ADMG385

ipptchap001.ppt

Home >Business & Finance homework help >Marketing homework help >ADMG385

one

chapter

communicating in the workplace

© 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.

chapter

one

Communicating in the Workplace

1-2

Chapter 1 is designed to give you an introduction to business communication through an overview of the reasons for its importance and the nature of its existence.

Learning Objectives

Explain and/or describe the following:

importance of business communication

current challenges

three main categories

formal vs. informal networks

business communication contexts

communication as problem-solving

1-3

Briefly, the areas to be covered are the importance of good communication skills in business, current challenges for business communicators, the main categories of business communication, different types of organizational communications networks, using business communication as problem solving, the contexts for communicating in businesses, and the business communication process.

Importance

Communication was rated the most valuable soft skill in business.

National Association of Colleges and

Employers Job Outlook Survey, 2011

1-4

Use this slide to support the value of communicating well—and all that that entails—in today’s workplace.

Communication is important to you and to the business you will work for.

For you, good communication skills can lead to advancement.

Unfortunately, many business people do not communicate well. You might share highly publicized communication blunders that companies have made, or ask students to share stories they may have about how good or poor communication in a company had a significant result, either for a particular communicator or for a company in general.

Need

Employers list communication and

efficiency as the top skills to be improved
in the workplace.

-NFI Research

1-5

Multiple surveys find communication skills as highly prized in job applicants along with such related traits as a strong work ethic, an ability to work in a team, and initiative. In assessments of MBA programs by recruiters, “communication and interpersonal skills” were rated “very important” more often than any other attribute. As one IT manager said, “The message will get lost if it is not clear, concise and high impact.”

Challenges

Media literacy
Increased globalism
Analytical skills
Ethics
Social responsibility

1-6

Communication has always been central to business, but in the 21st century people in business are encountering new challenges. Living in the Information Age means that information is now the hottest commodity. Whoever capitalizes on the changes in information technology stands the best chance of creating the most profitable innovations, and so keeping up with the constant developments of new technologies becomes increasingly important. To be an effective knowledge worker today, one needs several kinds of literacy.

This slide points to the current challenges for business communicators. Ask students to explain how each affects communication.

The nature of work today presents special communication challenges.

Expanded media literacy: Since the arrival of email in the late 1980s, business communication has been experiencing a revolution. Now more than ever, there’s a need for expanded media literacy in the workplace.

Increased globalism and diversity: According to a panelist for a recent webinar on workplace trends, we are seeing “the emergence of the truly globally integrated enterprise,” which means that the likelihood of working on a global team is increasing, as is the importance of “global social networks.”

Strong analytical skills: Adapting to a quickly changing business landscape requires being able to assess information quickly, focus on what’s relevant, and interpret information reliably and usefully.

Ethics and social responsibility: Meanwhile, ethical scandals have hurt many businesses and social responsibility has become a buzzword and marketing strategy for many companies.

You can have good conversations with your class about technological innovations that your students have seen in their own lifetimes, about the international nature of business these days, about diversity in places where students have worked, and about the growing presence of ethics and corporate-responsibility-related issues in the news. During the discussion of each trend, ask how it might influence business communication practices

Possible questions for discussion:

Expanded media literacy—How are apps, Skype, tweets, social networking and virtual meetings changing business?

Increased globalism and diversity—Diversity isn’t just cross-cultural. It’s also cross-generational. Have you noticed any differences between the younger generation (generally classified as Millennials) and Baby Boomers in the workplace? What about you and Gen X? Different attitudes towards work, technology, etc.? Do you feel a mutual professional respect? What do you feel you have learned/can learn from one another?

Increased need for strong analytical skills—Your book mentions that many work tasks now require “the ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed” and that “high-value work…may actually have an imaginative component.” Do you agree? Can you recall a project at work where you were required to add value through deep thinking and imagination, even if it was analyzing and presenting a simple report?

Increased focus on ethics and social responsibility—Do you agree, as your book states, that a “key way to build trust is through respectful, honest communication, backed up by quality goods and services”? Can you think of companies that have failed because they’ve failed to do this? What about those companies that are still successful despite breaches in ethics and poor products? Why do you think they’ve survived?

Diversity

1-7

Diversity programs are becoming more and more widespread. A Web article by American Express outlined these diversity benefits:

It builds your employer brand, it increases creativity, it encourages personal growth and it makes employees think more independently.

Possible questions for discussion:

Do you agree that diversity increases creativity in the workplace. How so?
Diversity isn’t just cross-cultural. It’s also cross-generational. Have you noticed any differences between the younger generation (generally classified as Millennials) and Baby Boomers in the workplace? What about you and Gen X? Different attitudes towards work, technology, etc.? Do you feel a mutual professional respect? What do you feel you have learned/can learn from one another?

Categories

Operational

Internal

External

Personal

1-8

Despite all the changes we’ve seen in the last 25 years or so, most communications in business still fall into one of three basic categories.

Internal-operational communication is all the communication that occurs in conducting work within the business.

External-operational communication is all the communicating businesses do with people and groups outside the business.

Personal communication is the exchange of information and feelings among the workers. People will talk when they come together. Much of this talk is personal. But this communicating can affect the workers’ attitudes—and thus their job performance.

Too much or too little personal communication, or the wrong type, can adversely affect productivity. Ask students to discuss the types of personal communication that went/go on in a workplace they are familiar with. Bring out the benefits and drawbacks and see if you can draw some conclusions about how much and what kind of personal communication is appropriate in a workplace or develop rules of thumb for personal communication in business.

Formal network

Well-established along operational lines

Depends on certain established forms or “genres” in the company

Planned and managed

Informal network

Complex

Dynamic

Networks

1-9

If we decide to analyze the information flow and human interactions of a business, an extremely complex system is exposed. These exchanges and the relationships they represent form communication networks, which be either formal or informal. Formal networks are generally well-established and function along operational lines. They depend on established policies and practices within the company; they include memos, reports and emails. They are often planned and managed, such as weekly progress reports.

The informal network is by contrast complex and every changing. It is not one single network but a complex web of many smaller networks that are constantly shifting and changing. Internally, it is what we often refer to as the grapevine.

This outline emphasizes the points in your review of networks. Have students generate and share examples of these from their own work experience.

The formal network consists of communication along established channels in the business. Every business has a formal network. It may be completely hierarchical, meaning little information can be communicated to the company unless it goes through the CEO and internal communications team first. Or it may be less formal, meaning that every employee has access to company-wide email and can send a notice out as required. In larger companies, the former is generally true, while in smaller companies the latter is often true.

Whether it’s formal reports, weekly/monthly staff meetings, or an internal project management/communications system, such as basecamp, every organization also has its own formal, often traceable way of disseminating work information and project updates internally.

The informal network includes those employees you have professional and personal relationships with within your company. It’s also the external network you interact with outside of work and within your social media networks, when talking about your company. Many companies, such as Procter & Gamble, have extremely strict social media policies and lengthy internal courses on how to use social media effectively. For instance, you cannot even say you “like” a P&G product on your own Facebook page without disclosing first that you’re an employee.

Possible discussions: Here, you can invite students to share their experiences with formal and informal networks in places where they or those they know have worked. Ask them who the “talk leaders” were in their examples of grapevines, and point out that even those without a great deal of formal power can have considerable informal power.

You can also invite students to share the difficulties they’ve encountered with Facebook and work situations. Have they seen a coworker write something negative on a page or share proprietary information? Did they feel the need to react? How did they deal with the situation ethically?

Formal vs. Informal Networks

1-10

This network diagram shows the communication networks in a division of a small manufacturing company. The black lines show the formal network. The red lines show the informal network at a given moment in time. They change often, and may look completely different over time.

Communication Factors

Nature of the business
Size and complexity
Industry environment—stable or volatile?
Geographic dispersion
Organizational culture

1-11

There are several factors that affect how and how often a business communicates—from the nature of the business (industry type) to organizational culture.

For discussion, you can draw on students’ own experience as employees and consumers to help them understand the significance of these factors. Compare students’ experiences working for large and small companies and companies in different industries. Get them to volunteer stories about the organizational culture of places where they’ve worked or shopped and to discuss how the culture probably influenced, and was influenced by, the company’s communication practices.

You can relay that if a culture is formal—for example, you need to set up an appointment to see the CEO, rather than dropping by his or her office—you can probably assume that the communication will be formal as well, perhaps having strict communication channels you must follow and not as much access to informal, verbal exchanges.

If the CEO is wearing jeans when you meet him or her, now common in many industries, especially if the company is a start-up, you’ll probably find an informal and conversational writing style, particularly internally and possibly externally.

Companies with the strongest cultures—shared values/mission, company-sponsored team-building events/retreats, etc.—are often the most successful. You may ask students why they think this is true.

However, the “unofficial culture”—what the employees really believe and what they’re really doing/saying behind closed doors—is often considered the true culture. When the company-sanctioned culture and the unofficial culture are aligned, you often have success. When they aren’t, the company struggles more.

You may also want to ask students what they feel are “tip-offs” to a company’s culture. You can also share these signs of an organization’s culture recognized by researchers and ask them to contribute others:

What kind of stories does the company tell about its past—the living history? What a culture chooses to share says a lot about its values. Do they have certain “heroes” that they elevate, or even make fun of in a friendly way, because they’ve had such an impact on the success of the company? This says a lot about the professional contributions they value. Do they have rituals? Burgers or happy hours on Friday? Battle of the bands every year? Community clean-up day? When the company gives employees tickets to events, are they tickets to NASCAR or tickets to the ATP? This says a lot about the type of culture it is.

Problem Solving

Most business communication problems are ill-defined and need:

Research

Analysis

Creativity

Judgment

1-12

Whatever you do in the business world, your communication tasks will invariably involve analyzing a unique circumstance requiring a unique solution at least on some level. So it makes sense to think of business communication as problem solving. Business communication problems do not come neatly packaged and to solve these problems requires research, analysis, creativity and judgment.

Research (interview the key players to understand the history of the situation and purpose of the communication)

Careful analysis (gather and interpret the relevant information)

Creativity (think of possible solutions and the right media and venues for conveying the information)

Judgment (pick the solution that will fit this situation best)

You might ask your class how it’s possible that, when there’s no single “correct” answer to any business-communication problem, it’s still possible to say that some solutions are better than others. If you’re not lucky enough to have a savvy student who “gets” this, you can make the point by showing them different handlings of a simple business situation and discussing what makes some better than others.

You might also share examples of how analysis, creativity, and judgment work during the business-communication process.

For instance, in addition to gathering and interpreting the relevant information, analysis often involves analyzing the culture’s expectations for communication (formal vs. informal), considering the current climate (are there sensitive/hot button issues, such as limited resources, that shouldn’t be brought up?), and looking at the individual audience’s needs and fears. For instance, if you’re asking your boss for a vacation day via email, and you know that he or she is already afraid a project isn’t going to be completed on time, at some point in the email you need to mention this, reassuring your boss that you’ll still meet the project deadline. Many factors go into analysis.

Creativity often means looking at a communications issue from multiple angles. At its most basic level, the following questions need to be asked: What is the correct medium for this communication? What is the correct venue? For instance, if you’re in internal communications for a major company and rolling out a new company brand internally, a memo is probably not the most creative execution. But having the IT department turn every employee’s desktop background into the company’s new logo and look, so they’re greeted with it in the morning when they come to work, is a surprising and fresh way to make the announcement

Judgment is making sure you always pick the solution that will fit the situation and the long-term goals and values of the culture. It also means always sending a message at the right time, in the right tone.

Communication Model

1-13

The business communication process involves two communicators trying to solve a particular problem. For the purpose of solving the particular problem, the communicators occupy the same sphere which can be defined as their relationship. The sphere of their mutual relationship occurs within the larger socio-economic historical context.

This model guides your discussion of the contexts for and steps in the business communication process. You can point out that the communication process here is viewed as part of a larger problem-solving process, in which the two communicators work together to achieve business-related goals and that communication is often ongoing—not a one-shot type of action.

A fun exercise for illustrating this process in action is to divide the class up into two opposing teams. Team 1 must recommend a surprising change to the syllabus to Team 2. Team 2 then has to follow the process of responding to this recommendation as laid out in this model. Do they agree? Will they propose a different recommendation and argue their case? Will they respond at all? If the class is large, you may break it up into smaller competing groups.

The larger context

business-economic

sociocultural

historical

The communicators’ relationship

The communicators’ contexts

organizational

professional

personal

Communication Contexts

1-14

In the previous slide we saw that the two communicators in a communication exchange occupy similar concentric spaces for their communication. The larger context includes the general business-economic climate; language, values and customs of the surrounding culture; and the historical location of the communication exchange.

The relationship of the communicators also forms an important context for communication. Although communication may be about moving information from point A to point B, it is also about interactions between human beings. Perhaps the strongest influencing factors are the particular contexts that comprise the relationship of the two communicators.

The organizational context of the type and culture of the organization will shape communication choices. Professional contexts are determined by the various levels of expertise of the communicators. Finally, personal contexts as defined by all the factors that contribute to make you who you are will influence your communication.

The sender . . .

senses a need to communicate

defines the situation

considers possible solutions

selects the best one

composes the message (medium, content, structure, style, form)

sends the message

Communication Process

The receiver . . .

receives the message
interprets in
decides on a response considers
replies (becoming a new sender)

1-15

Here are the steps that usually occur when people are solving business problems and communicating about them.

1. Sensing a communication need. You can emphasize that a “need” can be either a problem to solve or an opportunity to take advantage of.

2. Defining the situation. Here, the writer/speaker gathers information about the situation—about what has happened or what might be achieved, about possible audiences, about similar prior situations, about organizational goals and possible means for achieving them.

3. Considering possible communication strategies. Given the situation, in what different ways might the communication challenge be tackled? What strategies could best further the interests of the parties involved?

4. Selecting a course of action. Here the writer/speaker decides not only what to say but also how to say it. He or she makes basic decisions about the type of message that will be sent—which also involves choosing the communication channel (phone? email? texting?) that will best support the goals of the message.

5. Composing the message. You can preview the advice in Chapter 2 about the writing process. Help students realize that whatever writing style works best for them is the one they should use, but emphasize the importance of all three main composing stages (planning, drafting, and revising).

6. Sending the message. Students often do not realize how important message timing is, or how important it is to imagine the hectic work context in which the recipient will receive the message. This step deserves some careful thought.

7. Receiving the message. Now we’re over on the recipient’s side of the process. If the sender has made wise decisions (about timing, channel, format, and framing of the message), the odds of the recipient actually reading and/or hearing the message are promising. (Otherwise, as you can remind your students, the message might get thrown away, buried under other messages, or deleted.)

8. Interpreting the message. As the recipient processes the message, he or she will be forming all sorts of impressions—about the writer/speaker, about the writer/speaker’s company, about the goal of the message, about the message’s specific contents, about why the message is significant (or not).

Bottom Line

“The goal of business communication is to create a shared understanding of business situations that will enable people to work successfully together.”

1-16

Ultimately, successful communication is essential to people being able to work together.

C H AP T ER 1 Understanding Workplace Communication 13

y !

" #

The Informal Network.

d in% di$

. "

" & " %

Internal-operational communication enables employees to work together toward business goals.

ren03210_ch01_001-024.indd 13 1/10/13 9:53 AM

1-18

kelly_pekelder

P1.2