Communication, where art thou?

I have always loved words. I love writing. I love our language. And I certainly love communicating. Verbally and otherwise.

I’m a talker, what can I say?

I majored in Mass Communication in college and my professional background has primarily been focused in sales and branding, both of which involve excellent communication skills.

In other words, I’m a Communicator! Huzzah!

Currently, I am the Marketing Director for a local business that employs young people as sales associates. Nothing wrong with that, the fast food, quick-service industry is littered (and always has been) with young people, still in high school, in college, about to graduate college, just biding their time until they enter into the real world of careers, and answering the infamous question posed by the sadistic stiff of a teacher in the 1984 Twisted Sister I Wanna Rock video: “What do you wanna do with your life?”

Hopefully the answer is not still “I wanna rock!”

Entering into the real world, where everyone now communicates via emails, texting, social media, blogs or memes. Verbal communication seems to be a dying art to that of virtual. Who would have ever thunk it? Interpersonal communication, a thing of the past. Good interpersonal communication, anyway.

Side note: I took a class in college called Interpersonal Communication – I hope it’s still offered some 19 years later, because young people need it today, more than ever!

So I was recently asked by my employer to give a presentation to the young sales staff, about communication. Specifically, one on one communication and selling. Interpersonal communication, so to speak.

I can only laugh when I hear the owners complain that the sales staff has no solid communication skills. Well duh, our society isn’t fostering those skills. Or encouraging them. These kids are growing up in an age of texting. I recently saw a meme mocking texting, but sort of speaking some truth. It read: TEXTING: Killing genuine human interaction two thumbs at a time. Pretty much.

Who needs to talk? Who needs to write? Properly, anyway. We live in a society of people (of all ages) who text. It’s not just the young, so I don’t fault them fully. It’s even people in their 30’s and 40’s and beyond. It’s all emoticons, slang and texting acronym lingo. (Is it even referred to as shorthand anymore? Or did I just date myself?) I mean, there’s an abbreviation for everything: lol = laugh out loud, idk = I don’t know, b4 = before, ppl = people, dat = that. Kids can’t even type out the simple 3-letter word “and” – it’s nd. Really?!

Add to the list of dying arts: spelling and grammar. Very sad.

Oh, and my apologies. I wrote out the word text earlier. I meant Txt. My bad.

Did you know that there is a plethora of articles and blogs on the Internet that are written solely for parents, so that they can understand their child(ren)’s communication style and language? It’s quite comical. Forget learning a foreign language to be chic, you better know your txt lingo. (True dat.)

So yeah, I can only laugh when I hear this complaint of poor communication skills on part of our youngsters. (Youngsters. Using that word makes me feel über old, but it is what it is.) OMG! (That’s still my favorite.)

I’m not quite sure how I am yet going to approach my presentation to the younger generation sales staff who probably don’t even know what the words interpersonal or communication mean, but you can bet that I won’t be using emoticons and texting lingo. Or on second thought, maybe I should… to appeal to their intellectual level and for their entertainment. Nothing like an old lady trying to be young and hip. They might even consider me cool. (Do people even use “cool” anymore? I’m not even sure. While I prefer “the cat’s pajamas” or “the cat’s meow,” I think there’s been a resurgence amongst our young of sweet, tight and sick. But I’m pretty sure def, dope, phat and fresh were left somewhere in the 90’s and I am personally OK with that.)

Perhaps I’ll open my presentation by posing the question: How do YOU define the word, communication? I’ll be honest, I’m sort of excited to hear their responses.

Regardless, I miss the days of old school communication. Receiving letters. Receiving phone calls, even. (Not from telemarketers, they still call me plenty.) But from friends and loved ones.

I’m a fan of advancing technology, but I miss good, old-fashioned means of communication: the mouth, the pen and the telephone.

And don’t try to argue that texting is writing. It’s not. Use your beautiful brains, people. What a gift we all have.

The way we all have begun to communicate, not just our youth, is impersonal, passive-aggressive and somewhat annoying. Texting has become more of a public and personal annoyance than a luxury. IMO, of course. (That’s in my opinion, in case you were wondering.)

The other night I went out to dinner with my family and at two other tables near us were two, separate couples. Both couples were on their smartphones almost their entire meal. I only noticed one of the couples talking to each other briefly, while they shared an appetizer, but then it was back to their phones, even once their dinner arrived. And the second couple, I don’t know if I ever saw them speak to each other. The guy did stop to show his girlfriend/wife something on his phone a few times, but that was it. And these were young couples. It made me sad. I guess it’s really no different than seeing an older couple with no phones to distract them, not saying a word to one another while dining out, which I see a lot too, but it’s all the slow death of interpersonal communication and it’s sad any which way you look at it.

I even think about it on a personal level. How often there are times when I’m on my laptop, while my husband is on his and we’re each doing our own thing. What would we be doing with our time if we didn’t have our computers? Or our smart phones? Or iPads? Or Kindles? Or whatever your poison? Probably building better interpersonal communication skills, that’s what.

I’m really excited for my child to grow up in a world of such advanced technology, I am, but I do not want her to lose her ability to communicate properly. I don’t want texting or even social media to be her main platform for communicating within her own little corner of the world. I want her vocabulary to be vast, her grammar to be proper, her writing ability to be meaningful, and her sense of verbal communication to be HEARD, not just seen or read. She’s already an amazing orator, even at the tender age of 5, so I’m not too worried about her, but it doesn’t change how society is advancing away from proper communication skills or how advancing technology is slowly killing communication skills in general. I can only continue to encourage her and educate her on the importance of communicating, verbally.

I actually want this for all of our children. All young adults. All adults in general. Society as a whole.

When it comes time for me to present to the young sales staff on communication, I’m going to make sure to communicate how important it is to have interpersonal relationships FOR REAL and not just virtually. Virtual will never be as satisfying as the real (verbal) thing. And virtual will never lead to the successes one can achieve by way of the real thing. People want to feel important. Communication opens that door.

We must all remember that verbal communication is a wonderful gift. When choosing verbal vs. virtual, always choose verbal. And always remember, words are wonderful! So use them. For real. Yo. 🙂