The Millennial Dialogue: Kyle Demes
May 28, 2018
Do you describe yourself as a millennial? What does millennial mean to you?
What do you think older generations don't understand about younger generations? What stereotypes do you not like and why?
I think that many individuals from previous generations don’t fully appreciate how drastically socioeconomic context has changed in the last few decades and that impact that has on people’s lives. In their early twenties, my parents had borrowed $5,000 from their parents to get a loan and purchase their first home. Their expenses between 20s and 30s were mostly allocated towards their own investments and they secured well-paying jobs with little to no formal education or training. The amount of money needed to get ahead of the financial curve now is simply not feasibly provided by most parents, there is a greater demand for education and training (resulting in massive expenses and many years of lost working opportunity), and it takes years in a career after education before people today can get to the types of positions that can allow individuals to start saving to get a down payment on a house and so people today haemorrhage money into other people’s homes for at least a decade.
I don’t care for any stereotypes really. People are individuals-- I have never seen it be productive to even discuss stereotypes, but I have certainly seen it be unproductive!
Where do you get your news?
CBC Radio, Global, and colleague networks.
What communication tools/environments do you find most effective at work?
At work, I prefer quick phone calls. Meetings inevitably waste time (travel, additional conversations, etc.) and e-mails limit effective communication and the back-n-forth needed to resolve issues can waste almost as much time as meetings. At home, I prefer face-to-face over a meal or beer.
What are the things organization do well or could do better when it comes to communicating with you?
Real people need to be more accessible. Overly produced marketing materials come across as disingenuous and a well-executed, strategically planned communication does less for building trust than an authentic interaction with a real human, even when the execution is non-ideal.
What is your biggest pet peeve when in a group discussion with many generations?
Assertion over evidence. I like for conversations to be informed by evidence and guided by mindfulness. I get frustrated when someone in a senior role uses their position to assert things that are not supported by evidence (or worse, are in opposition of the evidence at hand). It drives me absolutely bonkers when that behaviour is followed by humour to course-adjust the mood and kill the conversation. That behaviour is associated with individual personality though and not a generation.
What communications advice has helped you?
2 pieces of advice from senior scientists and extremely well-accomplished writers come to mind:
“Pretend that your reader is a 14-year old with ADHD. 14 year olds are capable of understanding virtually any principle if presented appropriately and if you’re trying to lead the reader somewhere, it is your responsibility to create the road work that gets them there and a series of uncoordinated roads going in many directions will just not cut it. Even a single squirrel on the side of the road is an unnecessary distraction” I laughed and didn’t take the advice too seriously at first, but have since found this reflection extremely useful in crafting communications that keep attention and convey all of the necessary points without distractions.
“Write drunk; edit sober”. Again, I laughed when I first heard this, but I have found that it’s much easier to get thoughts on paper and iteratively refine than to try and write a near-perfect first draft. A beer or two can help get the initial thoughts on paper.
Do you have good communication skills? And, why or why not?
From a personal perspective
What book have you read recently? What is a favourite TV/Netflix show?
I just finished reading Story Design: The Creative Way to Innovate by Denise Withers, a fascinating read by an inspirational woman. I enjoy all sorts of Netflix shows, but two favourites come to mind: Jessica Jones and Grace & Frankie.
What do you do for extracurricular activities?
I like to socialize in the city during the week (e.g., dinner parties, fundraisers, networking events, trivia night, and sports teams) and I like to spend the weekends in nature (e.g., hiking, camping, snowboarding, SCUBA diving). I am also a bit of a vigilante scientist, collecting, analyzing, and publishing data when I can find the time and head space.
Who do you admire for the way they live their life?
I have always admired my PhD supervisor. He lives an incredibly busy and productive professional life and still sets time aside for his family and to mentor young scientists. His ability to integrate his personal and professional life has always inspired me.
What are the most important social issues to you?
What technology do you like best for communicating?
How do you feel about the education system?
I feel the weight given to academic over applied learning is harmfully skewed. There seems to be this notion that academic learning cannot be adulterated by focusing on applied skills. In two decades of my formal education, I was never once taught: the laws of the society I was raised in, how to manage personal finances, how to live in a way that proactively minimizes risk of preventable disease, how to file taxes, habits for good mental hygiene, etc. I also learned an incredible amount of knowledge that was lost by the time I started working and had no real awareness of skills, the currency of the world after school.
What is something you want to learn more about?
What bores you?
Unproductive meetings.
Where do you volunteer your time and/or money?
The LGBT+ community. Most of the major challenges in my early life were associated with growing up gay in a society with conscious and unconscious bias against gay males. Likewise, my charitable donations go towards organizations whose mandates are to alleviate those challenges for others.
What makes you laugh?
Are there any other thoughts you would like to share about communicating between generations?
I think it’s really important to not focus on differences among generations and to instead focus on recognizing a diversity of voices and communication styles among individuals across all groups (including generations). I certainly don’t want people thinking “how can I best communicate with a millennial?” in preparation for conversations with me. Similarly, I wouldn’t put much stock in advice on how to communicate with Baby Boomers before starting a conversation with someone who happens to have been born in 1963.
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Kyle's point about education, that he,"had no real awareness of skills, the currency of the world after school", rings true for me. I have met many university grads who also missed out on the "unwritten rules of society". They can easily make career limiting mistakes even though their technical knowledge is vast. I recall one situation where a highly educated and talented young woman blurted out a comment on her boss's appealing physical attributes in front of a group of peers in a training session. Hugely awkward and embarrassing....for all of us. I doubt her boss will forget that faux pas. In my early years, I had the good fortune to have a mentor who spent most of his life in the military. He taught me business protocol. I had none. And, as I firmly believe you have to know the rules in order to decide which ones you want to break, we need to find ways to impart those skills.
I was happy to see Kyle's comment about the person he admires. Many of the participants in this blog series value people who find time for family as well as work and giving back. Great to see those attributes being admired versus the old standards of success that focused on material wealth.
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