Chapter 1: Understanding Business Communication

Summary of Learning Objectives

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Explain why effective communication is important to organizations and how it can help you succeed in business. Communication is the lifeblood of organizations, and effective communication improves an organization's productivity, image, and responsiveness. Communication is effective when it helps people understand each other, stimulates others to take action, and encourages others to think in new ways. It helps you speed problem solution, strengthen decision making, coordinate work flow, cement business relationships, clarify promotional materials, enhance your professional image, and improve your response to stakeholders. Good communication skills increase your chances for career success and your ability to adapt to the changing workplace.

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Discuss four changes in the workplace that are intensifying the need to communicate effectively. Technological advances such as the Internet and portable communication devices make it possible for employees to telecommute; using such devices also highlights employees' ability to write and speak clearly. Increased cultural diversity in the work force requires employees to adapt their communication so that they can be understood by different cultures. An abundance of information and the need to share knowledge with others places a greater demand on the ability to organize and communicate one's thoughts. Increased use of teams requires mastery of interpersonal skills such as listening, giving feedback, working collaboratively, and resolving conflict.

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Describe how organizations share information internally and externally. Within an organization, communication occurs formally or informally. The formal communication network can be depicted as an organization chart, with information flowing downward from managers to employees, upward from employees to managers, and horizontally between departments. The informal communication network, or grapevine, follows the path of casual conversation and has no set pattern of flow. Communication between organizations and the outside world can be as formal as a news release carefully prepared by a marketing or public relations team or as informal as talking with a customer or letting one's appearance transmit an impression of the organization.

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List and briefly define the six phases of the communication process. The communication process occurs in six phases: First, the sender has an idea (conceives a thought and wants to share it). Second, the sender encodes the idea (puts it into message form). Third, the sender transmits the message (sends the message using a specific channel and medium). Fourth, the receiver gets the message (receives the physical message by hearing or reading it). Fifth, the receiver decodes the message (absorbs and understands the meaning). And sixth, the receiver sends feedback (responds to the message and signals that response to the sender).

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Identify and briefly discuss four types of communication barriers. First, perceptual differences affect how we see the world; no two people perceive things exactly the same way. Perception also influences how we develop language, which depends on shared definitions for meaning and is shaped by our culture. Second, restrictive structures and management block effective communication. Formal channels tend to cause distortion, as each link in the communication channel holds the potential for misinterpretation. Similarly, if managers aren't diligent in their efforts to communicate down the formal network, their messages can become fragmented so that employees never get the "big picture." Third, distractions can be physical (from poor acoustics to illegible copy), emotional, attributed to poor listening, or the result of information overload. And fourth, deceptive communication tactics are used by unethical communicators to manipulate their receivers.

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Discuss four guidelines for overcoming communication barriers. First, adopting an audience-centered approach to communication means focusing on your audience and caring about their needs—which means finding out as much as you can about audience members, especially if your audience is from a different culture. Second, fostering an open communication climate means encouraging employee contributions, candor, and honesty. You can create an open climate by modifying the number of organizational levels and by facilitating feedback. Third, creating lean and efficient messages means not communicating unnecessary information and making necessary information easy to get. You can send better messages by reducing the number of messages, minimizing distractions, and using technology responsibly. And fourth, committing to ethical communication means including relevant information that is true in every sense and not deceptive in any way.

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Differentiate between an ethical dilemma and an ethical lapse; then list four questions that will help you decide what is ethical. An ethical dilemma involves choosing between two or more alternatives that are neither clearly ethical nor clearly unethical, such as alternatives that are all ethical but conflicting or alternatives that lie somewhere in the gray areas between right and wrong. An ethical lapse involves choosing an alternative that is clearly unethical or illegal, perhaps placing your own desire or ambition above the welfare of others. One way to decide whether a decision is ethical is to ask yourself four questions: (1) Is this decision legal? (2) Is this decision balanced? (3) Is it a decision you can live with? (4) Is it feasible?

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