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IA Forward
IA Forward
Paper, Texts, or FaceTime: Bridging Communication Gaps
How do you communicate effectively when your clients and staff can span generations? Traditionalists trust paper, Boomers want a phone call, Gen X prefer bullet-point emails, a millennial seeks collaboration, and Gen Z has a s video-first mindset. Shane and Tonya break down what each generation values and explore how agency owners can adapt without losing efficiency.
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Announcer: [00:00:00] This is IA Forward your Playbook for Success as an independent insurance agent. Here to help you knock it outta the ballpark are your host, Shane Tatum and Tonya Lied.
Tonya: Welcome to IA Forward. A few weeks ago, we had our fabulous summer intern, Ms. Campbell, on the podcast, and we were discussing communication with Gen Z.
Since then, I have been thinking about how different generations communicate. How we communicate with each other and within our agencies.
Shane: I know we're gonna talk about some very specific generational things, but I've probably got a dozen stories over the, just the last three or four months about how critical communication is in our businesses and, and really, I mean, life in general, particularly within our businesses.
Were we clear, did what we say. Actually get interpreted the way we [00:01:00] meant for it to be interpreted. That can be generational company hierarchy, leadership level, non-leadership level that can be experiences. This is such a critical topic that we probably could do every podcast on this topic and never run out of something to talk about.
Tonya: It's that George Bernard Shaw quote. The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
Shane: It. It really is, and just an internal little tip that we've done. You're generally on a leadership team meeting virtually. There's a lot of stuff that you lose in that environment.
Just the sidebars. We try not to do it, but it happens. Did you get everything? Did you hear that? I asked Tonya. I don't know. It's been a while now. I was like, Hey, I know this is kind of very secretarial to say this, but would you take notes? Would you take. Notes on our meeting. It's not because you know anything [00:02:00] other than Tonya's, the one that's virtual.
So if Tonya heard it in our leadership meeting, it comes out right in the notes. I generally go back and read the notes and check what she heard. It's not anything bad on Tonya or anybody else on our leadership team. It's just the reality of did that come across the way it was intended? Is that what we're actually talking about?
I've had countless conversations in the last two weeks about the old telephone game. We said it, and we know in our minds what we meant to say, but did the person you're talking to or the group of people that you're talking to actually understand what you meant? That's a big deal. That can cause your business to be derailed.
It can cost you a really good employee. It can definitely cost you customers. This is great. Let's dive in.
Tonya: By the way, I never knew that anyone actually went back and looked at those notes because I usually take like four or five [00:03:00] pages of notes during our meetings, and I had no idea that you ever went back and looked at them.
Shane: I do. I'm not super consistent, but I go back and look at 'em. I take notes still. I take little handwritten notes. I go back, look at your notes, see my notes, and I'm like, is it close? Most of the time, pretty much every time it's close enough like it might be. Slightly different word here or whatever, but the intent is still there.
There's never really a reason to go back, but it's kind of a checks and balances, right? Did we talk about it the way that it was intended? It's a really good comparison and it's helped me within our meetings. The meetings tend to go a long time. We do it twice a month, and there's a lot to talk about and a lot of different moving parts in our organization.
It's really important that people know what's going on and the intent behind the discussions.
Tonya: Let's go through our different generations, what they love, what they don't love, and figure out the best way for them to communicate with each other. If we can do all of [00:04:00] that in 25 to 30 minutes, then we should write a book and then we will be multimillionaires.
Shane: A hundred percent. I doubt we get through this in 25 to 30 minutes. Both we're gonna try.
Tonya: People usually start with baby boomers, but let's start with traditionalists. Those are the people born. Before 1945, yes, they are still out there. If you are a Main Street agency, you still have those customers. Those are the customers that still really want that face-to-face, that formality of a written letter.
They value, respect, authority, hierarchy. And they trust paper more than digital.
Shane: They're walking into your office most of the time. We still see this age group in our area because of the retirement. We have a very large lake. People retire here from mostly Houston, but also the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and just [00:05:00] other parts of the state.
Sometimes outta state. They move in here at retirement. We actually still have the storefront and people walk in the office and, and wanna sit down. Sometimes they just want to visit the transaction or a service request took like three minutes and then they were here for 30. They just wanted to talk.
There's a balance there for our busy account managers and for us, just the reality of it. And, you know, they, they do wanna generally leave with a piece of paper. That's what's really interesting to me, like. They want a print out of that endorsement request or they want physical proof. And this is something that I still relate to because we sell a contract, we sell a promise.
You don't walk in and buy something from an insurance agency and generally walk out with this physical product. And we're not a pair of shoes. We're not clothing, we're not a vehicle. You can't drive us off the lot. They want that tangible thing in their hands when they [00:06:00] leave. It just makes them. Feel better.
It's just the nature of their mostly generation
Tonya: traditionalists lead into baby boomers. Those are the people that are born somewhere between 46 and 64. This is our parents.
Shane: Yes, and a lot of agency ownership in this category.
Tonya: One of the interesting things about Boomer agency owners is when they have staff meetings, they print out their agendas.
I
Shane: print my agenda, so maybe there's some Xers in this print thing.
Tonya: I get my agenda online and just pull it up and go from there. Very rarely will I print out an actual agenda. That's a very boomer thing to print things out. They prefer detailed, thorough conversations. They want phone calls, they wanna meet in person, and they have a tendency to like reports from a.
Ownership perspective, they're really [00:07:00] into teamwork, growth and finding consistent ways to do things.
Shane: I think I was born in the wrong generation.
Tonya: Yeah, it sounds like it.
Shane: Maybe I'm supposed to be a boomer, but I was raised by Boomer, obviously as you and so, so I, you know, parents obviously, so there's a lot of influence there.
I get the printed agendas, I get the detailed conversations. I also think in my defense, when we're talking about that original comment about printed agendas, we do cross the gamut in terms of generations from boomers to Xers to millennials within our leadership team. We don't have any Gen Zs there yet.
We are ways away from that, but we do have three generations represented within our leadership team. If one person prefers. The printed agenda, then everybody gets the printed agenda. It's not a big deal unless of course you're remote. And then if you wanna print it, you can print it and put it on your desk.
You can do that, and then you can write your notes, and then you can go [00:08:00] back and you can type the notes. How efficient is that? We write on the stuff we print, then we go back and type it again. This is what we do. This is what happens in real work. I know how we should do it, but this is the way we actually do it.
That's really where you want to get down to. You talk about communication. It's like, why are you printing that email? Maybe a boomer. Why are you printing that email? Well, because I gotta file it. You attach it to the system. Yeah, but I also need my file. We don't have paper files. Well, I do. This is a real conversation, by the way.
Tonya: When all heck breaks loose and there's some kind of cybersecurity attack, guess which person is gonna have the stuff they need in order to be able to work.
Shane: I have a visual of a boomer meme sitting over in the corner, relax, smoking a cigarette. Just saying, I mean, it's like, you know, while everybody else runs around with their hair on fire, you know, as they have their backup file in paper.
Tonya: In a [00:09:00] conversation like this one, when we are talking about how to get different generations to communicate, it makes sense that you would print that agenda because we do have baby boomers on that leadership team. So you doing that to make those members of our team comfortable. Makes perfect sense.
Shane: Our millennials are gonna throw it in the trash after the meeting.
That's fine. It's worth the paper. Doing things that makes more people comfortable than less people comfortable. That's part of the communication, that's part of understanding how to communicate to multiple generations. And as business owners, agency owners, we really have to do this. There are agencies out there, younger founders, mid thirties.
I'm just thinking about really young ones in their late twenties that I know. They may be in that space where some of the people they hired just happened to be around their own age and so they, they end up attracting a lot of younger millennials, gen Zs, because [00:10:00] that's their friend group. That's their circle.
That's their referral sources. They kind of think about this like the church setting. I had a conversation with a friend of mine the other day that was visiting his daughter, her husband. And they went to church with them, and the church was very millennial. Our church is multi-generational, and there's a lot of churches across the world that are multi-generational.
We've got literally 96 the other day in church down to infants. We're literally multi-generational. This particular church in a metro area. The adults are 25 to 35. It happens. It's out there, and they're not excluding people, it's just the way it's working out. Your business owners in some of those age ranges, those that category, they are more narrow in terms of their generational communication need because they're, they're [00:11:00] people.
Are the same as them. That is not what we look like and not what a lot of traditional independent agencies look like across the country. We not only within our leadership team go from boomers to millennials, but within our workforce itself, we go from boomers to Gen Z. We are spanning four generations within our employee base and five generations across our customer base.
Just let that sink in for a minute. When it comes to how people wanna be communicated with and what we have to do about it, it's not designed that way. It's just when you have referral sources that come from various places, you're not going to end up with this one size fits all kind of customer, and you're probably not gonna end up with.
One or two generations within your employee base.
Tonya: I love to refer to Generation [00:12:00] X as the bullet point generation because we are bullet point people. We don't need the story. Just give it to me in a bullet point format. We are email and text heavy. We are efficient, self-reliant, and very direct communicators.
We don't want a lot of extra stuff. It's not that we don't care, we just don't have time for the stuff because our entire life has been about growth and pushing to be better and make more money.
Shane: I do like bullet points 'cause I am an Xer. We're both Xers. It's interesting to hear what people say about your generation and then you realize that's pretty accurate and then.
You realize in some cases it's like, well, that's not really me. Maybe I'm an anomaly inside that generation. I just had this conversation last week. Like I told someone, Hey, you know, can you take that email and maybe break that email up [00:13:00] and put it in some bullet points? 'cause it's really hard to consume in this format that you've sent that.
I feel like I'm being judged a little bit. When you say that, you know, we're the bullet point generation.
Tonya: Okay. Communication for me. How many levels of bullet points are there?
Shane: I need 'em all broken down. Subpoint, subpoints to the subpoint.
Tonya: Color coded by the person that's talking.
Shane: My new favorite is the strike through.
I wrote it down and I don't wanna delete it. And I know we have markup versions over here, but I don't wanna look at the markup version. Markup versions of word give me anxiety. You just got a bunch of stuff going on and I know it's tracking it and I know it's great, but I love the strike through. It's kind of the check box.
Julie would want the check box. My wife would want the check box. I want the strike through. I like that.
Tonya: Daniel is all about the check mark.
Shane: I did things the other day and I still drew a line through the check mark. It's just [00:14:00]
Tonya: with you on that one. Aren't you glad that we have. The person in our lives that keep us straight,
Shane: yes, please organize me, please keep me organized and hold me accountable to it.
I don't know if that's an exert thing or just me. Maybe it's just me.
Tonya: Our X-ers are that 1965 to 1980 group, and then we have the generation that came after us. This is the generation that, from a communication perspective, I believe is the generation that's most. Misunderstood, and that is the millennial born between 81 and 96.
Shane: I would concur. This is the generation that a lot of the funny stuff come out on. You know, video job interviews with a millennial and there's some really funny stuff out there. I have had a lot of personal success in our business with a big number of millennial aged [00:15:00] agents. We've had a lot of success there.
And so what is portrayed maybe in social media? Maybe just maybe a bad rap hasn't been my experience. That's what's interesting. I made some comments over the last couple of years as we've gone through extremely hard market. We couldn't have a podcast without saying hard market, could we? Because we.
Through so much of that and the economy this and the political spectrum that and just everything that's happened since COVID. We gotta keep going back there too. I mean, it's been five years, but just the world, the way things have changed, observe things directly with your eyes and your experience. Don't just take some news media, some social media.
Don't just take that and go, that's what's going on. Because if I was to do that, if I was to say sitting here today that my experiences with [00:16:00] millennials was just based on what I observed in media and social media, then I would say the experience is terrible. You know, you would say all these things, but that is not my personal experience.
My personal experience is the direct opposite of that. I see a lot of successful agencies doing incredible things, and these owners are driven. Now granted, they like to take vacations. Don't misunderstand me like they play hard. They vacation hard. In my view. They reward themselves and their family and they understand why they're working to have financial success.
It's not to put it under their mattress. I think about taking my family to Europe when I was 35, 38 years old. I wasn't even close, but I know several millennials that have done that. Integra partners that have done that. It's fantastic. It's awesome and I know how hard they work, but I [00:17:00] also see how well they reward themselves and their family for that hard work.
I do agree with you. Totally misunderstood generation and not at all in my personal experience as the memes. Or videos or Saturday Night Live skits would portray.
Tonya: What people don't realize is I can say that millennials were born between 1981 and 1996. What our brain doesn't do is necessarily tell us that millennials are 29 to 44 years old.
That is your target demographic to start a business and that you want as your customer. Millennials are not. 17 to 25. Okay. They are 44. They are 40, they are 35. They are 32. They are who you want to be marketing to right now. That's right. They are digital first. This is a generation that grew up in the dawn of texting, [00:18:00] but they're very collaborative.
They're very flexible. They email, they text, they love social media and they really need feedback. Feedback and teamwork is a big thing for millennials, which is the antithesis of those of us that are Gen Xers.
Shane: Yeah. This is the disconnect for me that I'm eventually gonna get there. You know, the pat on the back generation, right?
You're doing great. You're doing great. In my, in the ex gen, exer generation, like that just was not us. Like we, I don't, I don't know if it's because we didn't get it or if it's because we didn't want it, and it is crazy to hear you say 44 Xen EALs. That's a term, so kind of where that blur is between Gen X and millennials.
It's crazy to think that there are 42, 43, 40 4-year-old millennials. And because when I say things, I'm still that guy that's like, you know, the other day. But that was like 15 years ago. And so when you realize those little [00:19:00] social media things, it's like when you realize that, you know, it's something with back to the Future, 1985 to 1955, I think were the dates.
And actually 1955 is closer to 85 than today. That's insane to me. Like that 1980 fives, five feels like 20 years ago. It's gonna be 20 years ago the rest of my life. But that's just what we do. And as the millennials and the Gen Zs get older, they're gonna feel the same way. I'm sure that millennial that graduated high school in 2005, 2006, that I'm sure that to them that feels like five years ago, 10 years ago at times.
And that doesn't change. It's just gonna always be that way. But this is why the communication is so critical. And for us to be able to understand that we think differently, like generations think differently. They had different [00:20:00] experiences growing up. I have two daughters that are going to both get married, one's engaged, one's probably a couple years from engagement, if not sooner.
Both my daughters and their future husbands will be. College graduates. My wife and I are college graduates, so our entire nucleus that started as, as my wife and I, our two girls, their spouses, everybody's gonna have a college education. Now, our parents, both sides. Only one parent had a college degree, the other did not.
That was normal. In 1985 it was even. A little rare that one of your parents had a college degree. The only friends of mine whose parents both had college degrees were educators. My circle growing up, I don't think my girls have any friends whose, at least one parent didn't [00:21:00] have a college degree. Both sides.
It's just something that struck me the other day, just going back and looking. And that is a generational thing. That's things we can go back and look into and kind of, and kind of study that shapes communication, our experiences, our educational levels, the educational levels of traditionalists versus boomers versus Xers.
The mixture of that educational level. That's interesting to me as you go down into Gen Z. While there's a lot of college education, we see this move back to the focus of trades, huge move to trades over the last 10 years. And so where does that take us from a communication standpoint?
Tonya: Gen Z, those born between 97 and 2012, they are so visual, they are all about.
Things that are visual, instant, quick hits. They [00:22:00] want immediate reaction. They love video. They love memes. They love short texts, and they really value individuality and quick information. You have two daughters that are Gen ZI. I have several people in my life that have Gen Z daughters who I have gotten to mentor.
Over the years, and I find it absolutely fascinating. They don't text me usually, or I'll get a text that says, Hey, can you hop on a FaceTime? And then my phone's ringing and it's a video call. I'm sure you have the same thing at your house.
Shane: We don't even get the text. We just get the video call. Mom's phone is going off.
Then she didn't answer. So my phone's going off. Then the sister's phone is going off. This just happened. We were on a FaceTime with my oldest daughter, and the youngest daughter hits the mom's phone. Julie's phone, my phone and my oldest daughter's phone all within [00:23:00] about 15 seconds because nobody was answering.
Nobody's answering. And it's like, what's going on? Why aren't you answering? God forbid that we be busy or work at work, where are you? What are you doing? Why aren't you answering my call? But. We don't get a lot of texts in that way. To your point, they actually like to talk face to face on video. They're the video call generation 100%.
They're becoming the teams generation or zoom generation when it comes to the workforce and not, yes, they need phones for outside. They need an office line, at least the app on their phone for work purposes. But most internal communication is going to be teams or Zoom, depending on what your organization uses, they will answer it and they will initiate it.
That's not rude to them. It's normal. If you're teaming me without checking with me, and probably many other people my age and [00:24:00] older within our organization, it's like, what are you doing? You didn't even ask me if I was available to do a teams call. What are you doing? I haven't. Made it to that point where I instituted that policy, but I've talked about instituting that policy, like all internal calls need to be teams, videos, period we're so scattered, and I haven't actually instituted it, but there may be agencies out there that are doing that.
That's a really cool thing, especially as you have more people remote.
Tonya: I thought that was a policy. Especially for those of us that work remotely. I don't remember the last time I actually made a phone call to somebody internally. Yeah, I see everybody's faces all the time.
Shane: Yeah, it's really good. I don't know that it's official.
I've talked about it a lot, but for sure those that are remote need that. But if you're not seeing people you work with regularly, then you know at you kind of missing the, I guess it's the new version of the coffee pot or the water cooler talk. There's gotta be [00:25:00] some social interaction. That's the other thing that Gen Z's struggling with.
I'm familiar with a lot of Gen Z going straight into the workforce without the quote, go to the office and there is some struggle there. There's some noted struggle there, and companies are struggling with this.
Tonya: One of the interesting things about Gen Z when it comes to training is they prefer training videos instead of a manual.
I can't stand to watch training videos like just. Let me go to the dentist instead. Just let me read it. I'll figure it out. I'll let you know if I have any questions. Training videos take way too much time for me. They drive me crazy. But when it comes to Gen Z, that's exactly that. What they want, they want to be able to, to watch a video, do it kinesthetically, and then they've got it.
Shane: Well, it's okay to call 'em the YouTube generation. I mean, they're digital natives and they don't know life without. [00:26:00] Smartphones. If millennials are the text generation, then definitely Gen Z. If not millennials are the YouTube generation. I can't tell you how many times I've been like, man, I don't know how to do this, or Something's broke, or something's this, and they're like, well, just YouTube it.
You can solve anything on YouTube. That's probably true. I don't know that I've ever found anything they couldn't solve on YouTube, so it's very natural to think. Why Gen Z's more comfortable with that than we are. I'm with you. It's not my favorite, but I use YouTube a lot
Tonya: and I love it when they transcribe it for me so I can take the video, read it real quick, and figure out what part I need to watch.
Shane: I've converted myself to more of a listener, over a reader. I'm gonna take an audible over a Kindle book. Obviously the combo is the best, but I read to fall asleep. I listen. To consume the book. How about that? Is that fair?
Tonya: I'm the same way. [00:27:00] How do we bridge this gap?
Shane: That's probably the point of the podcast.
To answer that question, we have to understand that people consume information differently if people consume information differently than we have to communicate differently to different people and be aware of that. And my struggle with this. And I like to think I'm a constantly improving communicator.
I know that I'm better than I was yesterday, and I'm way better than I was 10 years ago. This is an area that I spend a lot of energy on. I spend a lot of energy thinking about it. I probably drive my wife crazy and I'm like, how did that sound? Did that come across? If there's any validation that I typically need, it's around communication.
Did I communicate that well? Do you think everybody understood it? I think first and foremost, we have to recognize that we need to be better communicators. The other thing is get that feedback. I tend to double back. That's something I've [00:28:00] started doing more and more. I had an internal meeting with a team around some communication issues just in the last week.
I've doubled back this week with a few situations, one-on-one because I wasn't really sure within the team setting. If a couple of folks were getting it, maybe clearly understanding the direction or why, what the why was behind something, and I felt like doubling back one-on-one might close that gap. You know, it takes time, it takes a lot of energy and you have to be intentional about it.
But that's one of the things that we can do across multiple generations is just either the double back. It's really hard to get that feedback. Because sometimes I feel like I'm accidentally talking down to one group while I'm communicating. One group is hearing it as talking down to them. Another group is appreciating it [00:29:00] because it's in their tone, it's in their style, and so that's where the big struggle comes in as leaders and as communicators.
I had a mentor of mine, this is where I grabbed a hold of this about five years ago. He said, you're not the chief executive officer. You're the chief translation officer. And that's what happens within the generational span As communicators, we have to really be more about translating them, just speaking.
You gotta be able to translate what it is you're communicating into the various generational tones or. The way the generations receive it.
Tonya: One of the ways to simplify this is ask how someone prefers to communicate when you're talking with them at the end of the conversation, do you prefer text, call, email, video?
If you know how people want to be communicated to, it makes it a whole lot easier to communicate with them. I was at an insurance conference a few years [00:30:00] ago and there were two speakers they had created. Agencies specifically, so they never had to talk to a client. The only way they communicated with a client was via email and text.
If they had to physically speak to a client, in person or on the phone, they did not want them as a client and sent them somewhere else. And at the time I thought, well, that's very curt, and I didn't love it, and I still don't love it, especially knowing what I know. About our Gen Zs, because that's not even what they want.
There's a specific group of people that, yes, that's what they do. However, I see other agencies buying the system because people are saying, no one wants to talk on the phone. Everyone wants to get their information via text. Everyone wants to get their information in an [00:31:00] email. Then we've got major communication problems long term.
Shane: That's what's great about the independent agency system, is that there's agents that can create a model like that. The part that I do agree with you on that I just kind of cringe around is that there's people buying the concept, paying for this concept to be taught to them. Assuming that everybody's that way, and that's back to you have to make sure that evidence with your own eyes is accurate versus what you're being told.
That's great. There's a model out there. Somebody can make this agency successful by doing this. No communication. Don't wanna talk to a customer kind of concept. That's no different than that church that's targeting a certain area. Even though they're saying they're open to everybody, they're really targeting a certain age group.
It works. In that area on a very narrow scale, that agency model works, but you gotta go [00:32:00] wider. You gotta be in certain metro areas, certain geographic areas. You gotta be willing to pass on customers. You gotta be willing to do a lot for that to work. I admire somebody taking that chance and building an agency like that.
What I don't love is that everybody assume that a generation doesn't wanna talk on the phone when they actually do. It's very similar to marketing. We don't get any junk mail. I don't get any junk mail anymore. I don't know, maybe I'm rare. Maybe people are getting junk mail, but I don't, and one of the things that I actually think would work is actually sending a letter today.
And everybody's like, what? That's so expensive. Yeah, but it's not that expensive from a marketing standpoint. If you do it right and you think about it, okay. You send a letter and you get an increased response rate because nobody's doing that anymore. You ran against the [00:33:00] grain. You were contrarian view you, 'cause everybody's doing email 'cause it's cheap.
Everybody's doing text marketing. You know what, I'm not responding to a text. I get a gazillion text a day. Marketing to me, it's annoying. I'm sorry, but I will respond to a text from someone I know right now. If you have something to sell me and I know you. You text me, okay. I'm paying attention, but random, like direct mail, texting.
From a marketing standpoint, no, not interested, but I'm actually reading the letters. I got a letter the other day from a financial planning organization and I'm like, this is really good. Okay, I'm gonna check you out. And I did. I checked them out. I'm not gonna do business with 'em. I already have that, but.
It was intriguing to me. You have to figure it out with your own eyes. You can't just follow the crowd and just assume that just because someone's saying it and had success with it, that it's gonna work for you. That doesn't equal [00:34:00] success.
Tonya: Stay flexible, stay adaptable, and adjust the style that you're communicating based on the staff member you're talking to.
The client you're working with. That's ultimately the best way to do it is just be adaptable, be flexible. Now it's simple, but it's not easy.
Shane: Be coachable yourself. Be honest with yourself. Understand that there are different, there, different styles, different ways of of consuming information means there's gotta be some different ways of communicating that information.
The more we work on ourselves around that. The better communicators we can be. I am convinced that a lot of struggles in the world can be avoided with better communication.
Tonya: I'm gonna leave us today with this quote from Pat Summit. Communication is the key to building trust.
Shane: Attitude to choice. Make a great one.
Tonya: Bye y'all.
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