Business Communication Exam 1 Material

Exam 1 Material Chapter 1 - - - - Credibility o Your reputation for being trustworthy o The degree to which others believe or trust in The Role of Trust o How do you generally perceive business leaders? o Do you trust them and their choices? The Three Components of Credibility: o Competence: Refers to knowledge and skills needed to accomplish business tasks, approach business problems, and get a job done  *Most people will judge your competence based on your track record of success and achievement*  People develop competence through study, observation, and practice and realworld business experiences.  How you communicate directly affects how others perceive your competence.  Be a good listener. o Caring: Implies understanding the interests of others, cultivating a sense of community, and giving to others and showing generosity  People distrust individuals who are perceived as unconcerned about the interests of others or disinterested in causes above and beyond themselves.  Your ability to gain credibility strongly depends on your ability to show that you care for the needs of others.  Effective communicators gain trust by connecting with others – that is, seeking to understand other’s needs, wants, opinions, feelings, and aspirations. o Character: Refers to a reputation for staying true to commitments made to stakeholders and adhering to high moral and ethical values  Ethics: Rule of conduct or moral principles that guide individual or group behavior  Business ethics: The commonly accepted beliefs that principles in the business community for acceptable behavior  Transparency: Involves sharing all relevant information with stakeholders Open and Honest Communication o Why use open and honest communication?  1.) By avoiding open and honest communication business, problems, employees doom a business to poor financial performance.  2.) Dishonesty is among the primary reasons for lower employee morale.  3.) Dishonesty can be reason for dismissal. - - - - - Barriers to Team Effectiveness o Ineffective communication o Lack of effective chartering and goal setting  Not setting team guidelines o Lack of clarity and understanding of roles o Low morale o Low productivity o Lack of trust Principles of Effective Team Communication o 1.) Teams should focus first on performance o 2.) Teams go through four natural stages to reach high performance  Forming: Getting to know each other, first time meeting; degree of awkwardness  Storming (conflict begins): Starting to get into the task getting assigned. Storming can be difficult  Norming: Performance getting better, getting better with conflict, and utilizing communication to better conflict and disagreements.  Performing: Reach peak performance and focus on team accomplishment o 3.) Effective teams build a work culture around values, norms, and goals  Team culture: refers to a set of shared perceptions and commitments to collective values, norms, roles, responsibilities, and goals  Team charter: provides direction to the team in how it functions to meet shared objectives o 4.) Effective teams meet often.  Question: how often is enough?  Much more effective to meet face to face o 5.) Effective teams embrace differing viewpoints and conflict.  Inherent diversity: involves traits such as age, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation  Acquired diversity (developed through experience): Involves traits you acquire through experience, such as customer service experience, retail experience, or engineering experience o 6.) Effective teams provide a lot of positive feedback and evaluate their performance often. o 7.) Effective teams feel a common sense of purpose. When to meet? o Best time frame: 10 am-noon o Worst time: gradually gets worse from 2 pm on. Types of meetings o Coordination meetings – primarily focus on discussing roles, goals, and accountabilities o Problem-solving meetings – typically involve brainstorming about how to address and solve a particular work problem Agenda o Gets everyone on the same page o o o What’s listed?  Date and times  Purpose(s)  Desired Outcomes  Agenda item 1, 2, 3…  Everything is timed (You do not have to give to everyone)  Summarization  Participants and names of who went over each section Virtual Teams  Generally consist of team members located at various offices (including home offices) and rely almost entirely of virtual technologies to work with one another Run Effective Virtual Meetings  Start the meeting with social chat  Start with a contentious question.  Ask “what do you think about” questions  Make sure each team member is involved  Articulate views precisely  Take minutes in real time  Focus on your teammates and avoid multitasking  Use video when possible