Optimizing Millennials' Communication Styles

Article Review

The following article, which was written by Jackie L. Hartman and Jim McCambridge, raises the question of millenials, who were born between 1980 and 2000, and how to teach them communicate effectively in modern business world through style-typing and style flexing. Authors say that millennials are those people who were largely exposed to new technologies and therefore they use those technologies in a large scale, but they lack expertise in interpersonal oral, written, and interpersonal communication skills, which are vital and are very demanded in the labor-market. Article gives us some information, received from successful people, who say that effective communication skills were the cornerstone of their success. And to promote millennials to be more communicative article gives some tooltips, such as style-typing and style-flexing, for educators and also helps them to know which communicative style they are: amiable, expressive, analytical, or driver. In addition, to mix theories of style-typing and style-flexing with practice, authors prepared an exercise for tutor and students which is aimed to foster effective communication skills. To conclude authors say that effective communications is the key for both personal and business success and state that it is educators' obligation to prepare millennials for their future.

The dominant purpose of this article seems to be to help both millennials and educators to understand the importance of effective communications skills. Authors state a dilemma saying that millennials are technologically sophisticated and exposed to new technologies in a larger scale than previous generations, but they lack abilities to communicate interpersonally.

There are three interesting points in the article. First, is the way how authors try to convince that effective communication skills are crucial for everyone. And I find it convincing. They say that the large scale of modern successful companies is fostering communications skills within their company. Furthermore, they provided a survey of Fortune 500 vice president by Olney, which concluded that 97.7% of VP believed that communication skills had affected their advancement to a top executive position.

Second point is about style-typing and style-flexing and how they might be useful in business communications. Every person is unique, and, therefore, has unique communication styles. And authors tried to help readers to improve their communication styles by style-typing and style-flexing. They give us some useful tooltips, like adapting partner's communication style in order to prevent misunderstanding and build better relationships between each other. In addition authors provided a table, which would help to indicate which communication style a person is, what will be a great help for future managers and ordinary people.

And the last, third, point will be a great help for educators