Motivating and Communicating: McCrindle Research

8/2/2019 Motivating and Communicating: McCrindle Research

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Motivating and communicating | 153

MOTIVATING AND

COMMUNICATING

There is no nobler profession, nor no greater calling, than to be

among those unheralded many who gave and give their lives to

the preservation of human knowledge, passed with commitment

and care from one generation to the next.

Laurence Overmire

Employers and managers need to rethink their motiva-

tion strategies, and training and communication methods,

in order to heighten attraction and retention of younger

employees. While remuneration is always going to be a key

motivator for work, it is denitely not the only motivating

factor today, as we have seen. Simple yet effective measures

can be implemented to address changing employee motiva-

tors. Altering learning and communication styles can alsobe done with minimal effort.

Motivating todays employees

We all appreciate recognition for our efforts; however,

younger workers today yearn for it and thr ive on it. It makes

sense given the fact that young people have grown up in a

safety net of support at home, in society and throughout

h i d i Of h h

tinue, even at work.

Employers understandably ask, Why should I congratu-

late them for doing their job? or express sentiments like

Their pay is their thank you. Young workers, however,

respond to positive reinforcement and are more likely tocontinue and further improve their behaviour as a result.

Gen Y-ers are not used to blunt and negative feedback.

At primary school sports carnivals even those coming last

received a participation ribbon. So providing Gen Y-ers

with feedback about work that could be improved is essen-

tial. In fact, according to one Australian study of Gen Y-ers,

a good manager is one who gives regular, constructive

feedback.1 This generation responds best when feedback

is kept constructive or above the line. Rather than scolding young workers for less-than-optimal performance, high-

light behaviours that could be improved, and provide guid-

ance about how improved performance can be achieved.

As the most wanted generation, given more attention

and material benets than any other, the Zeds will also

expect recognition. Here are some simple steps that will

help motivate younger workers and workers in general:

Find out what motivates your staff. It may not be what

motivates you. Conduct employee surveys or have adiscussion with each worker to identify their individual

needs and aspirations. Implement a development plan

for each individual.

Think workmates not employees. Forty-two per cent of

all Gen Y-ers surveyed placed relationships with peers

as one of the top three reasons for getting or keeping

their job. An environment where they can interact

socially and work collaboratively is highly regarded by

G Y S d i h i l

7


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154 | The ABC of XYZ Motivating and communicating | 155

interaction and relationship building to help promote

positive interactions among team members and reduce

the occurrence of unhealthy conict.

Exit interviews. Dont forget to conduct exit interviews

with departing Gen Y staff this is a great sourceof learning and can g ive you ideas for changes and

strategies for the future.

Training and communicating

Employers in this era of declining supply may not always be

able to get workers with the most suitable degree or skills

but, if they have in place a culture of training, mentoring

and support, the expertise of workers who have potentialwill increase.

If training is to be effective and the knowledge of the

Boomers efciently transferred to the younger generations,

employers and managers need to understand that commu-

nication and learning styles have changed and then act

accordingly.

As we saw in chapter 5, in a matter of decades students

have gone from being mainly auditory in their preferred

learning style to visual and kinaesthetic. They have gonefrom passive learners to active learners. In fact the preferred

learning method of younger workers is on-the-job training

or hands-on training, which requires the boss to be more

than an expert it requires them to be something of a

coach and mentor.

People today, particularly young people, have a much

shorter attention span, largely due to the distractions of

technological devices such as mobile phones, personal dig-

i l i il d i S k X d

ticularly Y-ers engaged, training needs to be interactive and

multi-modal. By multi-modal we mean that facilitators

need to constantly re-engage their audience from discus-

sion to talk to break in order to keep their attention and,

therefore, be effective. It is important that training be enjoy-

able as well as informative.

In order to effectively communicate with these genera-

tions it is important to rst understand how the younger

generations communicate and why. Once, the only waypeople communicated was through face-to-face contact

and the written letter. The invention of the telephone in

1876 by Alexander Graham Bell changed the way we com-

municated and since then we have only moved forward, as

is the nature of technology.2 Because of major technologi-

cal changes, the ways young people communicate with one

another today are unprecedented.

In chapter 5 we also talked about the ways in which

d f i i h h d d h h Y

Table 7.1 Inspiring what works best today?

20th century(Builders andBoomers)

21st century(X, Y, Z)

Who Trainer

Learned

Facilitator

Learner

How Provable

Verbal

Observable

Visual

What Passive

Long-term needs

Participative

Short-term demands

Where Structured

Classroom style

Spontaneous

Caf style


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156 | The ABC of XYZ

and Zeds, born into this digital age, have embraced and

adapted their written language to these new ways of com-

municating. No longer do Australian students communicate

in the classroom by note. They send text messages. Instead

of walking over to a colleague in the ofce, Gen Y work-ers send emails.3 Young people no longer write long let-

ters to faraway fr iends and family to stay connected. They

dont even have to wait until they get home to make a

phone call (in fact, many young adults do not even have a

landline connection). Mobile phones allow young people

to stay connected throughout their day. It is not uncommon

for Y-ers to engage in online chat with friends at the ofce

while working without the standard and efciency of

their work being jeopardised.4

They are great multi-taskersbecause of the technological times they have been brought

up in.

Consequently, ease and speed of communication, and

process rather than content, are important to these 21st-

century generations in communicating. In contrast, older

generations, introduced to these technologies later in life,

apply their structured 20th-century processing in using

them.

Text messaging is by far the favoured form of commu-nication among Gen Y today and often replaces speech. 5

If Shakespeares most popular play, Romeo and Juliet, was

written today, the famous balcony scene where Juliet pro-

poses marriage to Romeo would probably take place via

text message:

Login:

Romeo : R u awake? Want 2 chat?

l h h

Romeo: Outside yr window.

Juliet: Stalker!

Romeo: Had 2 come. feeling jiggy.

Juliet: B careful. My family h8 u.

Romeo: Tell me about it. What about u?Juliet: m up for marriage f u are. Is tht a bit fwd?

Romeo: No. Yes. No. Oh, dsnt mat-r, 2moro @ 9?

Juliet: Luv U xxxx

Romeo: CU then xxxx6

The low-cost and mobile nature of text messaging has made

it very popular with youth, teamed with the fact that one

can text even where a phone call cant be made (34 per cent

of Gen Y have sent a text while in a movie cinema, and 15

per cent from a church during a wedding or christening).7In fact, for 97 per cent of Australian youth, text messag-

ing is the top mobile phone function used. In many other

countries, including the USA, UK, Germany, Hong Kong,

France, India and Russia, this is also the case. 8 A majority

of young people have their rst mobile phone by age 139

while over a third of those under 25 believe they cannot

live without their mobile compared to only a fth of those

aged over 25.10 For the majority (53 per cent) of Australians

aged 1824, texting is their preferred form of communica-tion (even over in-person, phone or email).11

For todays young people mobiles dont just t into

the phone category. Technologists aptly call them hand-

sets. From sending photos to texting friends, the mobile

has seen many technologies converge into the one device.

Our research shows that it is an essential carry-everywhere

item in the same category as a wallet or purse and keys.

Less than half of Generation Y now wears a watch another

f h b l

Motivating and communicating | 157


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Texting: the oxygen of friendships

Text messaging isnt just about letting a friend know when

you will be arriving at a party. It is very much a form of

social communication for youth, as is the telephone, chat

and email.12

Young people have entire conversations via textmessage and more than half of all mobile phone calls made

by youth are to friends. One Australian study showed that

one-third of Y-ers have got dates and developed friendships

through texting.13 Generation Y sends more text messages

than any other generation (almost one in three sends more

than ten texts per day) and it is the preferred form of com-

munication for the majority of them (53 per cent).14

Todays 1824 year olds are an always-on generation,

plugged in, linked up and connected to their friends 24/7.This is the generation that has taken the SMS technology

and adapted it for its own times. From sending picture

messages of themselves while travelling (60 per cent do this)

to using video calling and voice-to-text functions, Gen Y

have used technology to enhance their friendships. In the

space of a few years they have, through their creat ive texting

and pragmatic spelling, restructured hundreds of years of

grammar and spelling. Texting is a written language but

not as we know it.

Friends are the new family

Australians send almost as many text messages to fr iends as

family (37 per cent and 38 per cent respectively), but with

Generation Y friends win out over family (58 per cent and

10 per cent respectively). Texting is more than a procedural

messaging tool it is a relational tool, and increasingly a

business tool too.

Behavioural drivers: why were so into texting

The biggest motivators for texting are pragmatic factors like

the ease of communication, the cheaper cost (84 per cent),

and the time and location functionality (as we have seen,

being able to send a text from a place or at a time when onewouldnt have a phone conversation). However, some of

the strongest motivators have to do with social appearance

and comfort zones. Our research shows that 43 per cent

of Australians will text while they are by themselves in an

effort to look busy and connected. Also, texting is a social

risk reducer: people will text a message that they would feel

uncomfortable having to say via a phone call, hence the

growth in texting in ones romantic life. Texting is a social

enabler which helps us deal with the limitations of shynessand comfort zones.

While such technologies as the mobile phone have ben-

eted the Y-ers who are innovative and think in out-of-the-

Table 7.2 Mobile phones owned or regularly used by

young people aged 1124 by country

USA 72%

China 74%

India 75%

South Korea 85%

Hong Kong 89%

Mexico 91%

France 91%

Russia 92%

Australia 92%

Germany 95%


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box ways, as a result of their reliance on these technologies

Y-ers often lack relat ional skills. Many, used to hiding behind

the security of their mobile phone and computer screens,

are not so good with face-to-face communication.

The above statistics show how mobile phones havebecome part of a growing worldwide youth culture, as have

chat, email and the web. So big is the mobile phone market

that of the four billion world phone subscr ibers, two-thirds

of them are mobile phone subscribers. 15 With 3 billion

of the worlds 6.8 billion people owning a mobile phone

(compared to fewer than one billion in 1996), at least half of

all youth have used a mobile phone at least once.16

China, the worlds most populated country, currently has

400 million mobile phone subscr ibers, more than any othercountry and has one of the worlds biggest youth popu-

lations, although in decline.17 Over 155 million, or 74 per

cent of those aged between 11 and 24, own (or regularly

use) mobile phones.18 India has the worlds largest youth

population under 25 (600 million)19 and is projected to be

the most populous country by 2030.20 Currently, its youth

population aged between 12 and 24 sits at 300 million.21

Of these, 75 per cent, or over 225 million youth, own (or

regularly use) a mobile phone.22

In Australia, after 130 yearsof xed telephone line services, there are today 9.7 million

connections while after less than 20 years of digital mobile

phones there are over 21 million mobile services nation-

ally.23

The four elements of effective training

Training should be delivered in the following order:

Interest

To begin with, the facilitator needs to get the interest of the

audience. If participants dont understand the way a facilita-

tor communicates then that facilitator needs to communi-

cate in the way they understand. Getting the attention andinterest of the audience is required before offering feed-

back. In training, a point needs to be put in terms and con-

cepts that make sense to the audience or that are of interest

to them. Remember, its not about telling it to them but

selling it to them.

Instruct

Once the facilitator has the interest of the audience, train-

ing should follow. Essentially its not a generation gap its

a communication gap, so: keep it concise remember, we

are dealing with shorter attention spans today and keep

it clear get feedback to clarify that they got the message.

The responsibility for the message rests with the communi-

cator, not the listener.

Involve

Before the audience starts to drift off and become disen-

gaged, the facilitator needs to get the audience involved.

Young workers are part of the worlds most interactive gen-eration. Remember, only 30 per cent of young workers

today are structured auditory learners. We are talking about

a generation that doesnt want to sit and listen they want

to see and do. This is particularly the case in the manual

industries.

Inspire

To nish off, the facilitator needs to impress the minds of


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care how much you know until they know how much

you care. We all make decisions not just based on the head

but also on the heart. So when training, motivating and

communicating with todays employees, the facilitator or

manager needs to ask three questions:

1 What do I want them to know?

2 What do I want them to do?

3 What do I want them to feel?

Generations Y and Z represent the future. Lets not expect

the workplace to shift back to the days of 12 years aver-

realities, which are personied by Generation Y, are mani-

fested by most workers today regardless of age. Weve all

responded to the 21st-century world of work.

There is no pendulum of change to swing us back to the

good old days the direction of these shifts will continue.Indeed, have a quick look at the Generation Zeds. They are

born to parents who are a decade older than the Boomers

were when they began families, there are half as many of

them per household compared to 50 years ago, and so they

are being even more scheduled, protected and materially

endowed than the Y-ers.

The point is that we have entered a new era. And while

employers need not react to every whim of a new generation,

nor can they hold fast to the old and expect the emerginggenerations to conform. These new workplace entrants

have had two decades of cultural shaping and theres little

an employer can do to change this.

A metaphor of this is found in a book I had on my shelf

when I was growing up entitled How to Surf. There were

many pages and explanations on how to pick a wave, catch a

wave, and turn on a wave but not even a sentence on how

to create a wave or change a wave quite simply, because

we cant. The surfer cannot make the wave but only positionthemselves to catch it. And so it is with the generational and

cultural waves. We cant change the learning styles, work

patterns or employment attitudes of an entire generation

but we can position ourselves to understand and so better

engage with each new generation.

Table 7.3 What todays employees value in the

workplace

Yesterdays employees Todays employees

Work ethic Work/life

Bank balance Life balanceTask focus Team focus

Commitment Enjoyment

Authority Empowerment

Independence Support

Structure Flexibility

Tell them Involve us

Conformity Creativity

Tradition Innovation

Regional Global

Long careers Many jobs

Learn then earn Lifelong learning

Loyalty Variety

Below the line Above the line

Participation Ownership

CO C G O C SS S C


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BOOKS

The ABC of XYZ: Understanding the Global Generations by Mark

McCrindle, with Emily Wolfinger. 238 pages. Published by UNSW

Press, 2011. RRP $30.00

From explaining the labels and quantifying the numbers to outlining

the definitive events of each generation, the best-selling The ABC of

XYZ is a comprehensive and fascinating look at the generations.

The ABC of XYZ is a rollicking journey across time, generations and values that

has been forensically dissected by one of the best social analysts i n Australia.

Bernard Salt, Demographer & columnist; Partner, KPMG

The Power of Good: True stories of great kindness from total

strangers by Mark McCrindle. 232 pages. Published by Hybrid

Publishers, 2011. RRP $24.95

Seventy short, heart-warming stories of acts of kindness by strangers

with contributions by prominent Australians, including Jean Kittson,

Peter FitzSimons, Tracey Spicer, Father Chris Riley, and many others.

This book provides many examples of the power of doing good works, the

betterment conferred in so many different ways and, on occasions, leading to

the saving of lives. Tim Fischer A.C. Former Deputy Prime Minister

Word Up: A Lexicon and Guide to Communication in the 21st

Centuryby Mark McCrindle. 208 pages. Published by Halstead Press,2011. RRP $30.00

A fascinating insight into how English changes, a quirky look at youth

slang today, and a window into the minds of the different generations.

Mark McCrindle deserves a medal. Mapless, hes entered the alien t errains of

text-speak, web slang, Gen-Z dialect, among other domains, and returned with

a guidebook should we ever lose our way.

David Astle, Co-host of Letters and Numbers (SBS TV),columnist and crossword compiler

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Motivating and Communicating: McCrindle Research