Press Release:
The way you thought you needed to talk to Millennials is all wrong— new communications skills course addresses generational differences in business and the workplace
Greensboro, NC— In many industries, relations between manufacturers and their dealer network is essential, but they can face new hurdles as Millennials take over their Boomer and Gen X parents’ businesses.
A new workshop called Leading Across Generations addresses this challenge and reveals the facts and fallacies of Millennial employees and coworkers. Developed by training and development firm Jamesson Solutions, Leading Across Generations is an interactive two-day workshop that challenges many popular beliefs as it focuses on communicating across generational boundaries.
Jamesson Solutions created the workshop in response to a client company that needed to address a younger dealer base. In the motor vehicle industry, succession often means the business is handed to the adult children of the original owners and the manufacturer is finding that generational differences are becoming more of an obstacle in vital dealer relationships.
The new workshop to aid communication, uses a variety of original games. Acknowledging the tendency of Millennials to be connected to their phones, the workshop includes innovative online polling via text to take instant surveys among the class. The game “Guess What Generation We’re Talking About” reveals stereotypes and prejudices. The goal is to get people to realize they may not really understand who they’re communicating with, while highlighting the real obstacles that can be eliminated. For information about the Leading Across Generations, contact us here.
“We could see immediately that the sudden influx of Millennial-aged dealers had the potential of affecting critical communications and sales relationships,” says Jamesson Solutions’ Donna Warrick. “The idea that anyone can look at a whole generation and say, ‘this is how they are’ is just wrong.”
Leading Across Generations is not just about older generations gaining more accurate insights about Millennials. Millennials sitting in the same classroom learn how to be more effective working with older generations. The workshop empowers Millennials to get past the stereotypes they face and engage more effectively across generations with paths to resolutions, such as:
• Acknowledgment: putting the issue or challenge on the table, without blame or judgment
• Appreciation: identifying the common goal or need, and understanding the WHY behind the other’s behavior
• Adaptation: explore options and alternatives for agreeing
• Alignment: agreeing on the go-forward, restating the plan, and following up to ensure it’s working
Through exercises and simulations participants identify and share common individual goals, that may help facilitate dialogue, including:
• To trust and be trusted
• To learn and grow
• To achieve work-life balance
“What we’ve put together involves describing Millennials more accurately by clarifying the realities and exploding the myths,” says Warrick.
Warrick, who is partner in Jamesson Solutions with her husband Mike Warrick, developed the curriculum after a decade of working with corporations in training and development, with a special focus on high impact presentation skills as a cornerstone to continuing leadership growth. “Presentation skills are too often assumed to be prerequisite for many jobs, but most people are lucky if they had a speech class in college or high school,” says Donna Warrick. “Leading Across Generations is a logical outgrowth of our presentation skills curriculum, because the challenges for different generations are often very different.”
About Jamesson Solutions
Jamesson Solutions offers leader, team and organization development focused on achieving measurable improvement now and in the future. The company offers scalability and a range of solutions to fit the needs of small and large businesses, matching human resources professionals, trainers and organizational development consultants with products and services best suited to their needs. For more information, visit JamessonSolutions.com.
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For more information:
David McLean
King’s English
(336) 574-0304 ext 19
[email protected]