023: Jessica Brookes – On Cross Generational Communications – Is There A Sweet Spot?

Title: Jessica Brookes – On Cross Generational Communications – Is There A Sweet Spot?

Guest: Jessica Brookes

Peter: Welcome to the Biz and Life Done Well podcast, where we explore what it means and what it takes to do business and life well. I’m your host, Peter Wilson. If you’re like me, you’re intrigued by stories of common people who have achieved uncommon success in business and life. Join me as I interview fascinating people about how they got started, their successes and failures, their habits and routines, and what inspires them.

Jessica: Sure, thanks Peter and good morning. So my name is Jessica Brooks. I am, currently I work in community affairs for Amazon. But my background from a business perspective is over twenty two years of communications and marketing experience, leading communications for some of the biggest companies in the world. And I think that’s taught me something about people more than anything else.

I can’t say I’m an expert in anything, but I do think that you get to know a lot about people and what makes them tick. So I lived abroad for fifteen years. I live in The US now, been back for about a year. I think that’s another good lesson in listening to and communication is living in a country that you aren’t from.

Peter: Today, our topic, cross generational communication, is there a sweet spot? That was your title, your phrase, your wording. And it really caught my eye, especially because in my own personal, in my work environment, I have folks that are younger than my kids and I have folks that are on the other end of the age spectrum. And then obviously in my own personal life, I’d communicate with all kinds of folks. Why don’t you break it down for us in terms of how you think about this question?

Jessica: Sure, so I think I could even back up a minute and say, why do I think about this question? And I think the why is we have five generations in the workplace now, which is the first time in history that we’ve had that many different generations in the workplace. And each of those generations bring a different set of attributes to the table and they also bring a different set of expected norms and ideals and what their understanding of the world around them is. I think if I, so if I define cross generational, it’s multi generation, more than three, I’d say. And then if I define communication, to me communication is context.

So the study of communications and persuasion fifty years ago was really about words. But what we know now is people listen to 5% of what you say. What they take their cues from is the context, right? What’s surrounding that discussion? What are you making with your body language?

What gestures are you making with your body language? What are you communicating non verbally? There’s a whole probably side conversation that can be had about what’s happened to non verbal communication in the age of working from home. But cross generational communication is not only important because of how it impacts us in the workplace, but I think more importantly, there’s very little delineation now between the workplace, home, public, private, and I think understanding how to listen effectively and hear what people from different backgrounds are saying is one of the keys to actually being able to communicate with people.

Peter: Yeah, I can’t agree more with sort of your statement, not really a hypothesis, it’s more of an observation, right? This is what’s happening. It’s funny that you mentioned, you know, sort of working from home because, you know, doing Zoom has sort of become the expected norm for a lot of folks who aren’t used to staring at one or more people constantly. And if you look away, for example, it’s considered if you’re in a group setting, right, in a meeting, if you’re looking away, I don’t know what norms you have in your sort of work environment. But some that I’m in, it’s really considered to be kind of rude or not, you know, it’s not acceptable in some groups that I meet in and I find that very difficult to deal with right now.

So that’s just like a little tiny example of what I’m dealing with just with the Zoom. I mean, what are you seeing in that regard?

Jessica: Yeah, so I’d say I’m seeing the same thing. And I do think when we think about cross generational communication, there is a very strong case to be made for, you can put people in boxes to be honest. And I actually think that our generation as it may be printed on paper isn’t necessarily what our defined generational style is. So if we take me for instance, I’m Gen X, but because of the work I’ve done along my whole career, but especially now, I appear in social media settings more like millennial or Gen Zed, sorry, Gen Z. And so the way that I interact on a screen isn’t really consistent with a Gen Xer, right?

But if we take the generational styles, right? So we have the five generations we have in the workplace right now are the traditionalists, the baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Zed. And so if we take those different styles, if I think about the traditionalists, which my in laws would fit into, it’s very sweet talking with them on video And they obviously aren’t in the workplace anymore. They’re in their late seventies, they don’t work anymore, but you barely see the top of their head. That

Peter: describes my mom with her iPad. Like mom, tip the iPad up.

Jessica: Yeah exactly, it sits on their lap, we see half their face, trying to both talk at the same time, and then the baby boomers I think have a bit of a different grasp on it, and I’ll tell you why. I think it’s because of the grandchildren. So I think baby boomers, many of them have been FaceTiming with their grandchildren since FaceTime was a technology that was available. So I see that category and work being able to interact a little bit better on video. And then the rest of us, I feel like we’re digital natives.

Like I think Gen X down, we’re digital natives, right? But here’s what I find interesting. There’s a lot more subtext that happens now. So the context that you would normally get in communication, if we just take a meeting, right? You can see people’s body language, you can see when they sit back and they’re bored, you can see when they start fiddling with a pencil, And your point about looking away, some people might interpret that as they’re not paying attention, but in reality, they’re probably thinking.

And so here’s what I’m seeing now. Someone looks away and they’re conscious that that comes off as dismissive or just detached. And so they say, I’m just thinking. So there’s this subtext that used to be unspoken, right? And this kind of go, this maps to like high context and low context communication.

So in low context communication, it’s culturally communication that’s very direct, very explicit, very precise, right? Whereas high context is a lot more about traditions and values and things that are implicit, things that aren’t outwardly stated. And so a good example is the difference between American communication style and Japanese communication style. The Japanese communication style, there are so many things that are unspoken. So one of the unspoken rules in Japan is that nobody should sit down in a meeting room until the most senior person who’s supposed to be in that meeting comes in.

So someone that is not from Japan would, let’s say somebody from a low context communication culture like America would just sit down because that’s what we do. And it would be seen as very, very rude, but it would never be spoken that it’s very, very rude. And so how does that relate to what we’re talking about with video? Well, what it means is that no matter where your cultural context for communication comes in, there’s always a personal style. And so people are now feeling the need to explicitly say, Well, I’m just thinking.

Or one of the things that I see a lot is, I’m sorry that I’m not on video, fill in the blank, right? It tends to be my internet connection is bad, but reading between the lines, I do think sometimes people are finding it more difficult to mask their emotions. And so what I’ve noticed is that in very, very difficult or very conflict rich environments and meetings, people are choosing not to go on video. So I think what video has done, where we’ve gone to this 100% video standard, is that it’s taken so much of that subtlety away that now that subtlety becomes explicit instead of implicit.

Peter: Interesting. Yeah. I have been taking meetings with some members of my team, one, who is a young mom, who has a two year old running around. And very often, we’ll do our one on ones. We’ll just shut the video off because it’s it’s almost a distraction and we’re used to talking to each she’s in Boston, I’m in the Seattle area.

We’re used to talking to each other on the phone anyway. So when everything shifted to Zoom, it was like, oh, yeah. We’ll just use Zoom instead of what we used to do for our one on ones. And then after about a month of that, we’re like, this is a distraction. We just won’t need to do this.

And I found that, like for me personally, I’m I’m much it seems like I’m more able in that context to to process the information more and just be more on point with exactly what I’m trying to communicate, focusing on my words, not worrying about how I’m looking. So for me personally, a baby boomer, late baby boomer, that seems to work better for me. That is an interesting observation. What about, I know we’re just kind of talking about this sort of video virtual world that we’re living in here. Have you had an opportunity to connect in person with folks recently versus Zoom and kind of noticed like people are like, can’t believe it, we’re finally here together.

Jessica: Have, and I’ll tell you, my job is very interesting anyway, even before COVID. So my job is to build relationships within the community with elected and non elected officials in order to improve our delivery operations within the stations, which means 50% of my time is spent, well, that’s a rough estimate, but I spent a lot of time in delivery stations. So in a high vis vest, in steel toed boots, walking around, helping to sort packages, helping to get stuff onto vans. And those people haven’t moved into any different kind of world from a person to person perspective, except for social distancing. And obviously there’s a lot more safety measures in place.

And so for them, they feel like it’s very strange that they don’t see me as often. So I’m probably in a delivery station now once a week, or as it used to be every day almost. Whereas the people that I used to see in the office, they’ve split in my mind into two camps. One camp of people that are like, this is the best thing ever. Like, I don’t know why we didn’t think of this ages ago.

I get way more done. They tend to veer more towards the introverted side. They enjoy that they can shut themselves off from having to talk to people at will. They don’t have to close their office door and make excuses for why they can’t speak with people. I have started coming into the office on Wednesdays and inviting my team to do the same if they want to.

It’s very safe in the office because nobody’s there and I would never force anybody, but I’ll tell you what, they come in every week. Every week they come in and my team also ranges in age from Gen Z, millennial, Gen X, and I have a boomer on my team too. I mean, I’m talking just about my immediate team. I’m on a very big team, but just my immediate team is seven people. And they all come into the office when they can, because I think there’s still an element of us that craves human interaction.

A, B, I don’t think we were ever meant to, I don’t think we were made to spend twenty four hours a day, seven days a week with the same people in one house. We didn’t used to live very long, right? Like if we just rewind fifty years ago, so now one hundred and twenty five million people are over the 80. And it’s predicted that by the year 2050, the population of aged, the aged population will outnumber the infant population. And that’s because people are living longer, right?

They’re living longer which means that’s a lot of time with a spouse or children or whoever. So I think that’s why they’re coming into the office as well. But I hope at least that there’ll never be a need for or sorry, that there’ll never be a lack of person to person interaction that replace it. I don’t think that’ll ever go away completely. We’re human beings.

We need people, we need human interaction, I think.

Peter: I think one of the things that’s I have a small office, and a few of us do gather on Wednesdays as well. And it’s been really good for all of us, amount of interaction. We we have very specific work we do on that day. One of the things that I’ve noticed, least for me personally, is I kinda cherish that time with those people. Whereas before, I might have taken it for granted.

Mhmm. Right? It’s like, do I have to be here? Because I would traditionally be in my office four or five days a week. Now I really cherish that time.

I probably use it more wisely, and more productively and do have an opportunity to talk about, to work on relationships as well. So I’ve found it to be really helpful.

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Peter: Now back to Biz and Life Done Well with Peter Wilson.

Peter: Talking about, you know, these different generations, are there any that you find or generational style, I guess we could call it, are having a harder time? Do you think it gets harder as you get older or dealing with what’s happening right now in the workplace? What are you seeing there?

Jessica: Well, think there’s so many different angles we could take that from. There’s privilege, there’s do I have a job? There’s all kinds of things. But if we just think about communication, I think that there’s difficulty in the current situation of working from home that is different for every generation. But I think every generation has something that they’re finding extremely difficult about this.

So without going too far down the privilege route, let’s take Gen Z. They are the most likely to still be living with their parents. They are the most likely if they’re not living with their parents to be in like a roommate situation, right? Where they don’t have the same access at home to, I feel extremely privileged. I have a gorgeous house, I have my own office in my house, working from home, even with two elementary school children upstairs, it doesn’t change.

I have a stay at home partner, like it doesn’t change that much for me, except for that I don’t get the human interaction. But the Gen Z, I mean, lot of them are in roommate situations. They’re like holed up in their bedroom trying to work from home, right? And so that makes communication very difficult because you’re working with people that, you know, there’s even people that are far more privileged than me, right? They’ve got two houses and they get to go to their other house and work.

And so you’ve got these people on these Zoom calls who are like, yeah, I’m in the corner in my bedroom with pillows up against the door because my roommates are being so loud and I’m finding it really tough to work. And then you’ve got the traditionalists who are like, can you see me? Can you see me? Can you hear me?

Peter: Can you

Jessica: hear me? Should I share my screen? And so I think there is challenging elements of this for both ends of the spectrum and not to delve too quickly into solutioning, but I do think that the key to understanding those difficulties is being open to hearing what someone else’s experience is like. And if we parlay this into business, if we think about the customers that we’re trying to communicate with or the audiences that we’re trying to reach, it’s very difficult to reach those audiences if we don’t understand what their life is like right now. And so the more time we take to listen to each other and not speculate or make assumptions, or just go based on our own unconscious bias, the more we just listen to what is your experience?

So like one of the ways I try to do that, and I’m not saying I’m perfect, but because I lead a team of four generations, I try to spend at least, so I have a one to one with each of them every week and then I also have a team meeting and I try to spend at least five to ten minutes of my one to one time with them just asking, hey, how’s it going? Like what’s happening for you at home? How is everything? And then I try to do that in our team meeting too so they can hear from each other. So it’s not just me hearing about why the 22 year old has different challenges to the 50 year old, it’s also them hearing why there’s a difference in their experience and why they are each approaching the situation from a different perspective.

Peter: That’s exactly what we do with our team as well. Weekly one on one and we with each member and then a weekly team meeting as well. I try to do the one on ones on Mondays and except for one person, another day, and then a weekly team meeting in the middle of the week. We’ve been doing it religiously for years, like two or three years now. And one of the things that we do that really helps nurture that understanding among the team members is each week we have an assignment for, and we rotate the assignment.

So we do, what was it, disappointed or delighted. So what is one way that you were disappointed and delighted, not with anything to do with what we do, but out in the rest of your life. What was one customer service experience that you could relate to everybody? What can we learn from that? And so we rotate that every week.

Then we do a customer story, and anybody can do that. And then we do a quote of the week, and that’s the same person. So what that has done seems to me, and my team is pretty much virtual. I’ve got somebody in Boston, some people local, but they work from home by choice and have ever since, pretty much ever since we started working together, and then a couple of us together, really has fostered a team vibe. In fact, that’s one of our core values, is great team vibe.

And the team came up with the core values. We spent about three or four months working on it, and that was the one core value related to team. It was just, hey. This is there’s no other way to say it. Great team vibe.

And so, as we add people to the team, know, somebody gets added to this environment. We recently had somebody join the team maybe six months ago. They were easy you know, it was pretty easy for them to understand what we were about and kind of really relate pretty quickly to everybody on the team. And that’s as you grow a team and you’ve got this virtual environment, you really have to have these norms and this strong sense of team. Otherwise, it’s really I think it’s really difficult to add people.

And I mean, we actually document it. Like, we’ve got a doc and we you know, every week we we found that to be very powerful. And for me, personally, it’s been like, when we moved to virtual, because we’d already sort of been anyway, we didn’t really miss a beat, but it’s really important to have those sort of, I don’t know, I wanna call it a tradition, but kind of that norm with your team, right?

Jessica: Yeah, it’s a framework. It’s a framework that helps them understand the parameters in which they’re operating. So like I said, I’m a mother to young children, right? I have two 10 year olds. And again, who knows, call me in ten years and see if I did okay.

But I do think one of the most important things with them, which also I think is completely translatable to work is what’s the framework within which I’m expected to operate? Like what are my parameters? What are my boundaries? How do I show up in this family? How do I show up in my work family?

Because the reality is we spend more time with people we work with than the people that we’re related to. So it is a family of sorts. It may not be a biological family, but it’s a family. And so you have to have rules. And like we have a rule in my house that I’ve also parlayed into work.

Conversations don’t always go the way we want them to, right? So sometimes we go down a rabbit hole and things aren’t going well and people are upset and people are frustrated. And at home, say, right, so what do we need to do to level set and restart? Let’s wash this away and restart. And at work, I think it’s the same thing, right?

It’s listening to people. What do we need to get back on track with this conversation? Do you need a day? Do you need a minute? Do you just need to change the subject?

But let’s all take what we just heard, put it on a piece of paper and come back to it next week and move forward in a productive way instead of kind of going down. And it’s interesting that you say the disappoint and delight, we do high tide, low tide. So we do the same thing on that my we do at home. What was your high tide this week? What was your low tide?

I think it’s important, it allows people to bring themselves to work and not have it be something that’s completely separate from the way they’ve lived their lives.

Peter: One of the other things that we’ve done on my team is we have a couple just sort of like rules. One of them is no client bashing. As frustrating as individuals can be to deal with, I stick to that and we all catch each other occasionally on that. And so we have some of those sort of, some written down anywhere, but it’s just one of those we all know. That also helps.

It’s having those sort of guiding things to think about. It sounds like you’ve got them in your work environment as well.

Jessica: Yeah, think the bashing clients is really important, right? And I was on the agency side for a very long time and I think it translates into in house as well is everybody’s gonna have challenges with, because internally you still have clients, right? They may not be called that, they may be stakeholders, but still clients, right? And so it’s one thing to express an obstacle that we’re all finding challenging to overcome. We may have a stakeholder who’s difficult to communicate with or a stakeholder who’s unkind or a stakeholder who’s just very stubborn, but there’s a difference between bashing to your point and going, Hey, I’ve got this barrier.

Does anybody have any suggestions for how I can overcome it? And I do think it’s the same thing with clients. I’ve been on the side of having a difficult client and I’ve been the difficult client. I can imagine the conversations that are going on behind closed doors, but I think as long as it’s solution oriented than it is pushing the agenda forward for positive communication.

Peter: One of the things I’ve preached to my team is they can’t work with a client or each other necessarily and expect, like they have to discover and work or just explicitly ask people what is the best way to communicate.

Jessica: Yep, it’s one of the first things I do when I either have a new team member or a new stakeholder internally is I have an introductory conversation where I say, what are your preferred methods of communication? And it’s interesting because there’s a very, I find a very specific response that is absolutely based on age or maybe you could say experience, maybe it’s not age. Sure. The older somebody is, the more they will go, I do not like to get personal texts, what I like to get are, whatever. They’ll list out like, I only do work that’s documented in an email, please don’t I’m me with work to do, whatever.

They’re very explicit. And then the younger you get, the more they’re like, what do you mean? What do you mean when you say my communication style? And I’ll say, well, let me tell you what mine is. All of my social media channels are fair game.

You can talk to me anytime you want on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on TikTok, on Facebook, whatever, I’m fine. Don’t think there’s a, for me, there’s no separation between personal and business. At work, I will answer you when I’m working, I will not answer you when I’m not working. If it’s important, text me or call me. Expect you, this is my team, I expect you all to operate as adults.

And if you’re sending me emails at two in the morning, I’m gonna assume it means you were doing something really fun during the day and you’re catching up on stuff. I assume you can handle your workload. So if that’s not the case, you need to flag that for me because I’m not gonna be monitoring what time you’re sending emails. That’s on you, right? And so then normally younger people will go, oh, okay, okay, I see what you mean, yeah.

I don’t have any of my social media channels for with business use, it’s all personal, and then they’ll talk about what their norms are, but it’s almost like because digital natives have grown up in a society and in a environment where everything is fair game, it’s almost like nobody asked them before. What do you want? How do you wanna be communicated with? It was just assumed that they were fully accessible on any channel.

Peter: That’s great. The the the biggest challenge I have is we’re we’re working with a new client and we’re sending emails to the client and not getting a response. Well, I sent an email three days ago and I haven’t got a response. Said, well, did you pick up the phone and call

Jessica: them? That is a really, really tough one too. So I, with my friends and at work, I call it being vintage. So I am older, although I operate in a younger category sometimes. If I don’t get a response to something, will pick up the phone or I will text somebody, I will call my friends sometimes just because I’m in the car or I have time or whatever.

They’re like, everything okay? And I’m like, oh yeah, I’m being super vintage. I wanted to hear your voice. And they’re like, I can’t see you on FaceTime. And I’m like, cause I’m in the car, but I just wanted to say hi and see how you’re doing.

I actually with clients, when I was on the agency side, if I had a client that didn’t respond to me in email, when I did pick up the phone, I’d say, can you help me understand what the best way to communicate with you is? I tend to keep track of my tasks and emails. So if that doesn’t work for you, let me know if you want like a weekly business review, like what’s gonna work for you so that you know what I need from you to get my job done. And you know what you need from me to get your job done.

Peter: That’s great. In just thinking about the conversation, we covered a lot of ground. I think we’ve answered the question perhaps. I don’t wanna put words in your mouth. So the answer to the question, is there a sweet spot?

Jessica: The sweet spot is listening. I think the sweet spot for cross generational communication is not assuming that communication is talking. Communication is listening, Speaking is talking. And there are lots of different ways to listen. You can listen by doing social media audits.

You can listen by having a voice to voice conversation. You can listen by actually understanding what somebody means instead of assuming what they mean, but listening to how the other people that you work with or how the other person you’re interacting with wants to be communicated with, I think is one of the keys to cross generational communication because there’s not one way, there’s not a silver bullet, everybody has a different need. And also that changes, right? The way I wanted to be communicated with ten months ago, twelve months ago is very different now. We’re in a very emotionally charged time, very politically charged time.

I don’t want to talk about politics with my friends anymore. I did a year ago, I don’t want to now. I want to talk about The Bachelorette or, you know, I want to talk about something that has no weight on society because everything’s so serious right now. And so every person’s going to have a different communication preference, but then it’s also gonna adapt over time and it’s gonna shift. So the sweet spot is knowing your audience, the sweet spot is listening.

Peter: As a wrap up, are there any resources that you recommend with respect to this particular topic?

Jessica: Yeah, definitely. There’s a book by a woman called Anna Liotta, it’s called Unlocking Generational Codes, and I’d say from a work perspective, it’s very business focused, but from a work perspective, it’s excellent. She is a Seattle native, she comes from a family of 10, believe, big Italian family. And if you think about even just the nieces and nephews now that she’s an adult, I think at one point she said there were 50 if they were to all to get together, obviously this is pre COVID, but she’s written a really good book about how the different generations in the workplace can learn from each other. So there’s this concepts about reverse mentoring and a lot of different ways that we can ensure we’re getting the goodness from the experience that the people going out are going to take with them.

But then also we can get the goodness from the fresh eyes of the people coming in, right? And the people that actually understand the world around them very well, because they haven’t been jaded by corporate work environments, and so they don’t filter things the same way. Another one that I thought was really good, it is political, I’ll disclaimer that, but there’s an NPR podcast called Code Switch, And they recently did a really good episode on the generational divide between black voters. And it talked a lot about why there was such a strong division between the grandmothers in the house and the grandchildren in the house and what lines they were voting along and why they voted that way. You could remove the politics from it and the key message is still clear, is that we all come into a situation with our own framework and with our own set of standards and our own set of what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable.

So one of the interesting things was the older generation said they were voting for so and so because they knew so and so. They didn’t know that person, but they knew of them, right? So they didn’t seem as inexperienced to that older generation because they had heard of them, they knew who they were. So I think that’s really interesting.

Peter: That’s great. So for you personally, are there any causes that you’re involved with you’d like to mention? We’ve got a few listeners to our podcast here, so.

Jessica: Yeah, actually, after I get done with you today, I’m doing phone banking for Rock the Vote. So Rock the Vote is an organization that has been around since I was a kid and they empower youth voting. So, this is nonpartisan, this isn’t vote this way, vote that way, but if the number of people that didn’t vote in the sixteen election had voted, that would have been a whole nomination for a whole other person. There were more people that didn’t vote than there were people that nominated the president that we have. And so it’s super important that these young voters who’ve never voted before understand the importance.

And for me, it’s very personal. I grew up in a multi generational household. My great grandmother raised me and walked me, frog marched me to the polls every day, every day, every time there was an election, every time there was an election, I remember it being in the garage of a neighbor’s house at one point. So my great grandmother was born in 1898. She was part of the suffragette movement and she taught me to never ever take for granted democracy, to never ever take for granted the right to vote.

So for me, it’s a really important cause is that people understand that they have the power to vote and the power to make a decision.

Peter: Thank you, Jessica. Thanks for

Peter: listening to this episode of Biz and Life Done Well with Peter Wilson. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most of the other popular podcast platforms. Please tell your friends about us and leave us a review so even more people will find out about us. Thanks again. We’ll see you soon.