Communication: the exchange of information between a sender and a receiver, and the inference (perception) of meaning between the individuals involved.
Communication is a circular and dynamic process in which people interpret and make sense of the information they exchange.
Effective communication helps individuals, groups, and organizations to achieve their goals.
Researchers have begun to examine communication as a form of social information processing in which receivers interpret messages by cognitively processing information.
The perceptual model of communication presented in Figure 9.2 depicts communication as a process in which receivers create meaning in their own minds.
The sender is the person wanting to communicate information—the message.
Encoding translates mental thoughts into a code or language that can be understood by others.
The output of encoding is the message.
Managers can communicate through a variety of media including face-to-face conversations, phone calls, charts and graphs, and many digital forms.
Decoding is the process of interpreting and making sense of a message when received by a receiver.
Feedback occurs when the receiver expresses a reaction to the sender’s message.
Noise: anything that interferes with the transmission and understanding of the message.
Communication effectiveness is partly based on using the medium that is most appropriate for the situation at hand.
Media richness: capacity of a communication medium to convey information and promote understanding.
Media can vary from rich to lean.
Media richness is based on feedback, channel, type of communication, and language source.
Two-way face-to-face conversations are the richest form of communication, while static media such as newsletters, computer reports, and general e-mail blasts are the leanest.
Rich media should be used in situations that are complex or that are highly important to receivers, while newsletters, computer reports, and general e-mail blasts are lean media and best for less complex situations.
The answer is C, face-to-face.
Communication competence: performance-based index of an individual’s abilities to effectively use communication behaviors in a given context.
Communication competence reflects your ability to effectively communicate with others.
Nonverbal communication, active listening, nondefensive communication, and empathy are communication skills that affect communication competence.
When people feel threatened or attacked, this will lead to defensive listening and destructive behaviors such as shutting down or being passive-aggressive, standing behind rules or policies, creating a diversion, or counterattacking.
Defensiveness from one person activates a similar response in the other party.
Defensiveness often is started by the poor choice of words we use and/or the nonverbal posture used during interactions.
Listening: actively decoding and interpreting verbal messages.
Unlike hearing, which is merely a physical activity, listening requires cognitive attention and information processing.
Listening is a cornerstone skill of communication competence.
Many of us think we are good listeners when evidence suggests just the opposite, and we will not become better listeners unless we are motivated to do so.
Listening Styles
There are four typical listening styles: active, involved, passive, and detached.
These listening styles differ with respect to how invested the listener is, their level of participation, and the type of body language they display.
Effective listening is a learned skill that requires effort and motivation to practice.
We can improve our listening skills by showing respect, listening from the first sentence, being mindful, keeping quiet, asking questions, summarizing and paraphrasing, remembering what was said, and using nonverbal cues.
The answer is E, passive.
Linguistic style: a person’s characteristic speaking pattern.
Linguistic styles incorporate such elements as directness or indirectness, pacing and pausing, word choice, and the use of such elements as jokes, figures of speech, stories, questions, and apologies.
Linguistic style is a set of culturally learned signals by which we not only communicate what we mean but also interpret others’ meaning and evaluate one another as people.
Linguistic style helps explain communication differences between women and men and across generations.
Increased awareness of linguistic styles can enhance your communication competence.
The Male Perspective
Males are expected to communicate more aggressively, interrupt others more than women, and hide their emotions because they have an inherent desire to possess features attractive to females.
Men also see conversations as negotiations in which people try to achieve and maintain the upper hand.
Evolutionary psychologists propose that men cannot turn off the biologically based determinants of their behavior.
The Female Perspective
According to social role theory, females and males learn ways of speaking while growing up.
Research shows that girls learn conversational skills and habits that focus on rapport and relationships, whereas boys learn skills and habits that focus on status and hierarchies.
Women come to view communication as a network of connections in which conversations are negotiations for closeness.
Research demonstrates that women and men communicate differently in a number of ways.
Women are more likely to share credit for success, to ask questions for clarification, to tactfully give feedback by mitigating criticism with praise, and to indirectly tell others what to do.
Men are more likely to boast about themselves, to bluntly give feedback, and to withhold compliments, and are less likely to ask questions and to admit fault or weaknesses.
People from the four different generations currently in the workforce—traditionalists, baby boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials—have different views on communication styles and media.
When it comes to communication media, Millennials and Gen Xers are more likely to prefer instant messaging and texting rather than phone calls, letters, and reports than are boomers and traditionalists.
Younger employees are more likely to use the Internet and social media to accomplish their tasks.
It is important to remember not to generalize any trends, preferences, or perceptions to all men, women, or members of a particular generation as there are always exceptions to the rule.
Some suggestions for improving communication include:
Clarify communication expectations and norms.
Use a variety of communication tools, regardless of your preferred mode of communication (e.g., face-to-face or texting).
Don’t assume, based on somebody’s gender or age, that he or she only likes one mode of communication.
Make sure people get credit for their ideas and not their gender.
The answer is D, Millennials.
Social media: uses web-based and mobile technologies to generate interactive dialogue with members of a network.
Social media is used by a significant proportion of people across all age groups, and employers and managers are wise to utilize social media tools with employees across all generations.
A fundamental driving force behind technology at work, including social media, is to boost productivity.
Social media has been shown to increase job satisfaction, performance, and retention, and it has also been shown to improve work–life balance and foster creativity and collaboration.
If deployed effectively, social media enables businesses to:
Connect in real time and over distances with many key stakeholders.
Connect sources of knowledge inside and outside an organization.
Expand and open the traditional boundaries to involve outsiders in problem solving.
Lost productivity due to cyberloafing, which is using the Internet at work for personal use, is a primary concern for employers in their adoption of social media.
Employees waste time talking on cell phones or texting, surfing the Internet, on social media, sending personal e-mail, and online shopping.
Perhaps the biggest problem with such productivity losses is that employees rarely think about them.
Be Careful about Blocking Access
Approximately 36 percent of employers block access to social media sites at work to help combat waste and loss of productivity.
The evidence is growing that restricting or completely blocking the use of social media by employees at the office can backfire because it can alienate these employees and suggest a lack of trust.
Small breaks during the workday help boost productivity, and checking personal e-mail, looking at Facebook, or checking/sending Tweets could provide a “re-energizing” break.
Blocking access could be off-putting to employees and not really save time if employees just use their personal devices to access the sites.
If you expect employees to respond to work-related e-mails on their personal time away from work, you should allow them to attend to personal interests during work hours.
Employees are especially concerned about employers having access to personal e-mails and attachments, voicemail, text and instant messages, lists of apps on their devices, information in their mobile apps, and their location.
Along with other recommendations, organizations should communicate what personal information from mobile devices they will access, and they should communicate clear and sensible policies regarding potential actions regarding information on employees’ mobile devices.
The answer is C. Use social media for identifying and engaging potential employees.
Step 1—Frame Your Story.
Think of your presentation as a journey and decide where you want to start and end.
Include only the most relevant details or points and try to bring them to life with examples.
Try to plan your journey to end with a solution or conclude with a question to spur audience engagement or give them something to think about afterwards.
The 3-Step Problem-Solving Approach can be used as a framework for structuring your presentation.
Step 2—Plan Your Delivery.
Presenters can deliver a talk by reading it from a script, using bullet lists that outline what will be covered in each section, or memorizing what they want to say.
Reading and memorizing are often ineffective.
If you use the bullet list approach, be sure you know not only the content for each point, but also how you want to transition from one to the next.
Step 3—Develop Your Stage Presence.
Beware of how much you move—not too much or too little.
An important element of stage presence is eye contact.
Self-efficacy is an important part of overcoming nervousness, as is realizing that people expect you to be nervous.
Step 4—Plan Your Multimedia.
Keep your technology simple and don’t let it distract the audience.
People respond differently to pictures and videos than they do to words, as they convey emotion better than words.
Table 9.8 provides suggestions for avoiding bad PowerPoint.
Step 5—Put It Together.
Be prepared far enough in advance to practice in front of others so they can give you effective feedback.
Use these steps as a guide, but you still need to be yourself and not directly copy someone else.
Crucial conversations: discussions between two or more people where (1) the stakes are high, (2) opinions vary, and (3) emotions run strong.
Examples of work-related crucial conversations are talking to a coworker who behaves offensively; critiquing a colleague’s work; talking to a team member who isn’t keeping commitments; or giving an unfavorable performance review.
Handling difficult communications effectively can prevent problems, motivate team members, increase collaboration, and improve bottom-line results.
When faced with critical conversations, people may avoid them, face them and handle them poorly, or face them and handle them well.
With critical conversations, often our negative emotions kick in, and the fight or flight response takes over.
Crucial conversations often happen unexpectedly, which means people typically are unprepared.
Even though many organizations now claim that they believe in the merits of upward employee involvement and feedback, translating these espoused values into enacted values requires skill.
Because you can’t coach a boss that doesn’t want to be coached, you’re wise to put your efforts elsewhere if your manager is not receptive to feedback.
To gauge your boss’ receptiveness, it is recommended that you:
Learn your manager’s view of coaching.
Explain what’s in it for him or her.
Ask for permission to provide coaching or feedback.
Find how best to deliver criticism.
Ask for agreement and commitment.
If your boss is receptive to upward feedback, Table 9.9 provides recommendations for managing up.
The answer is A. Put multiple ideas on each slide to be efficient.
