BUS3041 Week 1 Disc

Situational Communication © 2016 South University

Situational Communication We have discussed your personality traits and styles. Continue to remain self-aware, and be reflective of your preferences for interaction with others. Listen to feedback from others, verbal and nonverbal, to help you understand when your styles created an advantage in your efforts and when and why it may have created a disadvantage. This will help you understand when and why you need to adapt or mute your personal communication styles. In order to do this, you need to consider situational differences in the workplace. To adapt, you need to consider what common occurrences require that adaptation. There are many of course, but let's look at a few general ones here:

• Formality requirements • Urgency • Confidentiality issues

These are just a few areas to consider when you are communicating as a leader. How formal is the situation in which you find yourself? Do you need to communicate with the board of directors? If so, your communication style will be quite formal. Your dress will be conservative. Your behavior, speech, and posture will be reserved and quiet. You will be well prepared in an effort to assert your credibility. Conversely, if the audience is a co-worker with whom you have worked for fifteen years and play golf with over weekends, your demeanor and communication styles will be much less formal. How urgent is the communication? When a message is critical in its timing, you may not have time to adapt your techniques. When your little brother runs into the road, you do not stop to think about how best to communicate what a bad idea it is, but you grab his arm and pull him out of the way of traffic. The same is true at work. Leaders often need to make immediate decisions and communicate issues to others very quickly in emergency-type situations. Your personal style may not matter much here, but the media you use will. In a critical situation, do not take the time to write a letter, even if that is your preferred method of communication. In a true emergency, speed must be the first communication criteria met by you.

2

Consider the confidentiality issues inherent in the situation. Is this something that everyone knows about, or should it remain between you and certain other people? If confidentiality is the key, you need to consider where and how you communicate with the person. The hallway or lunchroom is clearly not conducive to the topic. If it is a sensitive issue, the telephone may not be appropriate either. Additionally, consider the issue of leaving hardcopy of sensitive and confidential matters. If you send an e-mail, the hard drive retains a copy and it can be accessed by others. If you write anything down, it can be retrieved by others. Be aware of the paper trail you leave. Sometimes a written record will be very important to have, at other times it can create problems. Consider this in planning your communication.

Managerial Communications

©2016 South University