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Making the Most of Millennial Communication Styles
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Employers and millennials think millennials lack strong communication skills.
o 89% of employers think colleges need to emphasize communication
because graduates lack those skills.
o 38% of millennials and 35% of managers agree that, compared to older
generations, millennials have ineffective communication skills.
Millennial communication styles are different from other generational cohorts.
o Older generational cohorts prefer in-person communication while
millennials favor e-communication.
o Millennials are perceived as entitled and brash because they express their
opinions without regard to hierarchy.
Companies need employees with strong communication skills to succeed.
o Companies that are highly effective communicators had 47% higher total
returns to shareholders.
o Companies that are highly effective communicators are 20% more likely
to report lower turnover rates
Both employers and millennials themselves report that millennials struggle with
communication skills. For employers, this complaint has existed for some time. Hart Research
Associations (2009) interviewed 302 employers whose organizations have at least 25 employees.
Respondents were executives at private sector and non-profit organizations, including owners,
CEOs, presidents, C-suite level executives, and vice presidents. They reported that students enter
the workforce with inadequate communication skills, and 89% think colleges should place more
emphasis on ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing. In a more recent survey
(2013) of 1,200 St. Louis metro-area companies, lack of communication and interpersonal skills,
poor work ethic, lack of critical thinking and problem solving, and general knowledge of
business and industry received the highest response rate in 2013 and fell in the same rank order
as in the previous four years of the survey. Even though effective communication skills are a topranked criterion for managerial success, employers conclude that recent graduates largely lack
these skills (Hartman & McCambridge, 2011).
It isn’t just employers who report lacking communication skills. Millennials themselves
also identify a weakness in this area. In a survey of 500 millennials seeking employment and 523
hiring managers with experience interacting with millennials, 38% of millennials and 35% of
managers agree that, compared to older generations, millennials have ineffective communication
skills (Levit & Licina, 2011). In another study that relied upon survey data and interviews with
over 500 millennials in the workplace, miscommunication with older workers emerged as one of
the top ten self-identified weaknesses (Espinoza, 2012). All of this data indicates that
communication skills are considered a problem from the perspectives of both employers and
millennials. This agreement means that improvement is possible because recognizing a problem
exists is the first step to solving it. Unfortunately, the fact that millennials and older generations
have, in general, very different communication styles presents a significant barrier to solving the
problem.
Older generations prefer direct communication in person, but millennials prefer ecommunication (Levit & Licina, 2011). They have a “nomadic communication style,” which
means they prefer to use instant messaging and text to communicate followed by email and other
electronic forms of communication (Sweeney, 2006, pg. 5). In addition, millennials express
opinions without regard to hierarchy, so managers can perceive them as disrespectful, brash, or
entitled (Engels, 2011). The opportunity for mutual stylistic adaptation can take advantage of the
speed of millennial communication styles and the soft touch that comes from in-person
communication. Since all levels of business emphasize the importance of soft skills, finding
ways to teach millennials these skills opens up opportunities for advancement and improved
relations between millennials and their co-workers. In spite of this room for growth, the
collaborative and open nature of millennial communication style does offer potential for more
communicative leadership styles. The millennial communication style is to seek frequent,
positive, and open communication in the workplace, which as leaders enables millennials in
general to utilize a two-way communication approach (Chou, 2012).
Given the identified problem and the disconnect between the dominant communication
styles of millennials and other generational cohorts, what are the best ways to develop
communication skills? One way is to draw upon millennials’s self-identified strength of
teachability. In interviewing and surveying more than 500 Millennials, Espinoza (2012) found
that being teachable is one of the most frequently identified strengths. Millennials value
education and training that teaches them specific skills. In a survey working with 602 students
enrolled in public speaking courses, Warren (2011) identified three things that best increased
self-efficacy and public speaking skills: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, and
affective state (p. 46). Mastery experiences are those in which the learner does an activity
requiring them to use the skill they want to develop. Vicarious experiences are those in which
they watch peers doing the activity. In this case, public speaking improves from practice and
observation.
The M2M model takes into consideration both the demand for improved speaking skills
and the particular learning styles of millennials. The structured program involves many
opportunities to both practice and observe, providing extensive mastery and vicarious
experiences. This group-oriented training enables collaboration and appeals to skills that
millennials feel they possess while also helping millennials improve in other areas. Besides
learning skills, however, improving communication also requires addressing problems with
miscommunication and being perceived as disrespectful or entitled due to voicing opinions.
From interviewing managers, Espinoza, Ukleja, and Rusch (2010), identified the top nine
manager perceptions of Millennials: (1) autonomous, (2) entitled, (3) imaginative, (4) selfabsorbed, (5) defensive, (6) abrasive, (7) myopic, (8) unfocused, and (9) indifferent. Based on
their findings, they concluded that communicating was an essential strategy for managers to
solve and avoid conflict with millennial employees. This is an opportunity for everyone in the
workplace. Hartman and McCambridge (2011) suggest teaching style-typing and style-flexing,
which they define as follows:
Style-typing is a technique used to understand one’s own communication style as well as
the styles of others in the communication process. Of course, we know that no person
embodies all the attributes of a particular style; we are all a mixture of various styles.
Each of us tends to have a preferred or dominant style, while others may have different
preferred styles. The art of effective communication style-typing is to be able to
recognize in ourselves and in others the predominant tendencies that may define our
preferred communication style. Style-flexing is a follow-up to style-typing. It is based on
the concept of reciprocity, which stresses mutual understanding of one another’s
communication processes and the development of effective communication relationships.
When one realizes that the person with whom he or she is communicating has a different
style, it becomes necessary to modify one’s dominant style in order to effectively
communicate or to flex to another style to arrive on the same wavelength (28).
The M2M program trains Millennials how to practice these communication soft skills via the
inclusion of many vicarious experiences. Training in stylistic identification and variation helps
learners understand how to style-type and then style-flex. This enables them to overcome
problems with miscommunication in the workplace.
Besides simply solving the identified problem with communication skills, there are
numerous advantages that go along with having strong communication skills. The first is
increased employability. In the aforementioned St. Louis study (2013), the most in-demand skill
in job ads from June 2012-2013 was communication skills. Developing strong communication
skills responds to employer-identified desires and increases the employability of millennials as
well as future advancement opportunities.
Another advantage is return on investment. According to a survey by the International
Association of Business Communicators (Dodd, 2004), chief executive officers reported that
effective communication skills yielded a 235% return on investment. Another advantage is
financial benefit for the company. A Towers Watson Communication ROI Study Report (2010)
concluded that communication effectiveness is a leading indicator of financial performance:
“Companies that are highly effective communicators had 47% higher total returns to
shareholders over the last five years compared with firms that are the least effective
communicators” (p. 2). It also found that firms that communicate effectively are 4.5 times more
likely to report high levels of employee engagement versus firms that communicate less
effectively, and companies that are highly effective communicators are 20% more likely
to report lower turnover rates than their peers. M2M’s program is designed to equip Millennials
with the communication skills they need to contribute to their companies and make the most of
their career opportunities.
-By Amanda D. Taylor
Bibliography
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