Are Flirts More Successful?

We want more women in government and business–maybe because they have a "special weapon" that men don’t have. Does Hillary Clinton flirt?

Business school professor Laura Kray says, "Women are uniquely confronted with a tradeoff in terms of being perceived as strong versus warm. Using feminine charm in negotiation is a technique that combines both." 

Kray’s study demonstrated that flirtation that generates positive results is not overt sexual advances but authentic, engaging behavior without serious intent. In fact, the study found female flirtation signals attractive qualities such as confidence, which is considered essential to successful negotiators. Could this be why two of our most recent Secretaries of State have been women? It could also be a way to avoid the man-to-man "macho" roadblock.

MEN don’t flirt–DO they? To determine whether women who flirt are more effective in negotiating than men who flirt, the researchers asked 100 participants to evaluate to what extent they use social charm in negotiation on a one-to-seven scale. Earlier that week, the participants evaluated their partners’ negotiating effectiveness. Women who said they used more social charm were rated more effective by their partners. However, men who said they used more social charm were NOT regarded as more effective (sorry, guys!)

Kray’s advice to females in business and government is: "The key is to flirt with your own natural personality in mind. Be authentic. Have fun. That will translate into confidence, which is a strong predictor of negotiation performance."

When MOTKE burst into Whitley Strieber’s hotel room, he didn’t flirt–he got right down to business and told him amazing things, including the fact that the soul is a SCIENCE that we have yet to understand. Read all the other things MOTKE told him, with a new foreword from Whitley telling which of these predictions have COME TRUE, in the new edition of The Key.