Chapter 4 writing
Team context:
After reading Chapter Four Global Communication’s and Diversity in our Business Communication textbook by Peter Cardon, the section “Working Across Generations” (p127-130) was particularly interesting and relevant to me. I have experiences working with people of many different ages sometimes the groups are blend of ages, and sometimes the team is one age group only. Recently I was the team leader and working with two others who were older than me by many years, in fact they both decided to retire last summer. They likely would be considered part of the Baby Boomer generation, and I am considered to be of Generation X.
Script:
“Pam and Darlene, I recently read about changes happening in the workplace where five generations of people are now working together in the workplace. We do not have all five represented on our team but we do have two, Baby Boomer (the two of you) and Generation X (me). In addition, our work is on behalf of two other generations, Gen Z (our undergraduate students) and Millennials (our alumni group). There were a few tips from the reading that I thought could be helpful to our work together. First, the labels for generations could have us believe that we are very different from each other, however if we focus on our similarities, I think we can be innovative in finding ways to work together. For example, each class all of us are eager to be together and learn from each other and reminding everyone about our mutual goals and the legacy of the program is a great way to focus attention on our shared purpose. We do extensive communication to prepare our speakers and students to be together in class. We often default to the communication strategy that we each are comfortable using. However, we may not be as effective as we could be if we are trying to connect to others who prefer a different method of communication. This idea was the second tip I thought was helpful and I have a practical suggestion to make. I would like for us to adopt the strategy of finding out how our speakers and students would like to receive messages for class. Our speakers may prefer a phone call rather than an email, and students may prefer announcements in Canvas over receiving emails from us. I suggest that we use a poll in class this Friday to learn from students what their preference are, and as part of our first contact with speakers, ask about communication preferences. Adopting a practice of asking about preferred communication can help us adjust our approach for communicating effectively with both students and speakers. I was inspired to find a way to use the information learned right away, and I thought the idea of focusing on similarities and paying attend to communication preferences are good ways to start. What do you think about these ideas?”
Question 1: How do you find out what a company/workplace considers “formal” attire?
Question 2: What is a good strategy for working as an equal (peer) with those who have more industry experience than you do?
