Business Communication

Chapter 1:

Communication is the process of transferring information and meaning between senders and receivers,
using one or more media and communication channels.

Ambition and great ideas aren’t enough; you need to be able to communicate with people to succeed in
business.

Strong communication skills give you an advantage in the job market.

These three exchanges between a software project manager (left) and his boss (right) illustrate the
variety of ways in which information is shared between senders and receivers. In the top exchange, the
sender’s meaning is transmitted intact to the receiver, who accepts what the sender says at face value.
In the middle exchange, the sender and receiver negotiate the meaning by discussing the situation. The
negotiated meaning is that everything is fine so far, but the risk of a schedule slip is now higher than it
was before. In the bottom exchange, the receiver has a negative emotional reaction to the word think
and as a result creates her own meaning—that everything probably is not fine, despite what the sender
says.

Effective communication helps businesses in numerous ways, by promoting:

 A stronger sense of trust between individuals and organizations

 Closer ties with important communities in the marketplace
 Opportunities to influence conversations, perceptions, and trends
 Increased productivity and faster problem solving
  Better financial results and higher return for investors
 Earlier warning of potential problems, from increasing business costs to critical safety issues
 Stronger decision making based on timely, reliable information
 Clearer and more persuasive marketing messages
 Greater employee engagement with their work, leading to higher employee satisfaction and
lower employee turnover

What makes business communication effective?

 Provide practical information

 Give facts rather than vague impressions: Use concrete language, specific detail, and
information that is clear, convincing, accurate, and ethical
 Present information in a concise, efficient manner.
 Clarify expectations and responsibilities
 Offer compelling, persuasive arguments and recommendations

Professional Communication

Professionalism is the quality of performing at a high level and conducting oneself with purpose and
pride. Professionalism can be broken down into six distinct traits:

 striving to excel
 being dependable and accountable
 being a team player
 demonstrating a sense of etiquette
 making ethical decisions
 maintaining a positive outlook
 What employers expect?
 Recognizing information needs, using efficient search techniques to locate reliable sources of
information (particularly from online sources), and using gathered information ethically; this
collection of skills is often referred to as digital information fluency9
 Organizing ideas and information logically and completely
 Expressing ideas and information coherently, persuasively, and concisely
 Actively listening to others
 Communicating effectively with people from diverse backgrounds and experiences
 Using communication technologies effectively and efficiently
 Following accepted standards of grammar, spelling, and other aspects of high-quality writing
and speaking
 Communicating in a civilized manner that reflects contemporary expectations of business
etiquette, even when dealing with indifferent or hostile audiences
 Communicating ethically, even when choices aren’t crystal clear or you have to share news that
people don’t want to hear
 Managing your time wisely and using resources efficiently
 Using critical thinking, which is the ability to evaluate evidence completely and objectively in
order to form logical conclusions and make sound recommendations.

Communication in Organizational Context

Every organization has a formal communication network, in which ideas and information flow along
the lines of command (the hierarchical levels) in the company’s organization structure.
  Downward communication flows from executives to employees, conveying executive
decisions and providing information that helps employees do their jobs
 Upward communication flows from employees to executives, providing insight into
problems, trends, opportunities, grievances, and performance, thus allowing executives to
solve problems and make intelligent decisions
 Horizontal communication flows between departments to help employees share
information, coordinate tasks, and solve complex problems
 Informal communication network, often referred to as the grapevine or the rumor mill,
which encompasses all communication that occurs outside the formal network.

Audience Centered Approach

 An audience-centered approach involves understanding, respecting, and meeting the needs of

your audience members.
 Etiquette, the expected norms of behavior in a particular situation, can have a profound
influence on your company’s success and your career.

Exploring the Communication Process

Viewing communication as a process helps you identify steps you can take to improve your success as a
communicator.

Basic Communication Model

Barriers in the Communication Environment

 Noise and distractions.

 Competing messages: Having your audience’s undivided attention
 Filters: Messages can be blocked or distorted by filters, any human or technological
interventions between the sender and the receiver
 Channel breakdowns

To improve the odds that your messages will be successfully perceived by your audience, pay close
attention to expectations, ease of use, familiarity, empathy, and technical compatibility.

 Consider audience expectations

 Ensure ease of use.
 Emphasize familiarity
 Practice empathy
 Design for compatibility

Decoding the message

Decoding is a complex process; receivers often extract different meanings from messages than senders
attempt to encode in them.

Selective perception occurs when people ignore or distort incoming information to fit their preconceived
notions of reality. Resolve potential ambiguities.

Shared Experiences:

How Audiences respond to messages:

Audiences will likely respond to a message if they remember it, if they’re able to respond, and if they’re
properly motivated to do so.

Sensory memory – short-term memory – Long-term memory

By explaining how audiences will benefit by responding positively to your messages, you’ll increase their
motivation to respond.

Social Communication Model

The conversational and interactive social communication model is revolutionizing business

communication.

The social communication model can increase the speed of communication, reduce costs, improve
access to expertise, and boost employee satisfaction.

Traditional vs social modes of B.com

Disadvantages of social communication:

 Info overload
 Lower level of engagement with tasks and other people
 fragmented attention
 information security risks
 reduced productivity
 the difficulty of maintaining a healthy boundary between personal and professional lives

Mobile Revolution

Mobile apps and communication systems can boost employee productivity, help companies form closer
relationships with customers and business partners, and spur innovation in products and services
Mobile devices are rapidly taking over as the primary communication platform for many business
professionals.

Another successful approach is creating mobile apps that offer a more interactive and mobile-friendly
experience than a conventional website can provide.

People who grew up with mobile phones often expect to have the same level of connectivity in their
roles as both customers and as employees.

Here are the most significant ways mobile technology is changing the practice of business
communication:

 Constant connectivity is a mixed blessing: In this regard, mobile plays an important role in
efforts to reduce operating costs through telecommuting and other nontraditional work models
 Small mobile displays and sometimes-awkward input technologies present challenges for
creating and consuming content, whether it’s typing an email message or watching a video.
 Mobile users are often multitasking
 Mobile communication, particularly text messaging, has put pressure on traditional standards of
grammar, punctuation, and writing in general.
 Mobile devices can serve as sensory and cognitive extensions
 Mobile devices create a host of security and privacy concerns for end users and corporate
technology managers alike
 Mobile tools can enhance productivity and collaboration by making it easier for employees to
stay connected.
 Mobile apps can assist in a wide variety of business tasks
 More engaging experiences for customers and their users

Using Technology to Improve B.Com

Don’t rely too much on technology or let it overwhelm the communication process. Technology is an aid
to interpersonal communication, not a replacement for it.

Information overload results when people receive more information than they can effectively process.
An important step in reducing information overload is to avoid sending unnecessary messages.

The information technology paradox: information tools can waste as much time as they save.

Communicating in today’s business environment requires at least a basic level of technical competence.
In addition to using your tools appropriately, knowing how to use them efficiently can make a big
difference in your productivity.

No matter how much technology is involved, communication is still about people connecting with
people.

Tools for effective communications:

 Web-Based Meetings
 Videoconferencing and Telepresence
  Shared Online Workspaces
 Voice Technologies
 Mobile Business Apps
 Mobile Business Apps
 Wikis
 Data Visualization
 Crowdsourcing and Collaboration Platforms
 Internet of Things
 Content Curation
 Blogging
 Applicant Tracking Systems
 Podcasting
 Online Video
 User-Generated Content Sites
 Gaming Technologies
 Community Q&A Sites
 Microblogging
 Social Networking

Ethical and Legal communication

 Plagiarizing
 Omitting essential information
 Selective misquoting.
 Misrepresenting numbers
 Distorting visuals
 Failing to respect privacy or information security needs

Transparency gives audience members access to all the information they need in order to process
messages accurately

An ethical dilemma is a choice between alternatives that may not be clearly right or clearly wrong.

An ethical lapse is making a choice you know to be unethical.

Ensuring ethical business communication requires three elements:

 Ethical individuals
 Ethical company leadership
 Appropriate policies and structures to support employees’ efforts to make ethical choices

To ensure ongoing compliance with their codes of ethics, many companies also conduct ethics audits to
monitor ethical progress and to point out any weaknesses that need to be addressed.
Ensuring Legal Communication:

 Promotional communication: Marketing specialists need to be aware of the many laws that
govern truth and accuracy in advertising.
 Contracts: A contract is a legally binding promise between two parties in which one party makes
a specified offer and the other party accepts.
 Employment communication
 Intellectual property: includes patents, copyrighted materials, trade secrets, and even Internet
domain names.
 Financial reporting
 Defamation
 Transparency requirements: Governments around the world are taking steps to help ensure that
consumers and other parties know who is behind the information they receive, particularly
when it appears online.
 Chapter 2: Collaboration, Interpersonal Communication, and Business Ettiquette

Communicating Effectively in Teams

Collaboration—working together to solve complex problems—is an essential skill for workers in nearly
every profession. Problem-solving teams and task forces assemble to resolve specific issues and then
disband when their goals have been accomplished.(transitional)

Such teams are often cross-functional, pulling together people from a variety of departments who have
different areas of expertise and responsibility.

Team members have a shared mission and are collectively responsible for their work.

Committees are formal teams that usually have a long life span and can become a permanent part of
the organizational structure.

Advantages of Teams:

 Increased information and knowledge.

 Increased diversity of views.
 Increased acceptance of a solution.
 Higher performance levels

Disadvantages of Teams:

 Groupthink: occurs when peer pressure causes individual team members to withhold
contrary or unpopular opinions.
 Hidden agendas
 Cost
 Overload

Characteristics of Effective Teams:

Effective teams have a clear sense of purpose, open and honest communication, consensus-based
decision making, creativity, and effective conflict resolution. In contrast, teams lacking one or more of
these attributes can get bogged down in conflict or waste time and resources pursuing unclear goals.

Group Dynamics:

Group dynamics are the interactions and processes that take place within a team

 Assuming Team roles: Each member of a group plays a role that affects the outcome of the
group’s activities.
 Allowing for Team Evolution: Teams typically evolve through a variety of phases, such as
orientation, conflict, brainstorming, emergence, and reinforcement.

1. Orientation: Team members socialize, establish their roles, and begin to define their
task or purpose
2. Conflict
3. Brainstorming
4. Emergence
5. Reinforcement
You may also hear the process defined as forming, storming, norming, performing, and
adjourning, the phases identified by researcher Bruce Tuckman when he proposed one of the
earliest models of group development
 Resolving Conflict: Conflict in teams can be either constructive or destructive. Destructive
conflict can lead to win-lose or lose-lose outcomes.
How to resolve:
1. Proactive behavior
2. Communication: Non-verbal gestures are important.
3. Openness
4. Research
5. Flexibility
6. Fair play
7. Alliance
 Overcoming Resistance: When you encounter resistance or hostility, try to maintain your
composure and address the other person’s emotional needs.
Rather than pushing harder, stop talking and start listening. Apply the active listening skills
With a line of communication open, recognize that your primary goal is not to win the argument
but rather to build a relationship that can lead to solving the dilemma at hand.
 As you establish a comfortable working relationship, continue to be aware of elements of
resistance that remain unspoken.
With a better understanding of the resistance, the next step is to move toward a resolution
through collaborative effort.

Collaborating on Communication Efforts

Guidelines for Collaborative Writing:

 Select collaborators carefully

 Agree on project goals before you start
 Give your team time to bond before diving in
 Clarify individual responsibilities
 Establish clear processes
 Avoid composing as a group: to make sure there is consistency
 Make sure tools and techniques are ready and compatible across the team
 Check to see how things are going along the way
Giving Constructive Feedback:

Responding to Constructive Feedback:

When you receive constructive feedback on your writing, keep your emotions in check and view it as an
opportunity to improve.

Constructive feedback, sometimes called constructive criticism, focuses on the process and outcomes of
communication, not on the people involved. In contrast, destructive feedback delivers criticism with no
guidance to stimulate improvement.

Making your meetings more productive:

Well-run meetings can help companies solve problems, develop ideas, and identify opportunities

Preparing for meetings:

 Define your purpose

 Select participants for the meeting
 Choose the venue and the time
 Set the agenda

Conducting and Contributing to Efficient Meetings:

 Keep the discussion on track

 Follow agreed-on rules
 Encourage participation
 Participate actively
 Use mobile devices respectfully
 Close effectively
Improving Your Listening Skills
To be a good listener, adapt the way you listen to suit the situation.

Content listening is to understand and retain the information in the speaker’s message.

The goal of critical listening is to understand and evaluate the meaning of the speaker’s message on
several levels: the logic of the argument, the strength of the evidence, the validity of the conclusions,
the implications of the message, the speaker’s intentions and motives, and the omission of any
important or relevant points.

The goal of empathic listening is to understand the speaker’s feelings, needs, and wants so that you can
appreciate his or her point of view

Active listening, making a conscious effort to turn off their own filters and biases to truly hear and
understand what the other party is saying.

Understanding the Listening Process:

 Receiving
 Decoding
 Remembering
 Evaluating
 Responding
Effective Listening:

Overcoming Barriers to Effective Listening:

Selective listening is one of the most common barriers to effective listening. If your mind wanders, you
may stay tuned out until you hear a word or phrase that gets your attention again. But by that time,
you’re unable to recall what the speaker actually said; instead, you remember what you think the
speaker probably said.

Listeners sometimes make up their minds before fully hearing the speaker’s message, or they engage in
defensive listening—protecting their egos by tuning out anything that doesn’t confirm their beliefs or
their view of themselves.
 Chapter 3: Communication Challenges in a Diverse, Global
Marketplace

Understanding the Opportunities and Challenges of Communication in a Diverse World:

Opportunities in a Global Marketplace:

You will communicate with people from many other cultures throughout your career. Not surprisingly,
effective communication is important to cross-cultural and global business. The good news here is that
improving your cultural communication skills could make you a more valuable job candidate at every
stage of your career.

Advantages of a diverse workforce:

The diversity of today’s workforce brings distinct advantages to businesses:

 A broader range of views and ideas

 A better understanding of diverse, fragmented markets
 A broader pool of talent from which to recruit

Challenges of Intercultural Communication:

A company’s cultural diversity affects how its business messages are conceived, composed, delivered,
received, and interpreted. Culture influences everything about communication, including

 Language
 Nonverbal signals
 Word meaning
 Time and space issues
 Rules of human relationships

Developing Cultural Competency:

Cultural competency requires a combination of attitude, knowledge, and skills.

Understanding the Concept of Culture:

Culture is a shared system of symbols, beliefs, attitudes, values, expectations, and behavioral norms. You
belong to several cultures, each of which affects the way you communicate. You learn culture both
directly (by being instructed) and indirectly (by observing others). Cultures tend to offer views of life that
are both coherent (internally logical) and complete (able to answer all of life’s big questions).

Overcoming Ethnocentrism and Stereotyping:

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to judge all other groups according to the standards, behaviors, and
customs of one’s own group. An even more extreme reaction is xenophobia, a fear of strangers and
foreigners.

Stereotyping is assigning generalized attributes to an individual on the basis of membership in a

particular group.

Cultural pluralism is the acceptance of multiple cultures on their own terms.

You can avoid ethnocentrism and stereotyping by

 Avoiding assumptions
 Withholding judgment
 Accepting differences

Recognizing Variations in a Diverse World

Cultural context is the pattern of physical cues, environmental stimuli, and implicit understanding that
conveys meaning between members of the same culture.

Contextual Difference:

Cultural context is the pattern of physical cues, environmental stimuli, and implicit understanding that
conveys meaning between members of the same culture.

High-context cultures rely heavily on nonverbal actions and environmental setting to convey meaning;
low-context cultures rely more on explicit verbal communication.

Legal and Ethical Differences:

Honesty and respect are cornerstones of ethical communication, regardless of culture.

As you conduct business around the world, you’ll find that both legal systems and ethical standards
differ from culture to culture. Making ethical choices across cultures can seem complicated, but you can
keep your messages ethical by applying four basic principles:

 Actively Seek Mutual Ground

 Send and Receive Messages without judgement
 Send messages that are honest
 Show respect for cultural differences

Social Differences:

Formal rules of etiquette are explicit and well defined, but informal rules are learned through
observation and imitation.

Respect and rank are reflected differently from culture to culture in the way people are addressed and
in their working environment.

The rules of polite behavior vary from country to country.

Attitudes toward time, such as strict adherence to meeting schedules, can vary throughout the world.

Cultures around the world exhibit varying degrees of openness toward both outsiders and people whose
personal identities don’t align with prevailing social norms.

 Attitudes toward work and success

 Roles and status
 Use of manners
 Concepts of time
 Future orientation
 Openness and inclusiveness
 Use of communication technologies

Non-Verbal Differences:

The meaning of nonverbal signals can vary widely from culture to culture, so you can’t rely on
assumptions.

 Greetings
 Personal space
 Touching
 Facial expressions
 Eye contact
 Posture
 Formality

Age Differences:

A culture’s views on youth and aging affect how people communicate with one another.

Gender Differences:

Broadly speaking, men tend to emphasize content in their messages, whereas women tend to
emphasize relationship maintenance.

Religious Differences

Ability Differences:

Assistive technologies help employers create more inclusive workplaces and benefit from the
contributions of people with physical or cognitive impairments.

Adapting to Other Business Cultures:

Guidelines for adapting to any business culture:

An important step in understanding and adapting to other cultures is to recognize the influences that
your own culture has on your communication habits.

 Become aware of your own biases

 Be careful about applying the “Golden Rule.”
 Exercise tolerance, flexibility, and respect
 Practice patience and maintain a sense of humor

Improving Intercultural Relationships: