If there’s a word that epitomises the generational divide in the workplace, it’s communication.
The three generations that make up a majority of the workforce grew up in three distinctly different eras, with different methods of communication. The result is a set of dividing lines that affect team dynamics, and make it hard to fulfil certain roles.
While the world is trending towards text-based communication, face-to-face discussion is still a fundamental part of most workplaces. Harnessing the talents of younger employees means developing better presentation skills—helping them to sell themselves, communicate their ideas, and engage with colleagues in a way that benefits the business.
Analogue and digital
Most workplaces are now populated by three main generations: Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. This gamut of employees from teenagers to 60-somethings isn’t just most of the working population; it contains three entirely different preferences for communication. Older employees will have grown up in a purely or mostly analogue era, where phone and face-to-face conversations were the norm. Millennials straddled the divide between in-person and digital communication, while Gen Z have grown up entirely online.
The result is a mix of communication styles that do not easily mesh with one another. Many millennials have a preference for online communication, but still remember the days of landline phone calls, and have nurtured presentational skills through their careers. By contrast, Gen Z has not only grown up communicating online, but have also in many cases grown up through the pandemic, when face-to-face communication was taken away.
This has developed very different skill sets in many employees. Millennials and Gen Z are often better at text-based communication like emails and social media, valuable skills in themselves. But while these skills may be effective at communicating within generations, there can be a brick wall between them and older employees, where most key decision-makers still lie. This prevents ideas and opinions from permeating upwards, potentially making organisations less agile and responsive to younger audiences.
Framing the issue
The trick for businesses is obviously not to lose the manifold talents of younger employees, but rather to develop and bring out better presentation skills. This isn’t just a matter of being more confident, although that can certainly help. It is about developing the ability to adjust the way they communicate for different platforms and occasions, and knowing when to change tack to present themselves most effectively.
This isn’t a process that’s unique to Gen Z. In reality, they’ve just had the least time to adapt to it. Older employees should already have gone through this period of adaptation as new technologies have appeared, by learning how to best present themselves through tools like email, Slack, social media and conference calls. They may even still be going through this process with platforms like TikTok.
What’s key is not to frame the improvement of people’s presentational skills as a generational issue. Instead, there needs to be an acknowledgement that every generation has its own responsibility for upskilling, and adapting to changes in both workplace and social dynamics. An unwillingness to learn and improve at any level creates roadblocks that are difficult to get past.
Building confidence in communication
So, how exactly can we improve young people’s presentation skills? Any effective skills training starts with an understanding of people’s current skill sets, and what they need to improve on. If someone is already an eloquent writer or communicator online, then the base level of ability is already there. It isn’t a matter of developing presentation skills from scratch, but channelling those skills into face-to-face communication.
This may start with simple practice and repetition. A large part of presenting yourself effectively is gaining experience and confidence in a given medium. This obviously applies to actual presentations and meetings, where mock presentations can help to build confidence and rhythm, and allow for feedback on ways to improve the tone, cadence and contents of a pitch. But it also applies to written conversations across platforms, and presenting yourself to different audiences.
One of the more subtle generational divides may be the ability to communicate across generations, and with audiences of different ages and profiles. Younger employees may have more experience communicating across geographical boundaries, and with people of different backgrounds, but less experience talking with people older than them, or outside of their particular niche. An online social circle for a younger employee may consist of a Discord server or WhatsApp group around a hobby, exposing them to a limited subset of the population.
Tone of voice and company culture
The casual nature of these platforms can also create issues in terms of deference and tone. While they may be comfortable talking casually, there may not be an intuitive understanding there of when to change the formality of your language, pull back on using certain words or phrases, or to hold your tongue on certain issues. This last point is particularly important given the divisive nature of a lot of online discussion today, and the tendency to become defensive or absolutist on certain topics where deference may be required in a business setting.
Part of this comes down to inculcating them in your company culture. A fundamental understanding of who you are, your goals and your target audience will give employees an understanding of tone of voice on a fundamental level, and how it is you communicate with customers and clients. This kind of immersion can be as helpful or even more helpful than teaching tone of voice and audience profiles on paper. This level of intuitive understanding can be as important for the confidence of your delivery as practice can.
Your efforts to build presentation skills also have to engage employees. Any form of investment in skills training will help, as younger people tend to value career advancement, which can often mean moving away if this need isn’t being fulfilled fast enough. This compounds the problem, as many do not stay in the same place for long enough to build these skills organically. As such, improving presentation and communication skills should be framed in a way that makes the benefits for progression obvious, and the prospect of advancement within the business a tangible one.
Effective communication skills aren’t just about being assertive or confident, but about communicating on different platforms with different subtleties. Improving the way people present themselves means utilising the skills they have in a way that is productive and engaging, and sharpening and developing other skills along the way.
The mistake is to think that because some younger employees may need to improve their face-to-face presentation skills, that there is nothing for other people to work on. The reality is that the plurality of different platforms we now use and audiences we speak to mean that nobody will excel at everything. We should all be engaged in a process of constant reflection and self-improvement—engaging with each other to communicate better with everyone.
