show could be argued that it combats gender stereotypes using overly exaggerated examples as counterexamples for how we should act, it still seems to reinforce stereotypical gender roles for women on two opposite spectrums. It gives the one example of Jan, the only woman we see in the corporate structure of the company, who although is powerful and successful, due to her power-driven personality, she does not do well relationally. She suffers in this area, meanwhile Pam, a quiet and compatible secretary is physically attractive and kind, but shows very little drive to work up in the workplace. This is a woman who does much better relationally however, and receives attention from the handsome sales associate, and jealousy from her fellow females for her pleasant personality (Birthisel & Martin, 2013, p. 68-69). This example illustrates that our media is depicting that most successful women can either be accomplished socially or professionally, but rarely can they be successful in both areas; they can either be power focused or connection focused. One example of a woman who seems to have combatted these negative stereotypes and avoided focus on areas irrelevant to her accomplishments from the media is Daphni Leef. She is an Israeli social activist who led a social revolution as a student in 2011. Aside from a few exceptions, the majority of Leef’s success as a female leader was not overshadowed by her appearance, nor was she scrutinized for being a leader as a woman. “While criticized as a leader because of her lack of adequate knowledge of economics, she was also praised as someone advancing democratic values” (Liran-Alper & Tsarfaty, 2015, p. 72). She was occasionally noted as being overly emotional, but most of her followers sympathized with this. Most of the media and general public depicted her as a strong, assertive leader, while also having a caring personality for what she believed in. It was noted that many women joined in this tent revolution, but Leef did not dwell on this excessively. She presented herself confidently, despite having little experience in the political field, and the media tended to focus more on the social changes she was creating. Genderlect Styles This theory, written by Deborah Tannen, examines female and male communication styles as two different goal-oriented approaches to communication. She observes that men usually are focused on independence, or power when they communicate, while women are focused on intimacy, or connection. She took many examples of men and women in conversations who would have different understandings of the same situation, based on their style of genderlect. This theory also analyzed men and women’s traditional approaches to conflict, personal communication vs. public communication, listening, and dominance. Although both men and women convey mixtures of both styles of communication, Tannen argues that most men and women are either goal oriented around one of the two: independence or intimacy. She says in her book that no style is necessarily better, although her approach may slightly favor women. This theory does not necessarily apply to every individual, but it does provide a renewed understanding of male and female constructed forms of communication. Parks and Recreation Parks and Recreation is a television show that aired from 2009 to 2015. It reflects modern day government work culture in a comedic setting. The main character, Leslie Knope, is Leslie Knope 4 portrayed as a strong, passionate feminist, who not only has a slight obsession and joy for government work, but puts the same amount of passion and care into her relationships. Each season, Leslie works hard to do good work for the town she loves, and has a comical love that not many today have for government work. The show’s main focus is on Leslie and her relationships with her co-workers, who are also very close friends and eventually become like family to her. Through her kindness and care, Leslie forms positive relationships with her co- workers, who help her to be successful in her career, as well as enrich her personal life. Leslie Knope is a helpful, modern day example of a woman portrayed in our media who uses some elements of both male and female genderlect styles to be successful in her personal and professional life. Application: Genderlect Styles & Leslie Knope According to genderlect styles, feminine communication is usually focused, or goal oriented around connection, while masculine communication focuses on opposition, or power (Tannen, 1990, p. 24-25). In the television series, Parks and Recreation, Leslie Knope is constantly caught in between these two forms of communication. One of the main characteristics of Leslie Knope is that she enjoys making connections and doing wonderful things for her friends, hence her form of communication is usually focused on connection. However, she also works to communicate a sense of power as a leader in politics to the media and her publics. I will examine Leslie Knope’s interactions and how she communicates for connection to her friends, communicates for power to the media, and combines the two styles of communication to become a strong and effective leader. Each episode is usually focused around Leslie working for her city, and her struggle to do good work for a fickle town. In season four, Leslie Knope tries to run for city council in her town of Pawnee, Indiana, and receives a lot of scrutiny from the voters. In one episode, Bowling for Votes, Leslie becomes fixated on one voter who says he will not vote for her because he does not see Leslie as personable to him. As a comedic element to the plot, Leslie becomes solely focused on winning the vote of this man, because she sees his disagreement as a threat to not only her election, but to connection, which is what Tannen argues to be the main goal of women’s communication (Tannen, 1990, p.