Have you ever been curious about what your communication habits at work say about you and how that might differ from your boss and colleagues?
Associate Professor Jessi Grieser worked on a quiz recently published in the Washington Post about how our behavior and communication styles in the workplace are shaped by our generation, habits outside of work, as well as some of our earliest professional experiences.
In creating the quiz Jessi met with researchers and linguists Nicole Holliday and Mary Kohn, discussing what aspects of work communication are most likely to differ from generation to generation, and then to what each generation was most likely to do. She also took into account broader communication style differences as well as the actual content. An example given by Jessi was how “millennials use chat not necessarily because they love using chat but because they have developed a strong dispreference for email that is different than generations before them”. These tendencies indicate what would distinguish the generations the most and helped decide what belonged in the quiz.
Take the quiz to find out which generation your work style most closely resembles
The Washington Post provides limited free access to take this quiz.
