If you use different guidelines for relating to different folks, it’s possible that you’re simply sensitive to the differing needs of various personality types. Yeah, it’s possible…

… or you may be running double standards.

For example, if you’re a boss, do your male and female employees get the same pay for doing the same work? When you interview new potential employees, do you automatically rate some applicants lower if their formal education is ‘sub-standard’, even though they’re clearly bright, ambitious and capable?

Are you expecting your daughters to leave school, marry and bear babies, while it’s obvious to you that your sons will have a far higher destiny? Do you unthinkingly dismiss suggestions by your spouse because “a man can’t understand those things”… or alternatively, “a woman is just too emotional to handle such matters”?

Think I’m joking? I still hear comments like that by real people – modern, educated, progressive people. Sometimes the views are not stated quite so blatantly, but if you listen to the underlying assumptions, the message is clear and unmistakable.

And nowhere are double standards more likely to crop up than in dealing with our own families. This makes it doubly hard to deal with them because family matters link straight to the core of one’s personality.

Today’s guest contributor Colin Jarvis, a communications specialist and trainer who has recently acquired three terrific new step children, now finds himself staring directly down the barrel of his own…

Double Standards

By Colin Jarvis

I don’t know about you but I hate people who have double standards. Often they are the type of people who say, “Do as I say, not as I do”. Or they are the kind of people who complain about other people’s dishonesty and then fiddle their own expenses at work.

I was therefore horrified to discover that I, too, suffer from double standards.

When I married my current wife I inherited three wonderful children, two boys and one girl. The boys are seventeen and fifteen and the girl is eleven. The eldest boy is showing a serious interest in girls. I hope he shows them proper respect but at the same time I hope he has a good deal of fun.

The main point is that am quite happy for him to choose his own girlfriends and I have very few worries about his first forays into romance. This is not because I feel he is particularly mature, and this is the awful bit, it is simply because he is a boy.

Face to Face with Myself

I realised my double standards when I thought about how I will react when my daughter starts dating in a few years time. I feel I want to insist on having a complete background check on any potential boyfriend. Perhaps it is natural to feel so protective and perhaps, when my daughter is older I will not feel quite so protective. As things are at the present I recognize that my feelings are fairly normal, but I do not like having these double standards.

When I was first courting my wife and we realised our relationship was serious, I was introduced to the family. The two boys were great. We went and did many activities together that helped us bond. The boys seemed to accept me very readily and I was very relieved.

My future daughter, on the other hand, would not acknowledge my presence. She would not even look at me. She was obviously unsettled by my appearance. I decided that the only thing to do would be to wait for her to come towards me. After a week or so I knew I had broken through when she came up and punched me.

Since that time the boys and I have had good times and bad times. They are both wishing to express their independence and I, as their guardian, have to try to ensure they do not get into too much trouble or danger. Ann, on the other hand has given me no problems whatsoever. She was not aware that I have a particular interest in Thai classical music and dance so you can imagine my delight when she expressed a wish to learn these two disciplines. We have a very close relationship and I was thrilled when she asked if she could call me “Daddy”.

Love Accepts Responsibility

I have often heard people talk about the special relationship between a father and a daughter and I believe I am beginning to understand how strong and powerful such a relationship can be. Suddenly acquiring children, not of one’s own making, can be a difficult experience. There is the desire to be loved and respected by the children but there is also the duty of care and the need to ensure the right level of discipline and encouragement. There is nowhere to learn this and to me, as a new parent, it has at times been very difficult.

I doubt that I am a very good parent; I still have a great deal to learn. However I am finding the experience extremely rewarding even though it is sometimes exhausting, frustrating, even terrifying.

I just hope that as I become wiser and more skilful at being a parent I am able to do a decent job and help my new children lead useful and satisfying lives.

I hope I am also able to rid myself of my double standards now that I am aware of them.

Colin Jarvis works with organizations in South-east Asia, the UK and Europe to boost effectiveness through clearer communication. Basically his consultancy encourages people to think for themselves, to have the confidence to do so, and to help them access a good range of values they can live by. But you can’t always come out and tell your clients this, so everything is sold as business efficiency and effectiveness packages.

Back to Charles:
I met Colin here in Chiang Mai at a recent networking event, where I discovered that he has a passion for enabling better, clearer communication among people, departments, divisions, regions – any kind of communication. And as we talked, I realized all over again how closely communication is related to motivating and inspiring people to “buy into” goals, ideas or missions (both their own and those of an organization), and to stay in.

Without good communication of those goals, ideas and missions – communication both vertically and laterally – any organization will grind to a quivering, neurotic halt.

Think this doesn’t apply to you personally? BZZZZZZTT!! Faulty assumption.

The ability to move clear, accurate messages around from one part of your mind to another is the identical task that a company, a club, an army, or a charity all face. And one of the biggest blocks to internal clarity is unrecognized assumptions, like Colin’s attitude toward how much freedom is “right” for a boy versus what’s appropriate for a girl.

But Colin is a trained observer – a highly skilled communicator – so he quickly recognized (with some wryness) the irony that in his own life, he’s still learning his craft.

Give the man credit. He admitted the facts, then began moving to keep himself honest.

And all of this is prelude to the big question: do you have the same degree of honesty and integrity when you suddenly come face to face with one of your own double standards? It’s no disgrace to have a double standard. It’s what you do after you recognize it that tells who you are and where you’re headed.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles