Chapter 1
The New Workforce Demographics Require New Dynamics of Communication

This is not “your father’s Perfect Phrases book.” That’s because we don’t work in our father’s work environment. Many factors are changing the way we relate, influence, and succeed. These factors change the nature of power. What got us to the top in the past will hold us back in the future. The old model of management communication— top-down, controlled messages, paying lip service to employees while imposing force—doesn’t work in this new world. We need new models and new phrasing for our new workplace demographics.

A Woman’s Nation

Since 2008, women have officially outnumbered men in supervisory positions, and since October of 2009, they have taken predominance in the workplace as a whole.¹ The Shriver Report declared the United States to be a woman’s nation, with the postscript that “a woman’s nation changes everything.” While the report notes that not everyone experiences a feminized workplace culture, clearly the trend is toward acceptance and valuation of traditional women’s characteristics. These are the qualities of collaboration, cooperation, and personalization of business interactions. Of course, men can and often do also embody these values. And many women don’t. Some women struggle with a collaborative style, either because it is not natural to them or because they have spent decades adapting to a predominantly male communication workplace culture. Still, women are seen as the drivers of these trends. According to author Judy B. Rosener, women have shown themselves to be “far more likely than men to describe themselves as transforming subordinates’ self-interest into concern for the whole organization and as using personal traits like charisma, work record, and interpersonal skills to motivate others.”² This collaborative trend is expected to persist as women continue to grow in workforce predominance.

Generation Y

The youngest generation of workers is also pushing management toward a new communication dynamic. Generation Y is naturally conversational, informal, egalitarian, and personal. To inspire and motivate younger employees, managers are learning to develop their personal working relationships and deliver individual benefits to meet individual needs. The workers who make up this new generation expect their input, opinions, and desires to be acknowledged and for communication to be reciprocal. Most workers under age forty have never known a workplace without women managers and colleagues, and they are increasingly comfortable with a diversified workplace. Of course, this generation is also known for growing up with pervasive technology.

Globalization

Globalization is another transformative factor. We’re talking to and working with people from all over the world whose cultures are unlike ours. No matter how much we homogenize, our diversity still has a way of showing up in expectations, reactions, and miscommunications. This requires collaborative dialogue.

Social Media

Social media is also having a dramatic effect on the workplace culture. Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media aren’t just elements of the business climate to consider; they are drivers and reflectors of a new type of communication. We’ve gone from mass communication to masses of communicators. That alone is eroding the authoritarian communication model. Sound bites and messages in 140 characters or less are vogue. That feeds the desire for succinctness. Plus many employees are constantly logged on and linked in to their social networks. Meetings and events are peppered with audiences who text or tweet play-by-play analyses while the facilitator tries to keep their attention. And that’s if the leader is engaging. If he or she is not engaging, the texts are unrelated to the event.

Social media also creates a whole new set of conversations that managers need to initiate. Our fathers’ managers had to concern themselves with workers who played cards on company time. Today’s managers monitor computer games and texting.

Stretch or Be Stretched

It’s a stretch-or-be-stretched world out there. A manager who doesn’t adapt to the dynamic new work climate will not be effective. Management theories are helpful, but managers also need concrete, tested communication action steps and phrases.

This book gives the accidental (and deliberate) manager immediate benefits by providing words to use in hundreds of contemporary management situations. They are quick, easy, and effective.

You’ll find ready-to-use (and ready-to-adapt) phrases for every management situation. But first, we’ll dive into the new dynamics of communication that provide a foundation for all the phrases included in these pages.