Do Millenials Know How To Converse?

I met with a friend yesterday who runs an interesting entrepreneurial business.  He told me he expects at least 80 interns this summer, mostly college students excited about the prospect of spending a summer in the Big Apple and working on a fledgling yet exponentially growing enterprise.

 

We talked about his office space and how he accommodates all these young people.  "No problem," he says.  "In fact, last year when they came in, I was surprised to see that they wanted to share cubicles with one another --although they came in as strangers--rather than have a cubicle to themselves."  He was delighted that his seating capacity had virtually doubled.  I asked if there was anything that surprised him about their work habits, interaction, willingness to keep crazy hours and the like. 

His biggest surprise was that a large number of these young people--all of them crackerjack smart, all hard working and industrious, all college students--were unable to handle telephone calls. "They don't know basic telephone protocol," says my friend.   When I asked for an example, he described his efforts to have them assist on basic phone calls of business development.  Several of them had been assigned to research, to find likely prospects for his company's services.  They were great at it and came up with many new candidates.  He then had them make on-line connections with these people to set up a telephone appointment.  The idea was that they would place the call (since they had established the relationship on-line) and explain up front something like "I'm delighted to talk with you, Anna. I have asked XXXXXX, the Head of Marketing for our company, to join me on this call so he can explain with more detail our products and services."  Then, according to his plan, he would take over and do the bulk of the talking.

 

He found that a good number of the young people simply could not accomplish this seemingly simple telephone task.  They would freeze up, unable to finish their sentences.  He figured the first few times that it was just "first call jitters" but no, even when they tried multiple times, they just couldn't do it.  In all cases, they told him they were much more comfortable simply conversing with the prospects on line.  They found talking with a live person--though a total stranger--on the phone seriously uncomfortable.

I'm wondering if there is a connection between the proclivity of this group to cluster in cubicles and their reluctance to talk on the phone. Haven't found it yet, but I'm sure there is one.

If nothing else, this tells me that simple phone skills are a job advantage.  If you know of someone who doesn't have them, you can do them a favor by helping them learn the basics.  I don't care how much our world gravitates on-line; you still need to be able to talk with people on the telephone.  It may not be face to face, but when you are trying to sell something (or apologize for something!), it beats emails or on-line texting.  Hands down.

Frankly, whether it's on the phone or not, I find many millenniasl just not very good at conversation in any form.  How is it possible that we are bringing up people who love to chat but don't know how to converse?

Comments

[Mario Vellandi]

I too believe the ability to converse will increasingly become a vital skill. It's underestimated in our world of predominantly self-paced, low-bandwidth channels. Not only is it important for the time-effective reasons you've outlined Susan, but also for social and trust reasons.

I recommend that high schools have mandatory courses in interpersonal communication with activities and assignments in speed networking, interviewing (for survey & journalism purposes).

Secondly, organizations could encourage younger employees to call on existing customers for feedback on service experiences and potential improvement opportunities. If business development is the goal, scripts and rehearsing are vital.

There is hope. Organizations that seize the opportunity can use it as a competitive advantage.