The word communication derives from the Latin word communicationem. Thus, communication is about a lot more than delivering information outside the organization. Communication inside the organization is just as important, if not more important.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT

The word carries connotations of sharing information, of imparting knowledge. Further communication is about bringing people together, uniting and joining them. It’s no surprise, then, that good communication would encourage among colleagues a stronger sense of ownership and belonging. Organizational challenges aren’t just organizational challenges, they become my challenge, your challenge, our opportunities to bring to bear the group’s broad array of talents and insights in overcoming challenges and achieving team wins. It is absolutely invigorating.

COMMUNICATION SUCCESSES

The best leaders for whom I’ve worked are the ones who routinely communicated with me. The absolutely best teams I’ve been on are those in which the leaders routinely and clearly communicated with us. In these cases, communication wasn’t only a quarterly or semi-annual or annual formal event. Communication was daily interaction, routine exchanges of ideas and perceptions – discussion. And I remember each of these experiences as much more than any daily grind. They were periods when I wasn’t just working for General White or Colonel Brown or Mr. Pink or Ms. Black. They were times when I felt valued, and then all the more willing to work hard and even sacrifice for those leaders, for my colleagues, as part of a team. And these were, in my view, periods when I was learning the most, being educated by successful people.

COMMUNICATION FAILURES

Conversely, I can trace the absolutely worse experiences to one fundamental failure—a failure in communication. While there may have been some sort of apparent value, ethical, or moral failures tied into these bad experiences, the underlying failure was about communication: not communicating enough or at all with me or my colleagues, or only communicating when something was wrong, or occasionally when something was right. We weren’t part of a team; we were cogs in a machine. It wasn’t about education and learning and growing professionally. At its worst, it was about survival, day to day, week to week, until we could move on to something better.

GREAT COMMUNICATION

Old school folks like me are generally pretty content with the formal quarterly, semi-annual, and annual scheme of performance evaluation, which is really nothing more than communication between leaders and led. Whether its military or civilian, federal or contractor, public or private sector, I think it’s pretty much all the same: the better the communication—and by better I mean more frequent and meaningful—the more fulfilled the team. And frequent and meaningful has nothing to do with formality. It has to do with simple interaction, discussion, shared observations, exchanges of ideas and ideals. The communication experience is pleasant and engaging, not formal and stifling. It’s just talking.

THE MILLENIAL FACTOR

Millennials represent more than half the people on our teams, and that percentage is growing. And forgive me if I generalize too much, but I’m thinking about Millennials as an ideal and the best aspects of that ideal. Millennials have different expectations and needs than old-schoolers. Their world is a world of communication, of interaction both in-person and virtually. They have opinions and insights, and they want to inform successes, really be a real part of a real team. And the old-school communication routine, even at its best, isn’t enough.

Let’s face it, while old schoolers would concede that periodic, structured communication and feedback was enough for us to get the job done, I think we’d also argue that it was pretty unfulfilling and ineffective in the long term: the feedback was too infrequent to really change who we were at our core, how we did things, how we saw the world. Old school periodic feedback was too mechanical to really be humanizing. We really needed more, but we’d settle for less.

Well, according to Inc. contributor Ryan Jenkins, “Thirty-two percent of Millennials are likely to leave their job within the next six months. Only 11-12 percent of older employees are likely to quit in that same timeframe.” Millennials aren’t attached to organizations the way we older folks were, and it’s not because they’re rebellious and lack good morals and values. It could be because “only 23 percent of Millennials say they are getting enough feedback at work,” Jenkins reports. “Forty percent of Millennials do not consider themselves fulfilled at work, which is nearly two times greater than Generation X employees and almost four times greater than Baby-Boomers.”

TIME TO CHANGE

Change is difficult. It’s hard to dismantle the comfortable hierarchy old-school periodic, formal communications between leaders and led represented (and preserved). Yet, great organizations—and you don’t have to be a Fortune 500 to be a great, appealing, fulfilling place to work—are changing. For instance, according to Jenkins, at IBM, the Checkpoint system “allows people within IBM—no matter their organizational rank—to give feedback to other employees. Open communication has been a positive result since the system enables employees to give open and honest feedback. IBM also doubled the amount of times employees meet with their supervisors.” Radical.

At Lyft, folks are using 360 degree feedback—feedback on you from everyone: “The tool collects 360° autonomous feedback from the coworkers that know the employee best and the feedback is then delivered to the intended employee in a continuous manner.” Far out. At Facebook, “Work.com allows users to ask for feedback, give feedback to colleges, thank one another, and track progress.” Very cool.

WE ALL BENEFIT

Time to get on board. It’s not just about Millennials and their quirks and demands and penchant for Starbucks. As Jenkins puts it, “As 21st-century work continues to shift and evolve, Millennials won’t be the only beneficiary of enhancing your feedback process at work. Every generation can benefit from more accurate, timely, and actionable, feedback.”

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Ed Ledford enjoys the most challenging, complex, and high stakes communications requirements. His portfolio includes everything from policy and strategy to poetry. A native of Asheville, N.C., and retired Army Aviator, Ed’s currently writing speeches in D.C. and working other writing projects from his office in Rockville, MD. He loves baseball and enjoys hiking, camping, and exploring anything. Follow Ed on Twitter @ECLedford.