Business

Communication,
Management,
and Success

Module One

©2014 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2014 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Workplace Communication Challenges

 Employers clearly want employees who communicate well:

 States spend more than $220 million annually on remedial

writing programs for employees.

 Corporations may spend $3.1 billion annually to fix

problems from writing deficiencies. The cost is $22.13 per
page for a typical letter.
 Workplace Communication Challenges

 Work requires communication

 People communicate to plan products and services; hire, train,

and motivate workers; coordinate manufacturing and delivery;

persuade customers to buy; and bill them for the sale.

 Workplace Communication Challenges

 For many business, nonprofit, community, and government

organizations, the "product" is information or a service rather

than something tangible.

 Information and services are created and delivered by

communication.
 Verbal and Nonverbal Communication

 Communication takes many forms:

1. Verbal Communication that uses words.

2. Nonverbal Communication that does not use words.

Verbal and Nonverbal Communication

 Verbal Communication
 Face-to-Face/Phone Conversations/Meetings
 E-mail/Voice-Mail Messages
 Letters, Memos, and Reports

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Verbal and Nonverbal Communication

 Nonverbal Communication
 Pictures/Company Logos
 Gestures/Body Language
 Who Sits Whereat a Meeting
 How Long a Visitor is Kept Waiting

1-7
 Workplace Communication

 Communication affects all level of work

 Even in your first job, you'll communicate.
 You'll read information;
 you'll listen to instructions;
 you'll ask questions;
 you may solve problems with other workers in teams.
 In a manufacturing company, hourly workers travel to a
potential customer to make oral sales presentations.
 Workplace Communication

 Good communication skills are vital in today's workplace.

 The better an employee's communication skills are, the better

his or her chance for success.
 Business and School Writing

 Business writing is often different than other school

writing.
 Shorter sentences and paragraphs.
 More conversational tone.
 More dynamic document designs than a typical college essay.
 business writing often has multiple audiences.
 Business and School Writing
Differ based on/ School writing Business writing

Purpose. Show that you have

Meet an organizational need.
learned
Audience.
Limited Multiple

Information. New to reader.

Rarely new to reader

Organization Traditional essay form Psychological needs of reader

Style.
Formal Friendly

Document design. Short paragraphs

Long paragraphs

Visuals.
Few More
 Internal and External Audiences

 Communication—oral, nonverbal, and written—goes to

both Internal and External audiences.

 Internal: people in the same organization

 Subordinates
 Supervisors
 Peers
 External: people outside the organization
 Customers/Suppliers/Stockholders
 Unions/Government Agencies
 Press/General Public
 What does communication
accomplish?
 Internal
 Subordinates
 Supervisors
 Peers

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 The Internal Audiences of the
Sales Manager—West
Figure 1.1

1-14
 What does communication
accomplish?

 External
 Customers/Stockholders
 Unions/Government Agencies
 Press/General Public

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 The Corporation’s
External Audiences
Figure 1.2

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The Importance of Listening, Speaking,
and interpersonal Communication

Informal listening, speaking, and

working in groups are just as
important as writing formal
documents and giving formal oral
presentations.
 Basic Purposes of Messages

 Workplace massages can have one or more of these basic

purposes:
 To inform: explain or tell readers something.
 To request or to persuade: want the reader to act.
 To build goodwill: create a good image of yourself and of
your organization.

 Most messages have multiple purposes

 What makes a message effective?

 Is clear.
 Is complete.
 Is correct.
 Saves the reader’s time.
 Builds goodwill.

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 Good Business Writing
(Effective Message)

 Is clear: The meaning the reader gets is the meaning the

writer intended.
 Is complete: All of the reader’s questions are answered.
 Is correct: All information are accurate.

 Builds goodwill: The message presents a positive image of the

writer.
 Saves the reader’s time.
 Good Business Writing
(Effective Message)

 Whether a message meets these five criteria depends on:

 the interactions among the writer, the audience,
 the purposes of the message,
 and the situation.
 No single set of words will work in all possible situations.
 Poor Business Writing

 Poor correspondence costs even more.

 When writing isn't as good as it could be:

 you and your organization pay a price in wasted time,
 wasted efforts, and
 Lost goodwill.
 PAIBOC

Questions you need to answer before you begin composing

your message.

P What are your purposes in writing?

List all your purposes, major and minor:
specify exactly what you want your reader
to know, think, or do.

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 PAIBOC

A Who is (are) your audiences?

How do they differs from each other?
What Characteristic are relevant? How
will they respond to your message?

1-24
 PAIBOC

I What information must your message

include?
Make a list of the points that must be
included; check your draft. Put the
information without emphasizing in the
middle.

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 PAIBOC

B What reasons or reader benefits can you

use to support your position?
Make sure the benefits are adapted to
your reader.

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 PAIBOC

O What objections can you expect your

reader(s) to have?
Some negative elements can only be
deemphasized. Others can be overcome.

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 PAIBOC

C How will the context affect reader

response?
Your relationship to the reader, the
economy, the time of the year,..etc.

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 Assignment

 Introducing Yourself to Your Instructor

 Write a memo (at least 1X pages long) introducing

yourself to your instructor.
 Include the following topics:
1. Background:
1. Where did you grow up?
2. What you done in terms of school, extracurricular activities, jobs, and
family life?
 Assignment

2. Interests:
1. What are you interested in?
2. What do you like to do?
3. What do you like to think about and talk about?
3. Achievements:
1. What achievements have given you the greatest personal
satisfaction?
2. List at least five.
3. Include things which gave you a real sense of accomplishment and
pride, whether or not they're the sort of thing you'd list on a
résumé.
 Adapting Your
Message
to Your
Audience

Module Two

©2014 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2014 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Audiences

 Understanding your audience is fundamental to the

success of any message.

 You need to adapt your message to fit the audience's goals,

interests, and needs.

 customers have enough options to deal only with

companies that treat them respectfully.
 Understanding What Your
Organization Wants

 Succeeding in an organization depends first

on understanding what “counts” at your
organization.
 Ask your boss, “What parts of my job are
most important? What’s the biggest thing I
could do to improve my work?”

2-3
 Who is my audience?

 More people than you might think!

 In an organizational setting, a message may
have five separate audiences.
• The primary audience
• The secondary audience
• The initial audience
• A gatekeeper
• A watchdog audience
 Who is my audience?

 1. The primary audience will decide whether to accept

your recommendations or will act on the basis of your
message. You must reach the decision maker to fulfill
your purposes.
 Who is my audience?

 2. The secondary audience may be asked to comment

on your message or to implement your ideas after
they've been approved. Secondary audiences can also
include lawyers who may use your message—perhaps
years later—as evidence of your organization's culture
and practices.
 Who is my audience?

 3. The initial audience receives the message first and

routes it to other audiences. Sometimes the initial
audience also tells you to write the message.
 Who is my audience?

 4. A gatekeeper has the power to stop your message

before it gets to the primary audience. A secretary
who decides who gets to speak to or see the boss is a
gatekeeper. Sometimes the supervisor who assigns
the message is also the gatekeeper; however,
sometimes the gatekeeper is higher in the
organization. In some cases, gatekeepers exist outside
the organization.
 Who is my audience?

 5. A watchdog audience, though it does not have the

power to stop the message and will not act directly on
it, has political, social, or economic power. The
watchdog pays close attention to the transaction
between you and the primary audience and may base
future actions on its evaluation of your message.
 Who Is My Audience?

 Watchdog audience
 pays close attention to the transaction between
you and the primary audience and may base
future actions on its
evaluation of your
message

2-10
The Audiences for a Marketing Plan

2-11
The Audiences for a Consulting Report

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 PAIBOC

P What are your purposes in writing?

A Who is (are) your audiences?
I What information must your message
include?

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 PAIBOC

B What reasons or reader benefits can you

use to support your position?
O What objections can you expect your
reader(s) to have?
C How will the context affect reader
response?

2-14
 A Model of Two-Person
Communication with Feedback
Figure 2.3

2-15
 The Communication Process

 To communicate, a person must first

perceive a stimulus and then interpret
what has been perceived.
 The person then chooses the information
he or she wishes to send and puts it into a
form for the audience. That action is called
encoding.
 The Communication Process

 The message is transmitted through a channel,

such as a memo, a phone call, or an e-mail
message.

 The audience receives the message and decodes,
or makes sense, of it.
 The Communication Process

 At any stage of the process, noise may interfere

with communication. Noise can be physical, such
as illegible handwriting, or psychological, such as
the audience disliking the speaker.
 The Communication Process

❖ Perception: a person perceive a stimulus.

❖ Interpretation: interpret what has been
perceived.
❖ Choice/Selection: the person chooses the
information he or she wishes to send.
 The Communication Process

❖ Encoding: puts ideas into a form for the

audience.
❖ The message is transmitted through a channel, such as
a memo, a phone call, or an e-mail message.
❖ Decoding: extract meaning from the form.
 The Communication Process

 Channel overload occurs when the channel cannot

handle all the messages that are being sent.

 A small business may have only two phone lines; no
one else can get through if both lines are in use.
Information overload occurs when more messages
are transmitted than the human receiver can handle.
 The Communication Process

 Successful communication depends on the common

ground between you and your audience.

 Choose information that your audience needs and will

find interesting.
 The Communication Process

 Encode your message in words and other symbols the

audience will understand.

 Transmit the message along a channel that your

audience will attend to.
 What do I need to know about my
audience(s)?

 Everything that's relevant to what you're writing or

talking about.

 In general, you need to use common sense and

empathy.
 What do I need to know about
my audience(s)?
 Empathy
 the ability to put
yourself in someone
else’s shoes, to feel
with that person
 requires not being
self-centered

2-25
 Audience Analysis Factors

 There is no “one size fits all” approach to analyzing

audiences, but key factors are important

 Knowledge: anticipate what audiences will need to

know.

 Demographic Factors: include such measurable

features as age, gender, race, income, educational
level, and so on.
 Audience Analysis Factors

 Values and Beliefs: psychographics(the study of customers in

relation to their opinions, interests, and emotions: ) characteristics
include habits, hobbies, and lifestyles.

 Personality: when your primary audience is just one

person, his or her personality is relevant.

 Past Behavior: Studying how audiences have behaved
in the past may suggest how they will react in the
future.
Now that I have my analysis, what do I do
with it?

 Use it to
 plan strategy,
 organization,
 style,
 document design, and
 visuals
Now that I have my analysis, what do I do
with it?

 Use it to
 plan strategy,
• Make the action as easy as possible.
• Protect the reader's ego.
• Decide how to balance logic and emotion,
• Choose appeals and reader benefits that work for
the specific audience
Now that I have my analysis, what do I do
with it?

 Use it to
 organization,
• get to the point right away. The major exceptions
are:
– When we must persuade a reluctant reader.
– When we have bad news and want to let the reader down
gradually.
Now that I have my analysis, what do I do
with it?

 Use it to
 style,
• For most audiences, use easy-to-understand words, a mixture of
sentence lengths, and paragraphs with topic .
• Avoid words that sound defensive or arrogant.
Now that I have my analysis, what do I do
with it?

 Use it to
 style,
• Avoid hot buttons or "red-flag" words to which some readers will have
an immediate negative reaction: criminal, un-American, crazy,
fundamentalist, liberal.
• Use the language(s) that your audience knows best.
• Use conversational, not "academic," language.
Now that I have my analysis, what do I do
with it?

 Use it to
 document design,
• Use lists, headings, and a mix of paragraph lengths to
create white space.
• Choices about format, footnotes, and visuals may be
determined by the organizational culture or the
discourse community.
Now that I have my analysis, what do I do
with it?

 Use it to
 Photographs and Visuals
• Use bias-free photographs.
• Photos and visuals can make a document look more
informal or more formal.
• Think of the difference between cartoons and photos
of "high art."
 What if my audiences have different
needs?

 When it is not possible to meet everyone's

needs, meet the needs of
 gatekeepers and primary audiences first.
 How do I reach my audience(s)?

 Use you-attitude and positive emphasis.

 Use visuals to clarify or emphasize material.
 Specify what the audience should do.

2-36
 How do I reach my audiences?

 Important messages may require multiple channels

 Channels vary according to
 Speed.
 Accuracy of transmission.
 Cost.
 Number of messages carried.
 Number of people reached.
 Efficiency.
 Written Messages

 Written messages make it easier to:

 Present many specific details.
 Present extensive or complex data.
 Minimize undesirable emotions.
 Messages on paper are more formal than e-mail
messages.
 Oral Messages

 Oral messages make it easier to

 Answer questions, resolve conflicts, and build
consensus

 Use emotion to persuade.

 Get immediate action or response.

 Focus the audience’s attention.

 Scheduled meetings and oral presentations are more
formal than phone calls or stopping someone in the hall.
 You-Attitude

Module Three

©2014 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2014 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 You-Attitude

 Looks at things from the reader’s point of

view.
 Respects the reader’s intelligence.
 Protects the reader’s ego.
 Emphasizes what the reader wants to know.
You-attitude is a concrete way to show
empathy and the foundation of persuasion.

6-2
 How do I create you-attitude
in my sentences?

 Talk about the reader.

 Refer to the reader’s request or order
specifically.
 Don’t discuss feelings, except to offer
congratulations.
❖ In positive situations, use you more than I. Use
we when it includes the reader.
❖ Avoid you in negative situations.

6-3
 Talk about the Reader,
Not about Yourself
 Readers want to know
how they benefit or
are affected.
 When you provide
this information, you
make your message
more complete and
more interesting.

6-4
 Talk about the Reader,
Not about Yourself

Lacks you-attitude: We are shipping your

order of September 21 this afternoon.

You-attitude: The two dozen CorningWare

starter sets you ordered will be shipped this
afternoon and should reach you by September
28.

6-5
 Refer to the Reader’s Request
or Order Specifically

Lacks you-attitude: Your order . . .

You-attitude (to individual): The desk chair
you ordered
You-attitude (to a large store): Your invoice
#783329

6-6
In Positive Situations, Use You More Often than
I. Use We When It Includes the Reader

Talk about the reader, not you or your

company.
Lacks you-attitude: We provide health
insurance to all employees.
You-attitude: You receive health insurance as a
full-time Procter & Gamble employee.

6-7
 You-Attitude Examples

 Don't Talk about Feelings, Except to Congratulate

 In business your feelings are irrelevant and should be

omitted. All the reader cares about is the situation from
his or her point of view.

 Ex1:
 Lacking: We are happy to extend you a credit line of
$5,000.
 Better: You can now charge up to $5,000 on your
American Express Card.
 You-Attitude Examples continued

 Don't talk about the reader's feelings, either.

 Ex2:
 Lacking: You’ll be happy to hear that your scholarship
has been renewed.
 Better: Congratulations! Your scholarship has been
renewed.
 Avoid You in Negative Situations

Lacks you-attitude: You failed to sign your

check.
You-attitude (impersonal): Your check arrived
without a signature.
You-attitude (passive): Your check was not
signed.

6-10
 Does you-attitude basically
mean using the word you?

 All messages should use you-attitude, but

the words to achieve it will change
depending on the situation.
 In a positive message, focus on what the
reader can do.
 Q) "We give you" lacks you-attitude, why?
 Avoid you when it criticizes the reader or
limits the reader’s freedom.
6-11
 Does you-attitude basically
mean using the word you?

 In a job application letter, show how you

can help meet the reader’s needs, but keep
the word you to a minimum.

6-12
 I’ve revised my sentences.
Do I need to do anything else?

6-13
 To Create Goodwill with Content

 Be complete.
 Anticipate and answer questions readers are
likely to have.
 For information the reader did not ask for, show
why it is important.
 Show readers how the message’s subject affects
them.
 To Create Goodwill with Content

 Organization of the message is an important

to build goodwill. How?
 Put information -readers are most interested in- first.
 Arrange information to meet your reader’s needs, not yours.
 Use headings and lists so that the reader can find key points
quickly.
 Since we have good news for the reader, we should put that
information first.
 The message should be clear, easy to read, and friendly.
 Write a message to your department head.

6-16
 Positive
Emphasis

Module Four

©2014 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2014 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Some Negatives Are Necessary

 While business readers generally prefer to

see the glass as “half full,” some negatives
may be necessary for readers. In those
situations, be tactful in how you present
negatives.
 Some Negatives Are Necessary

 To build credibility
when giving bad
news.
 To help people to take
a problem seriously.

7-3
 Some Negatives Are Necessary

 In some messages, such as negative performance

appraisals, your purpose is to deliver a rebuke with no
alternative. Even here, avoid insults or attacks on the
reader's integrity or sanity. Being honest about the
drawbacks of a job reduces turnover.

 Sometimes negatives create a "reverse psychology" that

makes people look favorably at your product.
 Some Negatives Are Necessary

 In the situations where negatives are

necessary, be tactful in how you present
negatives.
 We use negatives to:
1. build credibility when giving bad news.
2. help people to take a problem seriously.
3.deliver a rebuke with no alternative.
 How do I create positive emphasis?

 Avoid negative words.

 Focus on what the reader can do.
 Justify a negative—give a reason or link it to a
reader benefit.
 Omit unimportant negatives.
 Put the negative in the middle and present it
compactly.

7-6
Negative Words to Avoid

7-7
 Avoid Negative Words and
Words with Negative Connotations

Replace negative words with positive words

Negative: We have failed to finish taking

inventory.
Better: We haven’t finished taking inventory.
Still better: We will be finished taking
inventory Friday.

7-8
 If the Negative Is Truly
Unimportant, Omit It

Omit negatives entirely only when:

The reader does not need the information to
make a decision.
You have already given the reader the
information and he or she has access to the
previous communication.
The information is trivial.

7-9
 If the Negative Is Truly
Unimportant, Omit It
Negative: A one-year subscription to PC Magazine
is $49.97. That rate is not as low as the
rates charged for some magazines.
Better: A one-year subscription to PC Magazine
is $49.97.
Still better: A one-year subscription to PC Magazine
is $49.97. You save 43% off the
newsstand price of $87.78.

7-10
 Bury the Negative Information and
Present It Compactly

 To deemphasize a negative, put it in the

middle of a paragraph rather than in the
first or last sentence, in the middle of the
message rather than in the first or last
paragraphs.

7-11
 Using Positive Emphasis Ethically

 The methods to achieve positive emphasis can

be misused, so be careful when using them.
 Don’t omit necessary details.
 Focus on what the reader can do rather than on
limitations only when the situation is appropriate.
 Presenting information in type large enough to be
read easily.
 Don’t hide meaning by using less common terms.
 Why do I need to think about tone,
politeness, and power?

 Tone
 the implied attitude of the writer toward the
reader

 Don’t use the same tone with a superior as

with a peer or subordinate.

7-13
 What’s the best way to apologize?

 No explicit apology is necessary if the error

is small and if you are correcting the
mistake.
 Do not apologize when you are not at fault.
 When you apologize,
do it early, briefly, and
sincerely

7-14