Changing Communication in the Workplace

The Generational Divide

We are now experiencing a dramatic shift in what to expect in our workplace. Every 15-20 years or so when the tail end of one generation meets the coming onslaught of the next, we go through this angst where the hand wringing of what these new workers will bring with them. This generational shift seems particularly pronounced because of the technological nature of the shift and the changes in communication it creates.

Being a member of Generation X myself, I remember the early- to mid-1990's Baby Boomer discussions of how to handle those Gen X Slackers. Now that Gen Xers are in management positions, no longer is Gen X a group of slackers; we have come to be seen as a generation which demands a work/life balance.

History may be written by the victors; perspective is all in the hands of who is running the show. I once had my boss, the CEO of the organization and a Boomer, tell me in the same conversation that she found me uncommunicative and not 5-minutes later she told me that I sent her more email than anyone else in the organization. Missing here? You cannot be simultaneously uncommunicative AND send more email than anyone else.

Generation Y is beginning to enter the workforce and Gen X is having a remarkably similar set of issues to those which befell the Boomers trying to figure these Xers out.

We can't figure out the excessive attention on me. We communicate differently while many older X Generation folk are just now getting comfortable with email and figuring out how and when to email as opposed to picking up the phone, Gen Y is more than comfortable with 160 characters complete with a lexicon of words that are designed to be phonetic and parsimonious with space rather than grammatical: Ur, K, brb. They think they're ready for every challenge and can't figure out why they get so many roadblocks.