Responsibility To Communicate
We all have to do our part, if our Lodge is to thrive
One can read quite a lot about the ‘Sandwich Generation.’
It’s defined as:
“a generation of people, typically in their thirties or forties, responsible for bringing up their own children and for the care of their aging parents”
I think that we have a ‘Sandwich Generation’ in most of our Lodges as well.
And I think that I’m one of those Sandwiches!
This all sort of came to me sitting in a meeting of our Temple Board recently.
We have, in our Lodge, and on our Board, young guys and old guys. Not much in the way of guys like me, well beyond young, but not yet considered old. I’m just the boring middle, and I’d peg one other member of our Board as in that boring middle too. The rest are young and old.
I’m sitting there, in our Board meeting, when our new Board President brings up his thoughts about what we are going to need to do in order to more effectively market our building rentals online. Fairly basic things, but things that we have ignored to our detriment for a long time.
He was instantly shut down, his suggestions instantly shot down.
But, I know all of the men on the Board extremely well. They aren’t against any of the ideas our new President brought forward. They are, I’m certain, supportive of the things he suggested. No doubt in my mind.
Yet they shot those ideas down. Quickly and definitively.
Why?
Because they didn’t know what in the hell he was talking about.
His lips were moving, and all they were hearing was nonsense.
That’s a problem.
It’s a serious problem that I hope we can address.
Now, as mentioned above, I’ve not yet reached ‘old farterry.’1 I figure that I’m 3/4’s of the way to ‘old farterry’ but I’m not there yet. And because of that, I have some idea about what our President was talking about, and why. I have some understanding about how the vast online world works. Not a lot. Some. Sometimes I need the help of a young guy to figure something out.
The young fellows, those much further from ‘old farterry’ than me, well this stuff is completely natural to them. Like our new Board President, it just is. They know it and they understand it, just like older generations know how to drive a car.
But those beyond me, those who have truly reached ‘old farterry,’ well, they don’t know it. It isn’t natural to them. It is hard for them.
And why we are all different in this way is really easily understood. It’s just like a foreign language.
Those young men in Lodge? Well, they grew up living at least part of their lives in the online world. It was there for them, right from the start. It’s a perfectly natural thing for them. Just as a child who grows up in a bilingual speaking home will be able to naturally speak both languages.
Those guys who have reached ‘old farterry’? Well, the online world didn’t even widely exist until they were in middle age, and they were most likely slow to adopt any part of it. It will never come naturally to them, and it will always be a struggle. This is no different from anyone who has tried to learn a foreign language in middle age or beyond. It can be done, but it’ll never come naturally or easily.
Me? Ol’ Sandwich guy? Well, when I was a senior in high school we had four or five computers in the entire school. That was it. After that computers were adopted into our society very quickly, and as a young adult I went online with everyone else, but we didn’t grow up that way. Didn’t grow up with these things. So, it isn’t natural. But it is something easier for me to learn than those who are older than me. Much like learning a foreign language in high school. Learning a language in that way will never make one sound like a native, but one can get by.
Here’s the thing though, in any Lodge, or on any Temple Board, all three of these classes of people have to be able to communicate.
And every one of us has to work to do so.
Because without that work, we will simply talk past each other.
And if we can not effectively communicate, our Lodge can not truly thrive.
So what does that look like?
Those young guys, to whom all of this stuff comes naturally, and who understand these things just as clearly as they understand how to drive a car, well, they can’t speak in jargon. They can’t use industry or online specific terms that those less online than they are won’t understand.
And they can’t start in the middle. They can’t say ‘We need a new domain name for our website’ without first explaining what on earth a domain name is. They can’t say ‘We need Stripe’ without first explaining what Stripe is.
But, it’s not all on them.
The older guys have a responsibility too. If they are going to help run an organization in 2025, they have a responsibility to do what they can to learn how things are done by younger people in this day. They have a responsibility to look up and learn what a domain name is, what Stripe is, and how those things work.
And us ‘Sandwich Guys’ well, it is our responsibility, as we know life before the online world, and life after it, to do our best to translate language for these two really different groups.
No matter how much explaining the younger fellows do, and no matter how much learning the older fellows do, those two groups will never perfectly understand each other when it comes to these things. Simply because for one group it comes naturally, and for the other group it is a struggle. So, we Sandwiches must stand as the translators. The guys who can help build the bridges needed so that these disparate groups can actually understand what the other side is saying.
Ultimately, every member of the Lodge has a responsibility for effective communication. And if we don’t meet that responsibility our Lodge can’t thrive.
So, let’s get to it!
I am in no way here using the term ‘old fart’ in a negative way. Indeed I’ve been looking forward to becoming a genuine ‘old fart’ for years! I’ve got big plans! I figure I can hang out all day, driving Melinda nuts, and when she finally boots me out of the house I can sit on the front porch yelling at the College kids to stay off my lawn! Seriously though, my ‘old farterry’ will probably find me kicked back on a beach in Mexico each winter, just waiting for the kids to wire me my beer money. It’ll be great!
You made some excellent points in this post, MW. I've said it from the first day I met members of our lodge -- we must meet them where they are. In most contexts, I'm specifically speaking about ensuring our Lodge activities are visible to the public where the public is actively consuming content. But, that same mentality carries over into all forms of communication. When your audience starts going blank faced, or in some cases outright resistant to that which you are saying, you've failed to meet them where they are.
Effectively communicating complex, technical topics to a not-so-well-versed audience is a struggle every advanced level technologist faces almost daily. For example, that feature Mr. CEO wants in the app could work if we tackle constraints X, Y, Z, which will completely nuke Mr. CEO's desired timeline. Mr. CEO doesn't care about how the underlying architecture of the app using tech stack A has inherent technical limitations, that while aren't full on blockers to achieve fancy new magic, will require hacking around the mass contabulator so the spacial spectrometer can trigger the whirlygig to emulsify the particulates. He just wants to know what a realistic timeline is, and if it can be done at a reasonable cost. He may ask for some lower level details, but it's our job to initially communicate as high level as we can without treading into the territory where he feels unseen, or made to feel ignorant, and thus combative to whatever information you're trying to deliver.
While I'm not suggesting a lack of ability to comprehend, in many cases it takes a bit of back and forth to figure out where that balance is for explaining something new/difficult to someone like one would to a child vs to an expert. You don't want to be patronizing, but you also don't want to tread into the territory where your audience feels something like condescension. Meeting on the level is a necessary art.
Is this ‘old farterry’ a particular age or can it happen at a different age depending on the person?
I mention the other day before a meeting with a brother that I can never tell how old a person is just by looking at them and it turned out we were the exact same age.
Not to mention I have no idea how old you are MW Sandwich Generation