Writing Routine and Positive Messages

Much of the vital communication between a company and its customers is about routine matters, from product operation hints and technical support to refunds and ordering glitches.

The three-step writing process gives you a great way to produce these messages effectively and efficiently:

1. Planning a Routine or Positive Message
2. Writing a Routine or Positive Message
3. Completing a Routine or Positive Message

Strategy for Routine Requests
Making requests - for information, action, products, adjustemnts, or other matters - is a routine part of business. Like all other business messages, a routine request has three parts: (1) Opening, (2) Body, (3) Closing. Using the direct approach, open with your main idea, which is a clear statement of your request. Then use the body to give details and justify your request. Finally, close by requesting specific action.

Opening
Begin routine requests by placing your initial request first; up front is where it stands out and gets the most attention. Be specific!

Body
Use the body of your message to explain your request. Make the explanation a smooth and logical outgrowth of your opening remarks. If possible, point out how complying with the request could benefit the reader.
This list of tips helps organize your message and helps your audience identify the information you need:

• Ask the most important questions first
• Ask only relevant questions
• Deal with only one topic per question

Closing
Close your message with three important elements: (1) a specific request, (2) information about how you can be reached, and (3) an expression of appreciation or goodwill. If necessary, include specific dates for when information should be sent to you. Ex: Please provide the figures by May 5.

Example Routine Request:

Crafting Messages for Electronic Media

The most common modes of business communication have chaned significantly in the past decade. Years ago, business communication was largely defined by a publishing or broadcasting mindset. Externally, a company released carefully scripted messages to a mass audience that often had few, if any, ways to respond. In today's business environment, the audinece is no longer a passive recipient of messages but an active participant in the conversation. This blog post will discuss ways of communicating by means of electronic media.

Choosing Electronic Media For Breif Messages

1. Social networks and user-generated content sites. The most common sites are:
• Facebook.com
• LinkedIn.com
• Twitter.com
• Myspace.com
2. Email. High speed and low cost, e-mail is now a primary medium for most companies. However, as technologies continue to evolve and users tireof fighting the flood of spam, viruses, and other prolems related e-mail, this medium is being replaced by other means.
3. Instant messaging (IM). IM offers even greater speed than e-mail, as well as simple operation and fewer problems with unwanted messages or security and privacy problems.
4. Text messaging. Small screen sizes and the lack of a regular keyboard on many phone devices make text messaging somewhat less convenient than computer-based IM. Text messaging is, however, making its way into business communication in such areas as marketing, customer service, and online banking.
5. Blogs. The ability to update content quickly and easily makes blogs a natural medium when communicators need to get messages out in a hurry. 
6. Podcasts. Business are now using podcasts to replace or supplement conference calls, trainging courses, and other communication activities. 
7. Online video. Creating high quality videos require some time and expertise, but even the simple video functions now widely available in cameras and mobile phones can be useful for research interviews, location surveys, product demonstrations, and other communication tasks.

Although electronic means of communication are quick and easy there are certain situations where traditional printed messages should be used. Here are several situations in which you should consider:

• When you want to make a formal impression.
• When your are legally required to provide information in printed form.
• When you want to stand out from the flood of electronic messages.
• When you need a permanent, unchangeable, or secure record.

Here are some important tips to e-mailing and why they are important:

• When you request information or action, make it clear what you're asking for, why it's important, and how soon you need it; don't make your reader write back for details.
• People will be tempted to ignore your messages if they're not clear what you want or how soon you want it.
• When responding to a request, either paraphrase the request or include enough of the originial message to remind the reader what you're replying to.
• Some businesspeople get several hundred or more e-mail messages every day and may need to be reminded what your specific response is about.
• If possible, avoid long, complex messages via e-mail.
• Long messages are easier to read as printed reports or web content.
• Adjust the level of formality to the message and the audience.
• Overly ormal messages to colleagues are perceived as stuffy and distant' overly informal messages to customers or top executives are perceived as disrespectful.
• Activate a signature file, which automatically pastes your contact information into every message you create.
• You save the trouble of retyping vital information and ensure that recipients know how to reach you through other means.
• Don't let unread messages pile up in your in-box.
• You'll miss important information and create the impression that you're ignoring other people.
• Never type in all caps.
• ALL CAPS ARE INTERPRETED AS SCREAMING.
• Don't over-format your messages with background colors, colored type, complicated fonts, and so on.
• Such messages can be difficult and annoying to read on-screen.
• Remember that messages can be forwarded anywhere and saved forever.
• A moment of anger or poor judgment could haunt you for the rest of your career.
• Use the "return receipt requested" feature only for the most critical messages.
• This feature triggers a message back to you whenever someone receives or opens your message; many consider this an invasion of privacy.
• Make sure your computer has up-to-date virus protection.
• One of the worst breaches of "netiquette" is uknowingly infecting other computers becuase you haven't protected your own system.
• Pay attention to gramma, spelling, and capitalization.
• Some people don't think e-mail needs formal rules, but careless messages make you look unprofessional and can annoy readers.
• Use acronyms sparingly.
• Acronys such as IMHO ("in my humble opinion") and LOL ("laughing out loud") can be useful in informal correspondence between close colleagues, but don't use them in important messages.

If you put these tips you use, you will be able to construct effective and proffesional electronic messages. For more tips, visit these sites:

http://www.businessemailetiquette.com/
http://www.emailreplies.com/

Completing Business Messages

In any medium, readers tend to equate the quality of your writing with the quality of your thinking. When you finalize your written product, there are four steps to account for:

1. Revise your message to achieve optimum quality
2. Produce
3. Proofread
4. Distribute

Revising
If you have time, put aside your draft for a day or two before you begin the revision process. When you begin, focus your attention on content, organization, style, and tone. To evaluate the content of your message, answer these questions:

• Is the information accurate?
• Is the information relevant to the audience?
• Is there enough information to satisfy the readers' needs?
• Is there a good balance between general information (giving readers enough background information to appreciate the message) and specific information (giving readers the details they need to understand the message)?

When your are satisfied with the content of the message, you can review its organization by answering these questions:

• Are all the points covered in the most logical order?
• Do the most important ideas receive the most space, adn are they placed in the most prominent positions?
• Would the message be more convincing if it were arranged in another sequence?
• Are any points repeated unnecessarily?
• Are details grouped together logically, or are some still scattered through the document?

Some points to improve your messages readibility:

• Vary sentence length. Varying the length of your sentences is a creative way to make your messages interesting and readable. By choosing words and sentence structure with care, you can create a rhythm that emphasizes importent points, enlivens your writing style, and makes information more appealing to your reader. 
• Keep paragraphs short. Large blocks of text can be visually daunting. Keep paragraphs short to avoid intimidating even the most dedicated readers.
• Using lists and bullets to clarify and emphasize. How easy is this blog to follow?
• Adding headings and subheadings. Headings and subheadings improve a message's organization, attention, and connection.

Producing
Design affects readability in two important ways. First, if used carefully, design elements can improve the efectiveness of your message. If used poorly, design elements can act as barriers, blocking your communication. Second, the visual design sends a nonverbal message to your readers, influencing their perceptions of the communication before they read a single world. To achieve an effective design, pay careful attention to the following design elements:

• Consistency
• Balance
• Restraint
• Detail

Proofreading Your Message
Use these techniques from professional proofreaders to help ensure high-quality output:

• Make simple passes. Go through the document several times, focusing on a different aspect each time.
• Double-check high priority items. Check the spelling of names and the accuracy of dates, addresses, and any number that could cause grief if incorrect
• Give yourself some distance. If possible, don't proofread immediately after finishing a document; let your brain wander off to new topics and the come back fresh later on
• Be vigilant. Avoid reading large amounts of materal in one sitting and try not to proofread when you're tired.
• Stay focused. Concentrate on what you're doing. Try to block out distractions. 
• Take your time. Quick proofreading is not careful proofreading.

Distributing Your Message
 With the production finished, you're ready to distribute your message. As with every other aspect of business communication, your options for distribution multiply with every advance in technology. When choosing a means to distribute messages, consider the following factors:

• Cost
• Convenience
• Time
• Security and privacy

Worthy Sites/Links: 

Eight Steps to Effective Document Writing (PDF)
www.powa.org

Writing Business Messages

Readers and listeners want to know how your messages will benefit them. Providing the right information in the right format is essential, but it's not the only important apect of adapting to your audience. You may also need to adjust your writing or speaking style for specific situations, and idoing so requires a concerted effort for most communicators. Adapting to your audience can mean altering your natural communication style to match specific situations. To adapt to your audiences in a way that provides a compelling answer to the "What's in this for me?" question, (1) be sensitive to your members' needs, (2) build strong relationships, and (3) control your style to maintain a professional tone.

Being Senstitive to Your Audience's Needs 

• Using the "you" attitude
• The "you" attitude is best implemented by expressing your message in terms of the audience's interests and needs
• Avoid using you and yours when doing so:
• Makes you sound dictatorial
• Could make someone else feel unnecessarily guilty
• Goes against your organization's style
• Is inappropriate for the culture
• "You failed to deliver on time" vs. "the customer didn't receive the order on time"
•  Maintaining Standards of Etiquette
• By being courteous to members of your audience, you show consideration for them an foster a more successful environment for communication
• When experiencing frustration with co-workers, customers, or others, you may be tempted to say what you think in blunt terms
• Venting emotions rarely improves the situation and can jeopardize your audience's goodwill
• Demonstrate your diplomatic skills by controlling your emotions and communicating calmly and politely
• Using Bias-Free Language
• Bias-free language avoids words and phrases that unfairly and even unethically categorize or stigmatize people in ways related to gender, race, ethnicity, age, or disability.

Buliding Strong Relationships with Your Audience 
Successful communication relies on a positive relationship existing between sender and receiver. Establishing your credibility and projecting your company's image are two vital steps in building and fostering positive business relationships.

• Establishing Your Credibility
• Audience response responses to your messages depend heavily on your credibility, a measure of your believability, based on how reliable you are and how much trust you evoke in others. 
• To build, maintain, or repair your credibility, empahasize the following characteristics:
• Honesty
• Objectivity
• Awareness of audience needs
• Credentials, knowledge, and expertise
• Endorsements
• Performance
• Confidence
• Communication style
• Sincerity
• Projecting Your Company's Image
• When you communicate with anyone outside your organization, it is more than a conversation between two individuals. Most successful companies work hard to foster a specific public image, and your external communication efforts need to project that image.

Controlling Your Style and Tone
Your communication style involves the choices you make to express yourself: the words you select, the manner in which you use those words in sentences, and the way you build paragraphs from individual sentences. Your style creates a certain tone, or overall impression, in your messages. 

• Guidelines for Using a Conversational Tone
• Understand the difference between texting and writing. The casual language used in text messaging and IM between friends is not considered professional business writing.
• Aviod stale and pompous language. To achieve a businesslike tone, you might be tempted to adopt such phrases as "attached please find" and "please be advised that."While these phrases were once common in business, they sound stale and pompous to contemporary audiences. 
• Avoid preaching and bragging. Few things are more irritating than know-it-alls who like to preach or brag. 
• Be careful with intimacy. Business messages should generally avoid intimacy, such as sharing personal details or adopting a casual unprofessional tone.
• Be careful with humor. In most situations, you have little to gain from humor and potentially much to lose. Never use humor in formal messages or when you're communicating across cultural boundaries.

Relevant Websites to Explore:

• www.write101.com/businessletter.htm
• www.ezinearticles.com/?Effective-Business-Communication&id=1875157 
• www.business.com

 
 

Planning Business Messages

Checklist for Planning Business Messages
A. Analyze the Situation.

• Determine whether the purpose of your message is to inform, persuade, or collaborate.
• Identify what you want your audience to think or do after receiving the message.
• Make sure your purpose is wothwhile and realistic.
• Make your the time is right for your message.
• Make sure you purpose is acceptable to your organization.
• Identify the primary audience.
• Determine the size and composition of your audience.
• Estimate your audience's level of understanding and porobable reaction to your message. 

B. Gather information.

• Decide whether to use formal or informal techniques for gathering information.
• Find out what your audience needs to know.
• Provide all required information and make sure it's accurate, ethical, and pertinent.

C. Select the best medium for your message.

• Understand the advantages and disadvantages of oral, written, visual, and electronic media.
• Consider media richness, formality, media limitations, urgency, cost, and audience performance.

D. Organize your information.

• Define your main idea.
• Limit your scope.
• Choose the direct or indirect approach.
• Outline content by starting with the main idea, adding major points, and illustrating with evidence.    
  

**The following provides detailed analysis of the above checklist**

Understanding the Three-Step Writing Process
The three-step writing process helps ensure that your messages are both effective (meeting your audience's needs and getting your points across) and efficient (making the best use of your time and your audience's time):

• Step 1: Planning business messages. To plan any message, first analyze the situation by defining your purpose and developing a profile of your audience. Then, gather information that will meet your audience's needs. Then, select the right medium (oral, written, visual, or electronic) to deliver the message. Finally, organize the information be defining your main idea and outlining your content.
• Step 2: Writing business messages. After you've planned your message, adapt to your audience with sensitivity relationship skills, and an appropriate writing style. Compose your message by choosing strong words, creating effective sentences, and developing coherent paragraphs.
• Step 3: Completing business messages. After writing your first draft, revise your message by evaluating the content, reviewing readability, and editing and rewriting until your message comes across concisely and clearly.

Planning Effectively
Analyze your situation. A successful message starts with aclear purpose that connects the sender's needs with the audiences needs. If you launch directly into writing without clarifying both your purpose and your audience, you'll waste time and energy, and you'll probably generate a less-effective message.

Define your purpose.  All business messages have a general purpose: to inform, tp persuade, or to collaborate with the audience. With the scope of its general purpose, each message also has a specific purpose, which identifies what you hope to accomplish with your essage and what your audience should do or think after receiving your meessage.

Gathering Information
When you have a clear picture of your audience, your next step is to assemble the information that you will include in your message. You can often use a variety of informal techniques to gather insights and guide your research efforts:

• Consider the audience's perspective. Put yourself in the audience's position.
• Read reports and other company documents. Annual reports, financial statements, news releases, blogs by industry experts, marketing reports, and customer surveys are just a few of the many potential sources.
• Talk with supervisors, colleagues, or customers. Fellow workers and customers may have information you need.
• Ask your audience for input. If you're unsure what audience members need from your message, ask them. 

Factors to Consider When Choosing Media

  The Importance of Good Organization
• Good organization helps audience members understand your message, accept your message, and save time.
• Good organizational skills are also good for your career becuase they help you develop a reputation as a clear thinker who cares about your readers.

Choosing Between Direct and Indirect Approaches
• The Direct Approach. When you know your audience will be receptive to your message, use the direct approach: Start with the main idea (such as a recommendation, a conclusion, or a request) and follow that with your supportive evdience.
• The Indirect Approach. When your audience will be skeptical about or even resistat to your message, use the indirect approach: Start with the evidence first and build your case before presenting the main idea. 

Communicating in a World of Diversity

Opportunities and Challenges of Intercultural Communication

Opportunities in a Global Marketplace
 Thanks to communication and transportation technologies, natural boundaries and national borders are no longer the impassable barriers they once were.Local markets are opening to worldwide competition as businesses of all sizes look for new growth opportunities outside their own countries.
FACTS: 

• Thousands of U.S. business rely on exports for significant portions of revenue.

• These companies export hundreds of billions of dollars worth of materials and merchandise, along with billions more in personal and professional services.
• Of the top 10 export markets for U.S. products, only two, Canada and Great Britain speak English as an official language.

Advantages of a Diverse Workforce
• Even if you never visit another country or transact business on a global scale, you will interact with colleagues from a variety of cultures, with a wide range of characteristics and life experiences. 
• Diversity is simply a fact of life for all companies

"More diverse teams tend to be more innovative over the long term than more homogeneous teams"

 -IBM's Ron Glover

Challenges of Intercultural Communication

• Today's increasingly diverse workforce encompasses a wide range of skills, traditions, backgrounds, experiences, outlooks, and attitudes toward work, all of which can affect communication in the workplace.

• Culture influences everything about communication, including:

1. Language
2. Nonverbal signals
3. Word meaning
4. Time and space issues
5. Rules of human relationships

• The interaction of culture and communication is so pervasive that separating the two is virtually impossible. The greater the difference between cultures, the greater the chance for misunderstanding.

Example:  The American-made movie Hollywood Buddha was advertised with posters showing the star of the movie sitting on the head of a statue of Buddha:

Such a depiction may have few spiritual implications for non-Buddhists, but it was a serious insult to many Buddhists - so much so that Buddhists in a number of countries took to the streets in protest.

Enhancing Your Sensitivity to Culture and Diversity

The Concept of Culture

• Culture is a shared system of symbols, beliefs, attitudes, values, expectations, and norms for behavior. Your cultural background influences the way you prioritize what is important in life, helps define your attitude toward what is appropriate in a situation, and establishes rules of behavior.

• You belong to several cultures, each of which affects the way you communicate.

• Learning culture directly: you are explicitly told which behaviors are acceptable.

• Learning culture indirectly: you learn by observing which values work best in a particular group.

Overcoming Ethnocentrism and Stereotyping

Ethnocentrism: The tendency to judge other groups according to the standards, behaviors, and customs of one's own group.

Xenophobia: A fear of strangers and foreigners.

• Distorted views of other cultures or groups also result from stereotyping, assigning a wide range of generalized attributes to an individual on the basis of membership in a particular culture or social group.

Cultural Pluralism: The practice of accepting multiple cultures on their own terms.

Three habits to help adapt to new cultures:

1. Avoid Assumptions. Don't assume that others will act the same way you do, use language and symbols the same way you do, or even operate from the same values and beliefs.
2. Avoid Judgments. When people act differently, don't conclude that they are in error or that their way is invalid or inferior.
3. Acknowledge Distinctions. Don't ignore the differences between another person's culture and your own.

Recognizing Variations in a Diverse World

Contextual Differences

Cultural Context: A pattern of physical cues, environmental stimuli, and implicit understanding that conveys meaning between members of the same culture.
High-Context Culture: People rely heavily on nonverbal actions and environmental setting to convey meaning.
Low-Context Culture: People rely more on explicit verbal communication.


Legal and Ethical Differences

• Making ethical choices across cultures can seem complicated, but you can keep your messages ethical by applying four basic principles:

1. Actively seek mutual ground. To allow the clearest possible exchange of information, both parties must be flexible and avoid insisting that an interaction take place strictly in terms of one culture or another.
2. Send and receive messages without judgment. To allow information to flow freely, both parties must recognize that values vary from culture to culture, and they must trust each other.
3. Send messages that are honest. To ensure that information is true, both parties must see things as they are - not as they would like them to be.
4. Show respect for cultural differences. To protect the basic human rights of both parties, each must understand the other's needs.

Social Differences
• Social norms can vary from culture to culture in the following areas:

1. Attitudes towards work and success
2. Roles and status
3. Use of manners
4. Concepts of time
5. Future orientation
6. Openness and inclusiveness

Nonverbal Differences
When you have the opportunity to interact with people in another culture, the best advice is to study the culture in advance and then observe the way people behave in the following areas:

1. Greetings
2. Personal space
3. Touching
4. Facial expressions
5. Eye contact
6. Posture
7. Formality  

Want to be more competitive when doing business across borders? Executive Planet offers quick introductions to expected business practices in a number of countries, from setting up appointments to giving gifts to negotiating deals. Visit: www.executiveplanet.com.

Mastering Team and Interpersonal Communication

Advantages and Disadvantages of Working in Teams
• When teams are successful, they can improve productivity, creativity, employee involvement, and even job security. They are not appropriate for every situation - even when they are, companies should weigh both the advantages and disadvantages of a team-based approach.
• Participative Management: The effort to involve employees in the company's decision making.

Advantages:

1. Increased information and knowledge: A team has access to more information in the decision-making process.
2. Increased diversity of views: Team members bring a variety of perspectives to the decision making process.
3. Increased acceptance of a solution: Those who participate in making a decision are more likely to support it and encourage others to accept it.
4. Higher performance levels: Working in teams can unleash new levels of creativity, energy, effectiveness as well as reduce employee boredom, increase feelings of dignity and self-worth, and reduce stress and tension.

Disadvantages:

1. Groupthink: Occurs when peer pressures cause individual team members to withhold contrary or unpopular opinions. 
2. Hidden agendas: Private, counterproductive motives, such as a desire to take control of the group, to undermine someone else on the team, or to purse a business goal that runs counter to the team's mission.
3. Cost: Assigning schedules, arranging meetings, and coordinating individual parts of a project can eat up a lot of times and money.

Guidelines for Collaborative Writing
• In any collaborative effort, it's important to recognize that team members coming from different backgrounds may have different work habits or priorities. To collaborate effectively, everyone involved must be flexible and open to other opinions, focusing on team objectives rather than on individual priorities. The following guidelines will help you collaborate more successfully:

1. Select collaborators carefully: Choose a combination of people who have the experience, information, and talent needed for each project.
2. Agree on project goals before you start: Starting without a clear idea of what the team hopes to accomplish inevitably leads to frustration and wasted time.
3.  Give your team time to bond before diving in: Make sure team members can get to know each other before being asked to collaborate.
4. Clarify individual responsibilities: Because members will depend on each other, make sure individual responsibilities are clear, including who is supposed to do what and by when.
5. Establish clear process: Make sure everyone knows how the work will be done, including checkpoints and decisions to be made along the way.
6. Avoid writing as a group: Group writing is often a slow, painful process that delivers bland results. The best approach is to plan, research, and outline together but assign the task of writing to one person.
7. Make sure tools and techniques are ready and compatible across the team: Minor details such as different versions of software can delay projects. Test the system before work begins.
8. Check to see how things are going along the way: Don't assume that everything is working just because you don't hear hear anything negative.

Using Meeting Technologies
• The focus of most meeting technologies is to enable participation among  people in two or more locations. These technologies have spurred the emergence of virtual teams, whose members work in different locations and interact electronically in virtual meetings.
• Teleconferencing: Long distance meeting tool that connects three or more people by phone simultaneously.
• Videoconferencing: Combines audio communication with live video, letting team members see each other, demonstrate products, and transmit other visual information.
Web-based meeting systems: Combine the best of instant messaging, shared work spaces, and videoconferencing with other tools such as virtual whiteboards that let teams collaborate in real time.
• Visit www.secondlife.com to learn about their recent developments in virtual meetings and other communication activities in virtual worlds.

The Important Process of Listening
• Listening is a far more complex process than most people think - and most of us aren't very good at it. To listen effectively, you need to successfully complete five separate steps:

1. Receiving: You start by physically hearing the message and acknowledging it. Reception can be blocked by noise, impaired hearing, or inattention.
2. Decoding: Your next step is to assign meaning to sounds, which you do according to your own values, beliefs, ideas, expectations, roles, needs, and personal history.
3. Remembering: Before you can act on the information, you need to store i for future processing.
4. Evaluating: Your next step is to evaluate the message by applying critical thinking skills to separate fact from opinion and evaluate the quality of the evidence.
5. Responding: After you've evaluated the message, you react. 

Effective Listening Video

Nonverbal communication  
Nonverbal Communication is the interpersonal process of sending and receiving information, both intentionally and intentionally, without using written or spoken language. These signals play a vital role in communication because they can strengthen a verbal message, weaken a verbal message, or replace words entirely. The range and variety of nonverbal signals are almost endless, but you can grasp the basics by studying six general categories:

1. Facial expression: Your face is the primary vehicle for expressing your emotions; it reveals
   both the type and the intensity of your feelings. Your eyes are especially effective for indicating attention and interest, influencing other, regulating interaction, and establishing dominance. 
2. Gesture and posture:  The way you position and move your body expresses both specific and general messages, some voluntary and some involuntary. Some unconscious signals that reveal how you are feeling include slouching, leaning forward, fidgeting, and walking briskly.
3. Vocal characteristics: Voice carries both intentional and intentional messages.  Varying pitch, pace, and stress can convey different messages.
4. Touch: Touch is an important way to convey warmth, comfort, and reassurance - as well as control. 
5. Time and space: Like touch, time and space can be used to assert authority, imply intimacy, and send other nonverbal messages. Some people try to demonstrate their own importance or disregard for others by making other people wait; others show respect by being on time.

The Importance of Business Etiquette 
• Attention to etiquette is essential to success in every form of business communication - so much so that etiquette is considered an important business skill. Poor etiquette can hinder team efforts, drain morale and productivity, drive away customers and investors, and limit your career potential.

Achieving Success Through Effective Business Communication

How is Business Communication 2.0 different from 1.0?
- Business Communication 1.0: Unidirectional flow of information, usually from "top down"
- Business Communication 2.0: Multi directional flow involving interaction, conversation, and technologies from the "Web 2.0 era".

1.0 Tendencies vs  2.0 Tendencies

Publication vs Conversation

Lecture vs Discussion

Intrusion vs Permission

Unidirectional vs Bidirectional, multi directional

One to many vs One to one, many to many

Control vs Influence

Low message frequency vs High message frequency

Few channels vs Many channels

If you are an active user of Web 2.0 technologies (i.e. blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other social media tools) you'll fit right in with this new communication environment - and possible even have a head start on more experienced professionals. 

For more, read this short article on 5 business communication trends:  

http://www.accuconference.com/blog/Communication-Trends.aspx

Achieving Success in Today's Competitive Environment (HINT: The key is COMMUNICATION)

*If you are looking for a surefire way to stand out from your competition, improving your communication skills may be the single most important step you can take. To do this, learn to:

1-Write well

2-Speak well

3-Listen well

4-Recognize the appropriate way to communicate in various business situations

What is Communication Anyway?

It is the process of transferring information and meaning between senders and receivers, using one or more written, oral, visual, or electronic channels. 

Some Benefits of Effective Communication:

   • Stronger decision making based on timely, reliable information

   • Faster problem solving, in which less time is spent on understanding problems and more is spent on creating solutions

   • Earlier warning of potential problems, from rising business costs to critical safety issues

   • Enhanced professional images fro both employees and companies

FACT: Top managers spend as much as 85% of their time communicating with others

Communication Within the Organization

There are two types of communication:

   -Formal Communication: ideas and information flow along the lines of command (the hierarchical levels) in the company's organization structure. They tend to follow the conventional Business Communication 1.0 mindset.

   -Informal Communication: Often referred to as the grapevine or the rumor mill, that encompasses all communication that takes place outside the formal network.

For Effective Communication...

1. Provide practical information
2. Give facts rather than vague impressions
3. Present information in a concise, efficient manner
4. Clarify expectations and responsibilities
5. Offer compelling, persuasive arguments and recommendations

The Communication Process

1.  The sender has an idea. Whether a communication effort will ultimately be effective starts right here. Have something to contribute (an idea, procedure change, etc.)
2. The sender encodes the idea as a message.
3. The sender produces the message in a transmittable medium.
4. The sender transmits the message through a channel.
5. The audience receives the message.
6. The audience decodes the message.
7. The audience responds to the message.
8. The audience provides feedback to the sender.

In  a Nutshell...


To communicate more effectively on the job, use six strategies:

1. Work to understand the communication process so that you can craft more effective messages.
2. Reduce distractions in the work environment, including not sending unnecessary messages
3. Adopt an audience-centered approach, focusing on the needs of your audience and working to ensure successful transmission and reception of your messages
4. Fine-tune your business communication skills
5. Give feedback that is constructive rather than destructive so that others can focus on improvement - and be able to respond to constructive feedback about your own work
6. Be sensitive to business etiquette, thereby reducing the chance of interpersonal blunders that might negatively affect communication

Communication and Ethics:
Ethical communication is particularly important in business because communication is the public face of a company, which is why communication efforts are intensely scrutinized by company stakeholders
Ethical Dilemma - When the choice is unclear because two or more alternatives seem equally right or equally wrong.
Ethical Lapse - Occurs when a person makes a conscious choice that is clearly unethical.