If you are a millennial, you have to read this post oo

Hey fam! How was your week? Today, I’m here with some office gist for you. You ready? Let’s go there!!! This week, my boss had glitch with the manner with which a guy communicates with her. Okay, so let me start from the beginning before you jumpstart to gender bias thoughts.

This guy is a university undergraduate who is on a part-time internship with my company and he is to directly report to my boss. Before now, my boss has been making short comments about the way this guy tasks her on assignments that are his own deliverables.

Then this week, she shared with us how this guy requested that she should ask another colleague about something he needed to for his own task. By the time she read the message to us, we all smiled and knew that his manner of request was not the best of preferred manners to communicate with a superior/boss.

Don’t get it wrong, it’s nothing bad to make request of your superiors but you should realise that there are 1001 better ways to subtly make request of people that they wouldn’t even feel that you just asked them to do something.

I noted that it’s a generation thing. Millennials are most times high on the expressive side that we often don’t know the efficacy of our words, we just wanna say it as it is.  Yes, you matter and your expression is important but can you take a two-seconds pause to cross-check your words either in writing or in speech before you let them out.

Your competence is not enough to how people perceive you rather your character/expression goes a long way to impress on how people perceive you. Often times, millennials pride over competence; competence in leadership, marketing, IT, public speaking, writing, social media influencing while we neglect or relegate the expression of character.

This week, the protagonist (the university undergraduate) conducted a virtual interview for some young persons like himself. I raised my head from my computer smiling and casting stolen gazes at him because of his choice of words to the interviewees. My boss was passively present in the interview for supervision, she didn’t comment but she also shared similar thought about his choice of words in the interview.

He was not rude neither did he use inappropriate words but there are surely better ways of conducting interview for people, make them feel relaxed and truthfully get the best out of them.

Back to the conversation at work with my colleagues, I encouraged my boss to give him feedback that will help him to get better because that is one of the reasons he is serving as an intern in the company. I reiterated that it’s prevalent in the millennial generation which I am part of that we often disregard ethics in communication. I had to confess to my boss in the presence of my colleagues that I learnt the skills of respect in communication from her.

No one is asking you to kneel down or prostrate to your bosses or superiors but you shouldn’t flout the simple code of respect in communication. And these things are not really taught in the best of schools especially in Nigeria, these are soft skills you deliberately learn or catch.

We further identified that there is disparity of values from one generation to another. One of the major and obvious disparity of values between previous generations and the millennial generation is the sporadic depravation of respect ethics in communication.

My amazing millennial Difers, we can do better. Let’s intentionally make effort to input respect ethics in our communication. Don’t allow the cloak of competence cloud your humane character of kindness, respect and love in your dealings with people no matter who they are or what they do. In our millennial age driven by technology, character is a main feature of your being that differentiates you from a robot. So, fam stay courteous and uphold the value of respect ethic in your expression of character.

Have a pleasant weekend. Je t’aime mon ami