Ma’am, miss, bruh. Handling effective and inclusive communication across the generations

There are four different and distinct generations in the workforce right now. Some of the boomers are working on their retirement exit strategy while team Gen Z are starting the careers. Navigating between different slang definitions of a word plus keeping everything can be daunting to say the least. While a 40-something would take a thumbs up emoji response as an approval, someone in their early 20’s may consider that as a passive-aggressive response.

In this talk, we will discuss some of the differences in language between generations and genders. We will cover written, oral and other various ways of communication. There are groves of people using emojis, memes, GIFs and more to have full conversations and each of them can have various meanings. We will cover some communication styles you should never use in a professional setting while discussing some tips that should keep you at the top of the communication game.

Presenter

Michele Butcher-Jones — Cornell SC Johnson College of Business