One of the most important things in being a manager of people is the ability to connect. Not just with your employees, but with your peers and customers.  If you are not able to create an environment that breads inclusion, you end up missing the mark with people and this then creates exclusion and confusion.  

I, as a manager of people, try to find common ground for education.  I try not to use examples or lessons that wouldn’t make eye contact with everyone.  I don’t like to use analogies that wouldn’t connect with certain people because of their background, age, race or sex.  It’s often a challenge, but one of the keys to being a good manager is the ability to make clear points and remove communication obstacles.  

Read the room and realize who you are talking to.  

A few years ago, I was working at a different company and the majority of the middle managers and staff were female.  The upper management consisted of men over the age of 50.  The team received a reading assignment, from the upper managers, and were told that they would discuss the information a few days later when the managers from corporate came to town.  The corporate managers were male and over the age of 50 as well.  

The reading materials consisted of articles about management and how to improve productivity, etc.  The catch? All three pieces were written by football coaches and riddled with sports analogies.  Sure, in the end, they were decent lessons on building a better team and making tough decisions, but the examples in these particular articles were written by a man and for a man. I am not saying that all women do not relate to sports analogies, but the tone and direction of these articles were written for a 50 year old man.  These articles were also more relevant to the time that they were written in-which was about a decade ago.   10 years ago- when these male 50 year old senior level managers were middle managers.  

The result of the meeting? Polarizing.  The female managers were guarded because of the male focused atmosphere of the meeting.  They were turned off, not just by the use of sports analogies, but by the lack of modern day relevance in the lessons that were trying to be conveyed.  The 50 year old male managers walked away from the meeting frustrated and confused as to why these stories didn’t cut through to the room.  To them, these articles were GOLD and represented how they think.  It also represented how out of touch they were with the modern day middle manager, the age and sex of the room and their need to hold onto the nostalgia of the way things were.   

Read the room and realize who you are talking to.  If the room doesn’t embrace the points you are trying to make, you might be in the wrong “room”‘.  Study the audience and realize that you may have to reword the presentation of your takeaways.  The end lesson can still be the same, but the presentation needs to connect with the audience.  Presidential candidates would not address a group of college kids and focus on the topic of social security…right?  You cannot take a one size fits all approach to teaching and connecting and just assume that everyone will eventually just “get it”.  You will end up just as frustrated as everyone else in the room.