What method of communication causes you to roll your eyes when someone tries to contact you that way? Text messaging? Phone calls? Email? Facebook Messenger? Something else?
I had a conversation about this with a friend this week. He prefers to pick up the phone and talk to people. He’s outgoing and probably in the Baby Boomer camp, so it makes sense. But not so much to his grandchildren who want to exchange texts with him.
We tend to communicate with people in the manner in which we feel most comfortable. A Generation Zer might send a birthday dinner invitation to her grandfather via text message, but her grandfather doesn’t want to text or maybe even check his text messages. He wants a phone call. A Generation Xer might try to call a millennial to catch up but the millennial doesn’t pick up because he or she prefers texting.
What we have here is a failure to communicate. Or, at least, a failure to communicate in a way in which the other person prefers. And this goes beyond just generational preferences. An introvert in any generation may very well be scared to death of the phone. An extrovert may look at a long text from an introvert (or from a generation that prefers to text) and roll his eyes before picking up the phone and calling the sender who then doesn’t answer.
And so it goes.
I’m in the introverted, Generation X camp. I prefer to talk on the phone, which sort of flies in the face of the introverted norm. I have exceptions though. I prefer to talk on the phone with people I’m close to, except during working hours. Then I prefer a text. If we are acquaintances, I’d prefer an email first. Never Facebook Messenger, no matter where we are in our relationship. I don’t expect people to know this about me. But since I have so many communication preferences, I know others do as well.
We could talk about the various preferred methods of communication for each generation, but that’s an article for another time. Instead, it might be more productive if we were to take stock in other people’s preferences and engage them in the methods they prefer. It seems like the chances of making a genuine connection are higher.
When I was young, my parents divorced, and my sister and I lived with my mom. Dad loved golf, but that wasn’t my game. I loved tennis, so he bought me an expensive racket that I used while playing for my high school tennis team. Not only did he buy me a nice racket, but he bought me the one I really wanted – the one that would allow me to take my game to the next level. And he even watched tennis on TV so we could talk about it the next time I saw him (or via letter). Looking back, I can see why he did what he did. He wanted to communicate with me, so he entered my world.
That seems like a pretty good model. Yeah, it might mean swallowing hard, then dialing your phone, or refraining from eye rolling the next time you get a long text, or checking your email inbox a little more frequently. Or, if you are like me, checking your Facebook Messenger app once in a while [shudder]. But I have a feeling you will think it’s worth it in the end.
Even if we don’t understand or appreciate someone’s preferred method of communication, the connection is what matters. And why wouldn’t we want more of that?
