As we interviewed the women for our book, we discovered that the way in which these women share their hard won lessons to the up-and-comers depended a great deal on the age and generation with whom they were sharing. Let’s face it; Baby Boomers speak a totally different language from that of Gen X or Gen Y.
It is somewhat akin to visiting a foreign country where you are supposed to be the visiting expert. The people you meet want to learn from you, but if you don’t speak their language, you can have the best intentions and the greatest wisdom to share, but it never reaches your audience. Without an interpreter or learning the language, the wisdom stays stuck in your head while your audience is craving to know what you know. A friend of mine says that is sort of like sitting on a ham sandwich starving to death! All the wisdom is right there in front of you, but you cannot access it.
One of the most enlightening things I learned about cross-generation communications is that young people no longer expect to “be seen and not heard.” They want to participate in the conversation, not just quietly listen to their “elders” expound on their experiences, no matter how great the lessons learned. They have great ideas and want to challenge and add to the body of knowledge from Day One. I don’t think they believe they are yet peers to the C-suite, but they do expect to be participatory in the learning conversations.
This is an area I would like to learn more about from our blog visitors—how do you think Boomers can best “speak” the language of Gen X and Y rising stars? As I said above, we can’t share our wisdom with each other if we aren’t speaking a language we both understand. That means making trade-offs and concessions to our favorite communications style for the sake of sharing ideas. What are your thoughts? What works and what doesn’t work, from your experience?
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