3 Ways to Integrate Technology with Communication To Get New Results

I just spoke for a group of 1500 advisors/teachers in Anaheim and when I started my keynote I asked for everyone in the audience to NOT put away their Blackberries or IPhones.

I asked them to please keep their technology ON for the duration of my presentation and I asked them to text any of their questions to me and held up my IPhone and put my number up on the screen.

Here’s the reality of today- everyone is busy, everyone has many things going on in their lives and I accept that people will be using their smart phones anyways. I just ‘outed’ that it was okay to openly use them during my presentation.

I had a lady come up to me after the presentation to thank me for openly making it okay to use their phones. She personally has an ailing father and urgent situations at the office and she needed to keep her phone on to stay in touch.

We have multiple generations in the workplace and we all need to embrace what technology can do for us, rather than try to impose rules that most likely won’t be adhered to.

Baby boomers are used to the traditional model of communication which is when someone is in authority we listen. Gen X and Gen Y are listening too; it’s just that they are also responding to a work question, posting to Twitter or texting a family member.

When we look at integrating technology into our current methods of communicating we can create a much more dynamic and innovative environment.

Here are 3 ways to integrate technology with communication to get new results:

1.   Encourage smart phone use- a recent survey of smart phone users showed that 76% of Gen Y’s use a smart phone to browse the web, play games and communicate. Only a small percentage actually use the phone to talk- they use instant messaging or texting. As a leader communicating with multiple methods can increase the level of engagement of your multi-generational team. It may sound counter intuitive to encourage smart phone use but if you provide the openness to encourage everyone to text, instant message, Skype in addition to face to face meetings you are reaching every demographic of your team. A hospital in Ontario recently allowed all staff to use their smart phones while on the job and they found a surprising result- productivity went up AND using the smart phones to access information was solving difficult patient cases.

2.   Gather opinions in face to face meetings- technology is great to encourage people who wouldn’t normally speak up in a meeting to be given a voice and to share their opinions. The same people with loud opinions typically monopolize old style traditional meetings. Often the quieter types have very valuable information but they withhold due to the intimidation of the meeting environment. You can use texting, or audience response technology to gather opinions of everyone not just a few. Using technology to gather information in a meeting increases participation and provides a higher level of accuracy of information to be used for innovation.

3.   Include gaming with your team mates- in a recent article in Elle magazine a female game developer who is a Gen X said that the average person who plays games on their smart phones and IPads has gone up exponentially in the past year and the surprising demographic is women in their mid to late forties. Gaming is something we do when waiting or instead of watching TV AND with many games they can be played with co-workers or other team members. A few months ago a friend introduced me to the Scrabble app- Words with Friends. I absolutely love it and I find playing with colleagues is quite fun. Trust me it can get competitive too. We know that Gen Y and Gen X enjoy gaming and Boomers are now enjoying it as well. Gaming provides increased connection and skill development.

As a presenter I have realized that I cannot impose my need for full attention rather I can be adaptive to the reality of who is in my audience. The people in the audience are hard working, multi-generational and needing to stay connected with work and family.

The people on your work teams are the same people, we can increase communication and be more relatable by using the technology as a solution.