Today's Business Communication
eBook - ePub

Today's Business Communication

Jason L. Snyder, Robert Forbus

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  1. 142 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Today's Business Communication

Jason L. Snyder, Robert Forbus

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About This Book

This handy guide to excellent business communicationsis perfect for anyone, whether preparing for acareer, launching a career, or advancing in a career.Future savvy business professionals understand thatevery organization expects employees to be exceptionalbusiness communicators and this book will getyou there.Inside, the authors lead you through the most frequentlyencountered business communication situationswith a combined 30 years of marketing andcommunication experience. Their success will give youvery accessible, entertaining, and informative answersto your questions. Also included are real anecdotesfrom business professionals from different industries.

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Information

Year
2014
ISBN
9781606496732
Chapter 1
Why Must I Read This Book and Follow Your Advice (or Else)?
When you read this chapter’s title you may have thought, “Who do these guys think they are?” If so, relax. We’re not nearly as full of ourselves as the chapter title suggests. Just like the late, life-and-success coach Dale Carnegie, we sincerely believe the following: “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.”1 Our assumption, and forgive us if we are assuming incorrectly, is that you want to be successful in your career. We also assume you want to have fun along the way. After all, if your work is fun, it’s a lot less like work and a lot more like play.
Ryan%20Kristafer.tif
This entire chapter is devoted to helping you gain a light-hearted perspective on how you can achieve success as a business communicator, and we are determined to have at least a little bit of fun along the way. So, why are we approaching our book in this manner? Let us answer that question by telling you a secret about ourselves. We have read a lot of wicked-dull books. It’s true. Between the two of us, we have two doctoral degrees, three master’s degrees, two bachelor’s degrees, and nearly 40 years of combined business and communications experience. Believe us when we tell you we know how dull many textbooks are. While it’s okay with us if you do not find our book to be a laugh riot, we hope you at least find it more interesting than many books you have read previously.
And speaking of fun, game show host Ryan ­Kristafer knows a thing or two about the relationship between success and fun. At the time of writing, Ryan is 22 years old; already, he has earned a degree in business, launched a career as an Internet entrepreneur (LIVE game guy), and is the top emcee/host at the second largest casino in the United States. Ryan says that half of what he does is building relationships and increasing his networks. He explains that the key to good relationships and networks in business is remembering that the people you meet today may not be immediately important to your business, but could become very important 5 years or more in the future. He also says relationships and networks must have mutual benefit—the benefit can’t be a one-way street.2 Ryan also offers advice on public speaking. You can find him on YouTube.
Communication Is About Relationships
Many, if not most, communication books focus on the process model.3 To demonstrate how the process model works, we’ll use an example from CBS television’s The Big Bang Theory, which was, according to the Neilson Company, the #1 show in the valuable 18–49 demographic for the week ending February 13, 2013. Let’s imagine that “Penny” is sitting on “Leonard’s” couch. She thinks about what she wants to say and then speaks those thoughts to him. He responds to her with some hilarious facial expression and says something back to her that makes the audience laugh. The Big Bang Theory scenario just described is an example of what researchers call encoding a message through symbolic and spontaneous messages.4,5
Although the process model helps us to understand barriers to effective communication—for example, how “Sheldon” grinding away on a blender in the kitchen behind “Penny” and “Leonard” could present interference, thus preventing “Penny’s” message from being accurately delivered to “Leonard”—it does not get to the real heart of communication: relationships. Part of what makes the comedy in The Big Bang Theory so hilarious to audiences is the complicated and dysfunctional relationships shared among the characters on the show.
Without communication, relationships of any kind would fail to exist. And just like the characters on The Big Bang Theory, we have in both our personal lives and our business careers, complicated, sometimes humorous, relationships with our coworkers, supervisors, direct reports, vendors, clients, customers, and stockholders, among others.
Great business communicators—and you should start lumping yourself into that category—must think beyond the process and understand that business communication is all about business relationships. This approach allows us to avoid dehumanizing our audiences, acknowledge the important role of relationships in our professional lives, and understand the interdependence and mutual influence that truly characterize our dealings with others.6 When you think about the great communicators in your life, do you admire their ability to overcome audience members’ psychological distractions or their ability to manage their relationships effectively?
Each Communication Carries Both Content and Relational Meanings
In their landmark book on communication and system principles, Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin, and Don Jackson presented five basic rules about communication.7 Although all five rules are worthy of your understanding, the second has practical usefulness for great business communicators: You communicate both content and relationship information in every message. What this rule is telling you is that not only are you giving a greeting when you say “good morning” to a customer, you are also sending information about the relationship between you and the customer. For example, the barista at Starbucks is greeting you, and at the same time letting you know that you are a needed, valued, welcome presence in the store. Part of the relational information the barista is communicating to you at Starbucks is that you have the power in the relationship.8 After all, the customer is always right, right?
Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson’s Five Communication Rules Paraphrased
1. You can’t communicate by yourself.
2. You communicate both content and relationship information in every message.
3. You and your communication partners organize messages with verbal “punctuation” that is similar to punctuation in written messages.
4. You communicate verbally and nonverbally.
5. Your communication with others is influenced by the nature of the relationship you have with those people.
Nonverbal Matters
For decades, people in popular culture have repeated the belief that nonverbal communication is 12.5 times more powerful than verbal communication. This belief rests in the psychological research of Albert Mehrabian.9 Without getting into a complicated debate over research methods, let’s just say that popular culture may have applied Mehrabian’s research a bit too broadly. However, we agree with the conventional wisdom that nonverbal communication is important. The best business communicators understand that reading and sending nonverbal communication is an art that can be practiced to advantage in dealing with others.
Let’s return to Starbucks and our barista example from before. We established previously that part of the barista’s “good morning” greeting was sending you relational message information. Much of that information being communicated by our barista is nonverbal (see rule 4). Examples of this nonverbal communication include his smile, the warmth of the expression in his eyes, the openness in his body language, or perhaps the slight inclination of his head toward you.
We’re spending time refreshing your memory about nonverbal communication because too frequently in business communication we forget that business is not entirely rational. Our organizations are filled with people, people who have emotions. For example, one of us once had a friend who complained that although he and his supervisor shared a cubicle, the supervisor would communicate even simple messages by email. In this case, the supervisor’s content was reaching its intended recipient. To the friend, however, the message really being sent was “I don’t like you enough to turn around and speak to you.” Was that the supervisor’s intent? Maybe not, but when we don’t pay attention to both the content and relational meanings of our messages, our communication effectiveness declines. Great communicators do the hard work of making sure that they attend to both meanings.
Nonverbal Communication Complements Verbal Messages
Your nonverbal communication should complement or reinforce your verbal messages. Effective business communicators understand this principle very well. What they understand is that when our verbal communication and nonverbal communication do not match (e.g., telling a prospective employer how interested you are in a job while leaning back, rolling your eyes, and crossing your arms), audiences give greater weight to the nonverbal behavior. So, when our verbal communication and nonverbal communication do not match, our messages lose clarity and become open to interpretation. And if there is one thing business communicators don’t like, it is losing control of their messages.
Think about a time when you suspected that a coworker was being dishonest with you. Chances are that, once your suspicion was adequately aroused, you began to pay attention to the coworker’s nonverbal behavior (e.g., failure to make eye contact, taking longer to respond to questions). Our interpretation of those behaviors was likely influenced by our past experiences with the person, with other persons, and by other outside factors. Although that approach is natural and reasonable, studies suggest those nonverbal behaviors are not the most indicative of deception10 and that we are not very good lie detectors.11 Therefore, when our coworker’s words are not matched by adequate eye contact, we tend to presume deception. Unfortunately, that conclusion may very well be incorrect. To ensure our messages are perceived appropriately, we must work to make sure that our verbal communication and nonverbal communication do not contradict one another.
It is probably worth mentioning that little white lies can be useful when used to help others avoid embarrassment. For example, when your pregnant spouse complains of feeling fat, it might be useful to tell her she has never looked more beautiful. Or, if your new colleague comes to a meeting in mis...

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