When I first graduated, I joined a well-known global company based in the UK. My memory – dimmed a little but not wrong – is of top-down management: you did what you were told and lumped it. Having worked for 30 years until becoming self-employed, and having children and relatives – young and old – who are still employed, it is evident that the highly rigid, hierarchical style of management has, in recent years, become less and less viable.

Of course, it still is at the core of organisations, public and private: there needs to be a structure. But with greatly increased outsourcing, home-working (whilst often still having a geographically-remote boss), the online ability to share experiences with globally-dispersed heavily and lightly managed workers, I think the rigid nature of “I’m your boss and you’ll do as I say” has changed – arguably for the better (I believe, maybe my old bosses would disagree!) and inarguably forever.

Globalisation, new technologies, and changes in how companies create value and interact with both clients and staff have greatly reduced – bosses may say undermined – the validity and even workability of a wholly directive, top-down model of leadership. So, for all employees, regardless of organisation type, size, or location, what do they believe will take the place of that model?

As I mulled this, I spoke to my daughter, a critical care nurse; my niece, a beauty therapist; my brother, a solicitor, and my partner, a receptionist – so across public and private sectors – what they think. In their own different linguistic ways, they said the answer lies in how leaders manage communication within their organisations— that is, how they handle the flow of information to, from, and among their employees. They all seemed to believe that the required future model – but also what is the-now, which some feel is what 50-year old (I generalise to make the point) managers – are that traditional dictatorial communications must give, and are giving, way to a process that is more dynamic and more sophisticated. Most important, that process must be conversational. The common thread seemed to be (sic) “I can use social media to complain and make a noise if I don’t like it and my boss is rubbish” (not something I would have got away with in my day!!).

We talked about it – in that most formal of settings, round the kitchen table over a coffee! – and arrived at that conclusion that they felt their managers need to make the effort to “have a conversation” with the team; and – which piqued my interest greatly – that managers need to (be made) aware that “advancing the conversation” will be driven as much by them, the employees, as the management. In the social media part of our discussion – unsurprisingly in 2017, a large part of our chat – my family said that their managers were aware that the workplace is a democracy not a dictatorship. This is backed up by any number of videos you may watch on millions of YouTube channels – I sought out many for the purposes of writing this – where the smoke-filled streets and offices are filled with bowler-hatted men carrying The Times (other papers are available – or were, now they’re predominantly digitised!) who you know were arriving at work to oversee the all-female typing pool.

It is pretty evident from any amount of reading, following the media, scouring Twitter “conversations” and Googling, that smart leaders today engage with employees in a way that resembles an ordinary person-to-person conversation more than it does a series of commands from on high. I also think – and in truth I gauge this very largely from many senior HR people I have worked with over several years – that those managers initiate practices and foster cultural norms – they realise, because they have no choice – that instil a conversational approach throughout their organisations.

An interesting aside, which seems counter to this but I believe is actually integral, is the dramatic reduction in trade union membership in the UK. This fluctuated from a 1940s peak to a 1980s not-dissimilar figure (think miners’ strike) to a low point by 2004. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3526917.stm). This figure continued to reduce to 2014 – the last available official figures: “Union membership levels in the private sector fell from 3.4 million in 1995 to 2.5 million in 2010. 2014 data continued to show a reversal of this trend, with union membership levels in the private sector rising for the fourth consecutive year, a non-statistically significant increase of 38,000 in 2013 to 2.7 million.” (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/431564/Trade_Union_Membership_Statistics_2014.pdf page 5)).

Perhaps – I think – an indication that the conversational approach is winning. Alongside that is social media’s ability to demolish individual campaigns – think the humiliation of the union leading the Grangemouth Ineos walkout in 2013 when the boss said (sic) “fine, you strike and I’ll close the gates and walk away”. Climbdown didn’t even come close. (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/09/ineos-unite-union-grangemouth-oil-refinery).

Integral? Because many people feel they don’t need unions to speak for them; and perhaps unions even don’t work for them – think 2016/17 Southern train strike where the public aren’t in the union but criticise or complain about the union via Twitter. Who’d have thought it 10 years ago?

Chief among the benefits of the organisation’s conversation is that it allows a large or growing company to function like a small one. By talking with employees, those with decision-making authority seek and earn the trust (and hence the careful attention) of those who work under that authority. They have cultivated the art of listening to people at all levels of the organisation and learned to speak with employees directly and authentically. Physical proximity between leaders and employees is increasingly neither always feasible nor essential.

Conversationally adept managers step up to the challenge of communicating personally and transparently with their people, a huge move away from long-standard forms of corporate communication. It shifts the focus from a top-down distribution of information to a bottom-up exchange of ideas. Its tone is less corporate, more casual.

Whether leaders, in the broad sense, have done that entirely willingly or been forced into it by 21st century working practices is a whole different question for another day.

I think the capacity for this 2-way necessary process to not only continue but also become the de facto for both “sides” (yes, many managers feel there are sides – I might allege Mike Ashley, Sports Direct or the infamous Sir Philip Green) is recognised as being driven, broadly, by:

• intimacy ‒ less about issuing and taking orders, more asking, and answering questions
• trust – enabling frank exchanges of views based on managers and staff understanding that digital and social technologies open up dialogue – productively if used constructively
• listening – staff and managers openly – and genuinely – respecting each other; being prepared to accept both bad with the good, absorbing criticism even when it is direct and personal

Essentially, as workforces have become more diverse and more widely dispersed, navigating across cultural and geographic lines has required interactions that are fluid and complex. And, as we noted earlier, a key factor – perhaps the largest – is generational change: younger workers, brought up with social media, expect peers and authority figures alike to communicate with them in a dynamic, two-way fashion.

In “Getting the message across – the importance of good communications – A(n) HMRC case study” it is noted that “Good communicators succeed in choosing the best medium of communication for the particular purpose in mind………..The Inland Revenue uses similar methods for internal communications e.g. Written communications – internal memos, staff magazines, notices or posters on staff notice boards. Oral communications – phone conversations between employees. Face-to-face – team briefings, meetings and presentations. Online – internal e-mails and intranet.” (http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/hmrc/getting-the-message-across-the-importance-of-good-communications/methods-of-communication.html)

The way forward? I think so and I think that the millennials know so.