Slide 6.

ENGL 307
Week 10

Establishing a dialogue:
interactive communication
Slide 6.2

Learning outcomes
By the end of this session you should be
able to:

recognise the wide variety of responses stimulated
by organisational activity and the importance of
securing feedback effectively;

identify the different characteristics of
organisational feedback and the mechanisms that
are used to collect and process this information;

critically assess specific feedback mechanisms
employed in relation to the organisation’s
employees, its customers and other stakeholders;

make connections between feedback mechanisms
and other organisational and managerial issues,
such as knowledge management, organisational
learning and emotional intelligence.
Slide 6.3

Why is feedback important?


Individually list the occasions on which you
have been the giver and receiver of feedback.

In pairs discuss these:


Why do individuals want to secure feedback?


Why do organisations want to secure feedback?
Slide 6.4

Organisational feedback: an
initial overview
2 distinct dimensions relating to the
quality of messages conveyed:


Degree of urgency (e.g. life and death
matter in a hospital)


Degree of inherent complexity (e.g. a
dissatisfied customer’s complaint might
be a mixture of factual information,
subjective perceptions and strong human
emotions)
Slide 6.5
Characterising feedback
mechanisms – urgency and
complexity

Characterising feedback mechanisms – urgency and complexity

Slide 6.6

The diversity of organisational

feedback: some examples

The diversity of organisational feedback: some examples

Slide 6.7

Challenges for organisations


Managing the diversity of feedback
(messages from the public are likely to
be more complex and their responses
are open to a variety of interpretations)

Collecting feedback (Time, location,
channels etc.)

Sharing and using feedback (privacy,
synthesising data to make it
meaningful)

Moral deafness (Bird 2002)
Slide 6.8

Moral deafness

Moral deafness – ‘People are morally deaf to the
degree that they do not hear and do not respond to
moral issues that have been raised by others’ (Bird
2002: 55)


5 types

inattentiveness

not being ready to hear bad news

not seeking out bad news

not comprehending

not taking into consideration the accounts of others


Example: Nestlé’s strategy for marketing infant
powdered milk formula in developing countries.
Slide 6.9

Case study: Nestlé’s strategy for

marketing infant powdered milk formula
in developing
Read the case and discuss:
countries
1. What factors do you think may have
contributed to the apparent ‘moral
deafness’ of Nestle in the early 1980s?

2. What kinds of communication channel

have operated to change the company’s
position since the initial protest? Can the
current situation still be regarded as
‘moral deafness’ in Bird’s definition?

3. Describe a recent example of an

organisation displaying moral deafness,
blindness or silence. How might the
development of technologies, such as
email and the internet, have affected
these phenomena?
Slide 6.10

Securing stakeholder feedback:

the case of employees
5 typical internal communication channels

1. Job satisfaction surveys

2. Staff turnover rates (incidental feedback)

3. Response to job advertising

4. ‘The grapevine’ (informal, unofficial)

5. 360-degree appraisal
Slide 6.11

Job satisfaction surveys


Often conducted by external research
consultancies in order to overcome
employee’s concerns regarding anonumity

Qualitative and quantitative data

Specific issues to employee attitudes

Data analysed and summarised to provide
feedback to senior management and HR
(written report or verbal presentation

Danger: important messages may be lost
during the process
Slide 6.12

Staff turnover rates


For larger organisations (where there are
enough employees to allow for the
identification of trends)

Increased turnover rate: dissatisfactions with
job or organisation, fears over its future,
highly competitive job market etc.

Reduced turnover rate: (+ve: staff enjoy
working there) (-ve only staying for large
redundancy payments)

Necessary to complement statistical analysis
to the turnover rate with qualitative data
Slide 6.13

Response to job advertising


Numbers of initial enquiries, number of
applications received and quality of
applicants etcs.


Indications: e.g. market may have
become more competitive; the
organisation may no longer be perceived
as an attractive employer; pay and
conditions are not sufficient for a post to
attract good candidates etc.
Slide 6.14

‘The grapevine’

Informal and unofficial channel can
provide some of the richest feedbacks
from employees

Management may find them elusive and
difficult to assess (informal, word of
mouth)

Information may be transient, inconsistent
and unreliable -> misinformation
(particularly when organisation facing
threats or uncertainties->Rumours)
Slide 6.15

360-degree feedback

Also known as multi-source feedback
(MSF).


Notion – employee’s assessment should
be drawn on feedback from a range of
sources – e.g. peers, subordinates,
customers (Marchington & Wilkinson
2002).


Grown in popularity due to problems
with other types of appraisal.
Slide 6.16

360-degree feedback appraisal of a

manager
Slide 6.17

Example: 360-degree feedback

in action
NHS modernising medical careers:

National Health Service (The four publicly

funded healthcare systems in the countries
of the United Kingdom)

‘The trainee will nominate 8 assessors from amongst
supervising consultants, GP principals, staff grades, specialist
registrars, SHOs, other foundation doctors and experienced
nursing or allied health professional colleagues to fill out a
questionnaire’.

The trainee will also complete a self-assessment using the
same questionnaire.

Feedback is collated electronically and is presented on a chart
showing the self-ratings, the mean nominated assessor
ratings and the national mean ratings. Comments are
anonymised, but produced verbatim.

The trainee and educational supervisor agree on the
strengths and key areas for development for the collated
feedback’.
(NHS, 2007)
Slide 6.18

The NHS logo

The NHS logo

Slide 6.19

Example: 360-degree feedback

in action (continued)
Consider the following questions:

What do you think are the reasons for
involving a range of colleagues in
giving feedback?

Why do you think trainees are asked
to self assess?

What might be the difficulties with
360-degree feedback?
Slide 6.20

Practicalities of designing a
feedback form
When designing a feedback form, address the
following questions:

What do I really need to know? (Too little; too
much?)

Are the questions clear, concise and acceptable?
(unambiguous, plain English, politically correct
etc)

Is the structure logical? (clear and logical layout)

Does the form encourage a positive response?
(complexity of questions; attractive design;
incentives for completing feedback etc)
Slide 6.21

Example of a form designed to

obtain feedback

Example of a form designed to obtain

feedback
Slide 6.22

Feedback, knowledge and

organisational learning
Key concepts:

Knowledge management (‘KM’) refers to practices
and systems used by organisations to identify, create,
represent and distribute knowledge in a way that
enables them to reuse the knowledge, increase their
awareness and learn from knowledge.


Organisational learning refers to the willingness and
capacity of organisations and their employees to
anticipate, learn about and respond changes and
uncertainty.
For example, organisations can ‘learn’ to be more
responsive to customers, or to improve their
environmental performance.
Slide 6.23

Feedback, knowledge and

organisational learning
(continued)
Key concepts: (continued)

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to be
aware of and to respond appropriately to the
emotional reactions of oneself and others.
Slide 6.24

Exploring emotional
intelligence

Focus on cognition (rational thinking and
expression) is insufficient; organisations
need to take greater account of the
emotional, or ‘affective’ dimension (i.e.
how people process and express their
feelings)

Salovey and Mayer (1990) concerned with
the way that people gain an understanding
of emotion as part of a larger project on the
interaction between emotion and cognition
Slide 6.25

Exploring emotional
intelligence

Mayer (as cited in Pickard 1999:50)

‘the ability to perceive, to integrate, to
understand and reflectively manage one’s
own and other people’s feelings’

A critical part to play in the information
processing that takes place in human -
>able to improve our thinking by
managing this aspect more effectively

Four fundamental ‘capabilities’
Slide 6.26

Exploring emotional
intelligence
Slide 6.27

Exploring emotional
intelligence
Slide 6.28

Exploring emotional
intelligence

Why might the concept of ‘emotional
intelligence’ be of value to organisational
communicators? What limitations can you
identify?


Is emotional intelligence an exclusively
Western concept? Consider its likely
relevance to different national and
organisational cultures.
Slide 6.29

Summary

Organisations make use of many different kinds of
feedback, conveyed through a range of
communication channels.

Feedback can be assessed along two key dimensions,
urgency and inherent complexity of the message.

The major challenges for organisations are to
synthesise information from multiple sources, and in
a variety of formats, and to ensure openness to
feedback, avoiding barriers such as ‘moral deafness’.

Various feedback mechanisms can be used to secure
feedback from employees, a key internal stakeholder.
These include employee appraisals, job satisfaction
surveys, staff turnover rates, responses to job
advertisements and organisational ‘grapevines’.
Slide 6.30

Summary (continued)

Even simple feedback mechanisms, such as
forms, involve many practical questions. These
include an assessment of the information needed,
and issues related to the structure and content of
the channel.


The capacity to encourage interactive
communication through feedback mechanisms is
closely related to other organisational and
managerial topics in the fields of knowledge
management, organisational learning and
emotional intelligence.
Slide 6.31

References
Bird, F.B. (2002) The muted conscience: moral silence
and the practice of ethics in business. Quorum,
Westport CT.
Goleman,D., Boyatziz, R. and M.Kee, A. (2001) ‘Primal
leadership: the hidden driver of great performance’.
Harvard Business Review, 79, 43–51 (December).
Marchington, M. and Wilkinson, A. (2002) People
management and development (2nd edn). CIPD, London.
NHS (2007) Modernising Medical Careers (Available at:
http://www.mmc.nhs.uk/ (accessed 28 August 2007)).
Pickard, J. (1999) ‘Sense and sensitivity’. People
Management, 48-56 (28th October).
Salovey, P. and Mayer, J.P. (1990) ‘Emotional Intelligence’.
Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9, 185-211.