How learning to bodypop can lessen your comms bodycount

By Annie Waite, North American Editor of the Internal Comms Hub, Melcrum

In a bid to bridge the gap between fuddy-duddy old-skool managers and their hipster celeb-hungry gen Y charges, the Hub this week has announced a selection of free leadership training courses on popular culture.

Aimed specifically at boosting understanding and improving communication between these groups of employees, the courses offered as part of the Hub's month-long blitz on poor inter-generational communication include:

• "Txt Spk": A popular course which explains the shortened code language used for cellphone text-messaging;
• "How to communicate with gen Y using your clothes" – a short fashion-sense training course to help make attire choices that will resonate with your younger employees;
• "Innovation in the workplace: Why knitting and billiards have made a comeback and how encouraging such employee interest groups can improve communication at your organization"; and
• "Reality TV ambitions: How not to lose your valuable gen Y employees to the allure of reality TV" (with a complementary module on The Boy Band phenomenon: its rise and fall).

As generation Y is becoming so obsessed with the lives of its favorite celebrities – such as Paris Hilton, Angelina Jolie, Ricky Tomlinson and Josh Lucas – it's adopted a new "gen Y patois". This new language is reportedly so impenetrable and littered with W.A.G terminology (slang terms used by the semi-famous "Wives And Girlfriends" of premier league footballers) that aging managers and leaders are seeking ways to get to grips with it.

The Hub's "Gen Y Patois" training course will provide vital language coaching, historic context and group conversational exercises to address just such needs.

Some managers show reluctance to train
Despite the obvious good sense in taking part in such training, one manager (who wishes to remain anonymous), who's been signed up by his CEO to take part in one of the forthcoming courses on "Bodypopping", fumed earlier today:

"Has the world gone mad?! It's utterly ridiculous! I was the Kentucky regional expert at the Hand Jive and The Mashed Potato back in my day, so I'm very comfortable with my abilities on the dancefloor – but what possible need can there be in the workplace for me to improve my dancing skills?"

Well, according to research conducted earlier this year in the Hub's core regions – Europe, North America and Australia – the subtle communication methods used within bodypopping by gen Y-ers have remarkable collaboration and knowledge-sharing elements built in. Managers could do well to learn from this system.

View the full calendar of the Hub's free popular-culture training courses.

Soundtrack to the blog: George Michael - Kissing a Fool

Comments

[Mark Ragan]

Annie,

The first Melcrum leadership course on pop culture should analyze American Idol.

I came into the office this morning and listened as my younger employees analyzed the episode the previous night.

It occurred to me that our so-called "reality t.v. shows" are really the 21rst Century equivalent of the bear-baiting you Brits (my ancestors) loved so much---only, except for bears, we stake human beings to the stage of a nationally televised program and bait them with the likes of Simon (oh-what's-his-name again)?

It's amazing how things haven't really changed. Cruelty is still soooo in.....

Mark

P.S. Of course, things are never that simple, right? After the bear-baiting, the bankside theaters were turned over to a playwright by the name of William Shakespeare. Go figure.....

Mark