Communication in the Workplace

中国经济管理大学

Communication in the Workplace

Communication in the Workplace

Much of the information you will cover in the first meeting is routine—introduction of yourself, office hours, course requirements, operating policies, and other business.  In addition, you will probably want to introduce the subject matter of the course.  Chapter 1 contains such an introduction, so you may want to start by summarizing its contents, adding to it examples and illustrations from your knowledge and experience.  Your overall goals should be to convince the students that business communication is important in business and to their personal advancement in business; to alert them to current challenges facing business communicators; to convey basic facts about the business-communication environment; and to bring out that business communication, as a problem-solving activity, requires analysis, creativity, and judgment (there are no magic formulas).

If you want to add some interest to this first meeting, try assigning a message to be written in class (but not for a grade).  Make the problem a difficult one—a refusal or other bad-news situation requiring tactful handling.  Without instructions on such problems, most of the students will write messages that are flawed.  Save these messages until you cover this problem in the course and then give the messages back.  When the students see their early writing specimens and compare them with their current work, they’ll see the progress they have made.  Also, the exercise is good for a few laughs, especially if you have some students read their original messages aloud to the class.

Another idea is to present a sample message (perhaps one from a real business) and, going over each part in detail, discuss the many decisions that went into the writing of the message.  For example, the writer had to decide first even whether or not to write; then he/she needed to decide what genre (or form) of message this would be, how formal to make it, how to address the reader, what to say, how to organize the contents, where to put the paragraph breaks, which wording would be best in each place . . . and so on.  This exercise reinforces the key point that good business communication is good decision-making—as well as the point that preparing any message of importance will require time, care, and revision.

Text Summary, Lecture Outline

The Role of Communication in Business

Slides 1-1, 1-2

This chapter puts business communication in context.  It explains the importance of business communication skills, describes large and small factors that affect business communication, identifies the the main types, and describes the problem-solving approach that is essential to effective business communication.

Slide 1-3

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

For you, good communication skills can lead to advancement.

Your performance will be judged largely by your ability to communicate.

The higher you advance, the greater your need for communication skills will be.

For the business for which you will work, communicating is important because it is a major part of the work of the business.

Communication is essential for organized activity.

Much of the work done involves the processing of information.

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.

Slide 1-4

As the RAND study and may others have pointed out, business has changed hugely since the computer revolution began.  And other developments—such as the contracting out of manufacturing, greater diversity in the workforce, and so forth—have also driven these changes.

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.

Slide 1-5

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. It is the work done to carry out the operating plan (the business’s plan for doing whatever it was formed to do).

It takes many forms—orders and instructions from superiors; oral exchanges between workers; written reports, emails, memorandums, proposals . . . and the list goes on.

Much of it is conducted through the business’s computer network.  (Here you can call attention to the Intranet example provided and discuss other contemporary communication media that businesses are using internally.)

External-operational communication is all the communicating businesses do with people and groups outside the business.  Because businesses are dependent on outside people and groups, external-operational communication is necessary for success.

This category includes direct selling (sales presentations, advertising, public relations activities, mailings), correspondence with other businesses, and communication with such external parties as community representatives, non-profit and/or government organizations, and more (see the figure provided).

Nowadays, much of this communicating is technology assisted. Ask students what types of computer-assisted messages businesses are sending out these days in addition to email and faxes.

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.

The communicating that occurs in a business may be viewed as a network—becoming increasingly complex as the business becomes larger.  This network has two parts: formal and informal.

Slides 1-6, 1-7

The formal network consists of communication along established channels in the business.

The communication flow can be downward, upward, or lateral (with this latter type growing in importance as hierarchies in organizations become flatter).

Each business develops its own forms (or genres), of communication to get its work done.

The informal network consists of all the personal communicating that goes on in the business.

It follows no set pattern and may link any of the workers in the business. Its structure is ever changing and may be extremely complex.

Known as the grapevine, it carries rumors and gossip but can also spread inforrmation and insights that enhance an organization’s culture, cohesion, and performance.

It cannot be outlawed or controlled—so wise executives work with it rather than against it.

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.

Slide 1-8

How much and what kind of communicating a business does depends on the type of business, its environment, and the nature of the people involved.

The size/complexity/geographical dispersion of the company will affect its communication.

The industry it is in, and current issues in that industry, will affect its communication.

The culture of the company influences, and is influenced by, its communication.

The kinds of people in the company affect its communication style and practices.

Again, 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.

The Business Communication Process

Slide 1-9

To understand the business-communication process, it’s important first to understand the nature of business communication.  Business communication is best understood as complex problem solving.  This means that, for most situations, the business communicator will need to take a unique set of circumstances into account and generate a unique solution that will achieve the desired business goals.  That is why being a successful business communicator requires

Careful analysis (to gather and interpret the relevant information)

Creativity (to think of possible solutions)

Judgment (to 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.

Slide 1-10

Because the communicating that goes on in business is done by people, it is helpful for us to know how communication between business people occurs.   This model shows both process and contexts.

Slide 1-11

With this slide you can take a closer look at the contexts in which business communication takes place: 

       The larger business-economic, sociocultural, historical context

       The communicators’ relationship

       The communicators’ individual contexts (organizational, professional, personal)

As the text says, communication is not simply about moving information from point A to point B.  Anyone who neglects the specific contexts in which communication takes place is likely doomed to be an unsuccessful communicator.  Factoring these multiple contexts into communication decisions is a large part of treating business communication as a problem-solving process.

Slide 1-12

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 prior similar 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 5 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’s 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).

9.       Deciding on a response.  If the recipient attends to the message, he/she will have a response, whether it’s the one the sender intends or not.  If the message has been tailored carefully to the recipient’s interests, the recipient’s response—whether a return message, an action, or simply a change in attitude—will have a good chance of being the desired one.

10.   Replying to the message.  Here the recipient becomes the sender, and the communication cycle begins again.  And it may lead to another cycle—and another. The cycles may continue as long as the participants wish to communicate.  In oral communication, you can point out, the cycles tend to happen quickly as the communicators work to create a mutual understanding, whereas the communication cycles in written communication tend to occur more slowly.

There are no guarantees that any message will be successful—but the analytical process presented in the communication model will make the odds of success as high as possible.

Slide 1-13

The last slide suggests the three key features of business communication:  it’s about sharing information, it’s about building relationships, and it’s about solving workplace problems.

Answers for Critical Thinking Questions

1.       “If there’s no definitive solution, then all ways of handling a business communication problem are equally good.”  Using the discussion of business communication problem solving in this chapter, explain why this statement is false.

True, there are no guarantees that even the best-planned, most carefully designed message will succeed.  But one that is not well thought out and well executed will almost certainly fail.

2.       Is communication skill more important to the successful performance of a supervisor than to the successful performance of a company president? Defend your answer.

Certainly communication ability is important to both, but the president is likely to need to converse with more people in more ways about more different things, thus affecting more people and influencing the business as a whole more than a supervisor would.  But there can be exceptions.  See if your students can produce any.

3.       To get a feel for how rapidly information technologies are changing and how significant the impact is on business, make a list of all the information technologies (devices and applications) that you’ve learned to use over the last five years. Now reflect on how your communication, work, and life have changed as a result of these technologies.

Each student’s answer should be evaluated on its merits.

4.       “People need to leave their cultures and values at the door when they come to work and just do business.”  Discuss the possible merits and flaws of this attitude.

Each student’s answer should be evaluated on its merits, but the best ones will be able to see both sides of this claim.

5.       List the types of external-operational and internal-operational communication that take place in an organization with which you are familiar (e.g., school, fraternity, church, or business).

Each student’s list should be evaluated on its merits.

6.       “Never mix business with personal matters—it just leads to damaged relationships, poor business decisions, or both.”  In what ways might this be a fair statement?  In what ways is it unwise advice?

The statement has merit in that getting too personally involved with a business associate can lead one either to neglect the business goals or to risk damaging the personal relationship in the interest of business.  It is also not ethical to develop a personal relationship just to exploit it for business reasons.  On the other hand, even in business contexts, people are still people.  They cannot leave their humanness at the door—and, arguably, business would not be rewarding and worthwhile if they could.  The good business communicator always remembers that communication is a human activity and takes care to foster goodwill between the communicators.

7.       Describe the formal network of communication in an organization, division, or department with which you are familiar (preferably a simple one). Discuss why you think it has taken this form and how successfully it meets the business’s needs.

Each description should be evaluated on its merits.

8.       Make a list of the types of companies requiring many kinds of communication. Then make a list of types of companies requiring few kinds. What explains the difference between these two groups?
The lists will vary. Some possibilities for companies requiring extensive communication are insurance companies, newspaper publishers, electronics manufacturers, financial institutions, and real estate companies. Examples of organizations requiring less communication are plumbing companies, painting contractors, home builders, and television repair shops.

As noted in the text, certain factors explain these differences between groups: (1) Nature of the business. Some work activities require little communication. Plumbers working for a plumbing company, for example, often spend long work periods with little or no communication. On the other hand, most workers for an insurance company rarely have long periods of time without communication.(2) Operating plan of the business. Depending on the size and nature of operations, operating plans vary. The larger and more complex operations obviously require much communication in order to coordinate activities. (3) The business environment.  All other things being equal, those working for companies in a stable environment will probably need to communicate less, and less often, than those in a volatile one. (4) Geographic dispersion.  Clearly, coordinating a widely dispersed workforce will require more communicating than coordinating a centrally located one. (5) The nature of the people in the business. Employees who are comfortable and skillful communicators, for example, will probably generate more communications than those who aren’t. (6) The company culture. Some companies “like” and encourage communication more than others.

9.       In Images of Organization (2nd ed., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), management scholar Gareth Morgan has analyzed companies using a variety of metaphors.  For example, he has looked at those elements of a company that make it appear to run like a machine (with rigidly organized, specific job roles), an organism (with elements that make it dependent on and responsive to its environment), a brain (with self-managing teams and employees who can do a variety of jobs as needed), and a political system (with employees vying for power and influence).  Think of an organization you know well and decide upon its dominant cultural metaphor.  Is it one of Morgan’s?  Or is it a family? A team?  A community?  A prison?  A mixture of several kinds?  Once you settle on your metaphor, be prepared to explain how this organization’s culture affects, and is affected by, its communication practices.

Each example should be evaluated on its merits.

Almost any of the six Managers Hot Seat videos linked to this text’s Online Learning  Center could be used to have a great class discussion about organizational culture.  Have the students watch one of these and then describe what is positive and negative about the company culture(s) represented in the video.

10.   As noted in this chapter, companies develop specific forms of communication, or genres, that enable them to get their work done.  In a place where you have worked or another organization you have been a member of, what were the main forms of communication with the employees or members?  To what extent were these uniquely adapted to the needs of the organization?

Each answer should be evaluated on its merits.

11.   Think of a recent transaction you had with a businessperson or a staff person at your school.  Describe the contexts of your communication, from the larger context (business-economic, sociocultural, and historical) down to the personal contexts (to the extent that you know them).  How did these help determine the outcome of your communication?

To get students thinking, you might invite those who have tried to argue a parking or library fine or to resolve a registration or payment problem to reflect on contexts that helped determine the nature and outcome of the communication.

12.   Using this chapter’s discussion of communication, explain how people reading or hearing the same message can disagree on its meaning.

The explanations should note that our specific contexts give us different mental filters (storehouses of experience, knowledge, biases, priorities). Thus, when two people interpret a message through their unique filters, the meanings given the message are likely to differ. For example, assume that John has worked for companies in which the human resources department was poorly run, while Bill has seen firsthand that well-run HR departments can make important contributions to the morale and bottom-line of a company. Their responses to a message announcing an additional hire in the HR department would differ sharply.

Suggested Solutions to the Critical Thinking Exercises

1.       Watch the video “Did You Know?” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U. Using the content of Chapter 1 to aid you, describe what kinds of skills one will need in order to survive and thrive in this quickly changing world.

Answers will vary, but problem solving skills should be at or near the top of the list.  Most of the conceptual knowledge that students are learning now will become obsolete, maybe even quickly—but the ability to analyze, research, and solve problems, including communication problems, will only become more important.

2.       Using the Internet, find a company that has a corporate social responsibility program and study what the company’s website says about that program. What kind of image as a corporate citizen is the company trying to project, and how? How convincing is this effort, in your opinion, and why?

The public face of almost any major company will have some kind of corporate-responsibility dimension.  Look for evidence in the students’ responses that they have tried to analyze and assess the bases on which the company claims (explicitly or implicitly) to be a good citizen.  You might ask students to attach or share sample Web pages from the company to support their observations.

3.       Choose a certain national or regional culture, ethnicity, or generation—one different from your own—and find out what values the people in this demographic are generally known for. How might working or doing business with a person from one of these groups require you to adapt your own values and communication style?

The main things to encourage in this exercise are use of details and honesty.  Help students realize that there may be a down side to working with those unlike themselves—but that the gains are usually greater.  Look ahead to Chapter 15 to preview the challenges and benefits of working with those from other cultures.

4.       Find two websites of companies in the same industry—for example, two manufacturers of household products or two wireless service providers. Using the evidence presented on their websites, compare their company cultures. Look at their stated mission (if any), their history (if provided), the gender and qualifications of their personnel (if given), their employee benefits, their information for job applicants, their information for investors, the company image projected by the visual elements on the site—anything that suggests who they are or want you to think they are. Write up your comparison in a well-organized, well-supported message to you instructor.

This is a simple but educational research project.  You might ask students to attach sample Web pages from the company to support their observations.

5.       [The Megan Cabot Case.]
Obviously, Megan has exercised her strong communication skills to influence her coworkers to accept her views. Probably they recognize her as their informal leader. The situation is difficult and has no one best solution. Thus, each student’s analysis must be judged on its merits.

Some students will favor taking a strong approach with a goal of heading off Megan’s assumed authority. This course might involve making it clear to Megan that the decision is yours, that you believe the procedure will work, and that you expect her cooperation in making it work.

Others will suggest a more diplomatic solution. One such solution is to explain clearly to Megan that the procedure has been effective wherever it has been tried. Perhaps you could even sell her on the procedure and get her cooperation in making it work. If she does cooperate, you have gained in the eyes of your subordinates, and your problem is solved. If she does not, then you may need to move to a strong approach.

6.       [The Sample Message from a Department Head.]
It is easy to see why this message evoked negative reactions. In most minds, the negative language used here is associated with harsh, autocratic leadership—the kind most of us do not like. As will be explained in following chapters, such negative words create unpleasant mental images. In addition, the lecturing tone used throughout the document is insensitive or even insulting. Most people react negatively when people talk down to them. A much more diplomatic message would have resulted had the writer thought more carefully about what effects he/she really wanted to achieve (making people angry shouldn’t be one of them), who would read the message, and how they would be likely to respond to various approaches and tones.

7.       Find an article in the business press or general news about a recent incident involving a company—for example, a merger or acquisition, a scandal or crisis, or the launching of a new product. What kind of communication challenges might this event have posed for the company, both internally and externally? What kinds of messages probably needed to be written, and to whom?

This is a relatively easy research project that can get students thinking about the communication efforts—and challenges—involved in running a business.  See Chapter 18 for resources that students might consult.

The Manager’s Hot Seat video “Change: More Pain than Gain?”—available on the text’s Online Learning  Center—illustrates some of the communication challenges that mergers and acquisitions cause.  Viewing and discussing this video could be an effective and interesting way to introduce this research project.

8.       [The Robo Solutions Case.]
The important thing here is that students show they’ve thought about the problem—and the likely consequences of each possible solution.  Perhaps the optimum solution would be to speak with Sarah McCann and give her the choice.  But one could make a case that, given the importance to all employees of keeping the company financially viable, it would be ethical in this case for the president to decide to send someone else to communicate with James Pritchett to get his desperately needed business—as long as provisions were made to direct future business Sarah’s way.  (Of course, the communication to Sarah about this decision would have to be carefully worded.) Students should learn that weighing the ethical obligations to all parties involved, and then communicating the resulting decision, can be quite difficult.

Related discussion/exercises:

The Manager’s Hot Seat videos “Ethics: Let’s Make a Fourth Quarter Deal” and “Whistleblowing: Code Red or Red Ink"—available on the text’s Online Learning Center—can give students further experience with ethical reasoning and ethical business communication.

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