Communications in Business Management

Questions: 1.Analyze communication principles for effective business communication and apply strategies of business communication to prepare effective communication for managing relationships between different stakeholders in a business entity? 2.After reading the case critically evaluate communication for effective team work and engagement within organizations to promote a positive workplace culture? Answers: 1. Communication principles for effective business communication: The importance of effective communication in a business organization can never be overemphasized in an organization. While most of the organizations usually focus on the ways by which it can achieve profit maximization, the exchange of information or the motivation of the employees via effective communication methods plays a vital role. Each organization follows a set of business strategies based on the mission it intends to accomplish, and the achievement of these strategies largely depends on how well the management authority communicates with the employees. Communication plays an indispensible role in the decision-making and problem-solving methods and enables one to motivate the clients as well (Wild and Han 2014). Since communication plays an integral role in the business management process of an organization, an organization must follow certain guidelines to ensure the effectiveness of the same. First of all, while a message is being communicated, it must be clear, concise and swift. While a team-leader or a manager intends to communicate a business strategy to his subordinates, he must ensure that his style of communication is absolutely poised. The specificity of the content and clarity of the thought is highly important. In other words, speaking with the tone of aggression will make him an unacceptable autocratic leader, while speaking with too much submissiveness will result in his ideas being easily rejected by the subordinates (Binder 2016). Hence, the first communication principle in the business world is clarity of thought, communicated with the help of a well-balanced tone. However, for ensuring the clarity of the message communicated, the communicator has to have a comprehensive und erstanding of the ulterior objective that the communicated message intends to achieve. One has to understand why a specific message is important, and accordingly should the message be communicated. An in-depth understanding of the message to be communicated helps the speaker communicate the purpose and benefits of the message in a more effective way by including the most relevant details only (Locker and Kaczmarek 2013). The third principle of business communication is essentially a sense of objectivity and detachment. It should be noted that business communication does not necessarily refer to the discussion over the formulation and implementation of business plans and strategies. Business communication also refers to the internal communication that is being carried inside an organization between the employer and the employee, or among the employees. Since any business organization is a professional arena, one must ensure that he does not communicate with anyone in a rude, aggressive and coercive way. The best communication style to be adopted here is the objective style of presentation of facts. For instance, if an employer discovers that his employee has not been working well, he should communicate the problem caused by his inefficiency, instead of yelling at him, humiliating him or questioning his professional capacity. An indirect style of communication has a sense of detachment that helps in su ccessfully communicating the issue, without demotivating anyone (Weiss 2014). It should be noted that any stakeholder plays a vital role in the growth of an organization, and hence a considerate and empathetic style of conduct should be incorporated in the communication style. As stated in the case study, a telephone operator often has to deal with abusive clients, complaining about their inefficient work or poor quality service, and despite the unacceptable behavior, he should retain his composure. Thus, a calm and composed approach is required, and the same is only possible if one can adopt an impassioned, objective style of communication. The communication process not only involves the process of speaking, but also listening. Hence, retaining composure, while dealing with rude clients, or inefficient employees, is an important principle of effective business communication. Hence, the omission of irritating expressions, abusive words or personal remark is a must. The professional burn out of employees working in a competitive industry, or an NGO is quite normal, and hence should be considered while communicating with the employees. The communicator, while communicating a message to the listener, must ensure that he puts himself in the position of the listener. Thus, the problems, emotions or possible reaction of the employee is required to be considered while communicating a message. A considerate approach is also an important principle of effective business communication (Berger and Meng 2014). Application of Strategies for Better Communication: Effective communication plays an integral role in any business entity, as it helps in enhancing the loyalty of the consumers, while maximizing the profitability of the company as well. Hence, an organization must implement strategies that can enhance the communication skill of the employees. First of all, it is important to be noted here, that soft skills and communication skills are inter-related concepts. Hence, in order to groom the communication skills of an employee, his soft skills, such as his style of conduct, or his listening skills merit equal attention (Brewer and Holmes 2016). Hence, the organization should arrange soft skill and communication skill developing training programs, which can enhance the listening skills of the employees with the help of different learning course and educative activities. Many organizations also rely on the professional expertise of the professional skill developers, and thus encourage the participants to participate in various seminars, work shops and conferences. These seminars and workshops help in improving the communication style of the employees, by teaching them different strategies needed for understanding the personality of the listener, or by simply improving their patience level, while dealing with harsh clients or inconsiderate boss. The strategies are quite expensive, and imply huge investment on part of the management authority of the organization. The organization can also conduct selective training sessions for its employees, whereby a limited few senior managers can participate in the training programs, and subsequently can be asked to train the subordinates at periodical intervals after office hours. Besides, the organization can also arrange different interactive sessions and fun, interesting activities that can also create an intimate bond among the stakeholders, and improve their interpersonal communication skills. In such cases, the organization can arrange family picnics, planned trips or interacti ve activities, which can effectively promote team unity while enhancing the communication styles of the employees (Houston et al. 2013). 2. Effective communication for effective team work: Any organization works based on the principle of group effort and hence effective interpersonal communication style must be adopted for the purpose of ensuring group accomplishment. As even seen in the case study, it often happens that during moments of organizational crisis, the stakeholders of an organization start playing the blame-game, rather than trying to adopt an organized approach toward a problem (Brock et al. 2013). Seen in this context, an organization where the employees do not share an intimate bond, end up suffering from financial loss, owing to the employee conspiracy or higher rate of employee turnover. First of all, it is advisable that each employee of an organization is being trained to give up passive aggressive style of communication, and adopt the assertive communication style instead (Grunig 2013). In the mentioned case, one can notice that there was a no basic communication between the different hierarchical positions. This resulted in creating different stories by workers of different levels that had no connection with that of the others. This type of miscommunication often leads to organizational crisis ultimately resulting in complete destruction of organizational reputation and also the brand image (Nahavandi et al. 2013). This in turn leads to losses and decreased productivity which in turn affect the companys mission and goals. Hence, many researchers have suggested that the communication is the central process through which the workers are able to share information, data, creating bonding and relationships, make meaning and construct organizational cultures and values (Galeghar et al. 2013). This is often considered as an effective process in the sense because it acts as a proper combination of people, message, meanings, practices and purpose (Schwalbe 2015). A proper meaningful communication has often been observed to develop relationships and helps in proper functioning and survival of organizations. If a proper communication was present between the different members of the mentioned companies, then there was a huge chance of effective handling and proper crisis intervention of the emergency that occurred (Nancarrow et al. 2013). In many cases, it is often seen that intensely social and communicative process helps individuals and groups to properly coordinate activities to achieve goals (Austin and Pinkleton 2015). Communication has also proved to be vital in socialization, decision-making, problem-solving and change-management processes. Building up an effective internal communication helps improving a workers style of working. Communication can help motivate, spur engagement, build trust, and create shared identities and many others (Argenti 2015). From the case study, one can make an idea that absence of proper communication had resulted in improper building of networks and resulted in the huge accident. It also acts as the pathway for different employees to express emotions, share hopes and ambitions. It also helps them to celebrate and remember accomplishments. These help in building a bonding where one feels for the other and extends their hands in crisis situations (Cornelissen 2014). Such bonding was completely absent in the workers of the mentioned cases and therefore they were busy playing the blame game and saving their own backs. This showed a complete absence of communication among the workers of different levels. Interpersonal communication, group level communication and organizational level communication should be practiced in every firms and companies to help the organization achieve its mission successfully and avoid any situations that would result in destruction of careers and even lives (Kembach, Eppler and Bresciani 2015). References: Argenti, P.A., 2015.Corporate communication. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Austin, E.W. and Pinkleton, B.E., 2015.Strategic Public Relations Management: Planning and Managing Effective Communication Campaigns(Vol. 10). Routledge. Becker, J., Kugeler, M. and Rosemann, M. eds., 2013.Process management: a guide for the design of business processes. Springer Science Business Media. 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