Article Review Professional Communication In Today’s Digital, Social, Mobile World

Business Communication Essentials

Eighth Edition

Chapter 2

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Collaboration, Interpersonal Communication, and Business Etiquette

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Learning Objectives (1 of 3)

2.1 List the advantages and disadvantages of working in teams, and describe the characteristics of effective teams.

2.2 Offer guidelines for collaborative communication, identify major collaboration technologies, and explain how to give constructive feedback.

Learning Objectives (2 of 3)

2.3 List the key steps needed to ensure productive meetings, and identify the most common meeting technologies.

2.4 Identify the major types of listening, describe the listening process, and explain how good listeners overcome barriers at each stage of the process.

Learning Objectives (3 of 3)

2.5 Explain the importance of nonverbal communication, and identify six major categories of nonverbal expression.

2.6 Explain the importance of business etiquette, and identify three key areas in which good etiquette is essential.

Communicating Effectively in Teams

LO 2.1 List the advantages and disadvantages of working in teams, and describe the characteristics of effective teams.

Collaboration—working together to meet complex challenges—has become a core job responsibility for roughly half the U.S. workforce. A team is a unit of two or more people who share a mission and the responsibility for working to achieve their goal. You will participate in teams throughout your career, so developing the skills to communicate successfully in team settings will give you an important advantage.

Advantages of Teams

Increased Information and Knowledge

Learning Opportunities

Boldness

Accountability

Teams are often at the core of participative management, the effort to involve employees in the company’s decision-making process. The advantages of teams include the following:

Increased information and knowledge. By aggregating the resources of several individuals, teams bring more information to the decision process.

Teams provide learning opportunities because each team member has a unique background and skills, and other team members can learn from those skills.

Some may feel empowered by the support of team members.

Since each team member is responsible for the outcome, some team members may work hard in order to avoid letting the team down.

Increased diversity of views. Team members can bring a variety of viewpoints to the decision process if these diverse views are guided by a shared goal.

Increased acceptance of solutions. Those who participate in decision making are more likely to support the decision and encourage others to accept it.

Increased performance levels. Effective teams can be better than top-performing individuals at solving complex problems.

Advantages of Teams

Trust Building

Increased Diversity of Viewpoints

Increased Acceptance of Solutions

Increased Levels of Performance

Teams are often at the core of participative management, the effort to involve employees in the company’s decision-making process. The advantages of teams include the following:

Increased diversity of views. Team members can bring a variety of viewpoints to the decision process if these diverse views are guided by a shared goal.

Increased acceptance of solutions. Those who participate in decision making are more likely to support the decision and encourage others to accept it.

Increased performance levels. Effective teams can be better than top-performing individuals at solving complex problems.

Disadvantages of Teams

Groupthink

Pressure to Conform

Affects Decision Quality

Hidden Agenda

Restricts Interaction

Limits Productivity

High Cost

Aligning Schedules

Arranging Meetings

The disadvantages of teams include the following:

Like other social structures, business teams can generate tremendous pressures to conform. Groupthink occurs when peer pressures cause individual team members to withhold contrary or unpopular opinions and to go along with decisions they don’t really believe in. The result can be decisions that are worse than the choices the team members might have made individually.

Some team members may have a hidden agenda—private, counterproductive motives that affect the group’s interaction.

Still another drawback to teamwork is the high cost of coordinating group activities. Aligning schedules, arranging meetings, and coordinating a project can eat up a lot of time and money.

Characteristics of Effective Teams

Clear Objective

Full Engagement

Creativity and Technical Skills

Mix of Skills and Abilities

Open and Honest Communication

Shared Purpose

Consensus Decision Making

Communication

Psychological Safety

The Needs of the Team First

Effective teams share a number of traits, including a clear objective, a shared sense of purpose, full engagement from all team members, procedures for reaching decisions by consensus, and the right mix of creative and technical talents for the tasks at hand. While all these traits contribute to team success, the single most important factor is how well the team members communicate. Teams that lack one or more of these attributes can get bogged down in conflict or waste time and resources pursuing unclear goals. The success of the team is based on strong communication skills.

Summary of Discussion (1 of 6)

In this section, we discussed the following:

Advantages of Teams

Disadvantages of Teams

Characteristics of Effective Teams

The next section will cover Collaborating on Communication Efforts.

Collaborating on Communication Efforts

LO 2.2 Offer guidelines for collaborative communication, identify major collaboration technologies, and explain how to give constructive feedback.

When a team collaborates on reports, websites, presentations, and other communication projects, the collective energy and expertise of the various members can lead to results that transcend what each individual could do alone. However, collaborating on team messages requires special effort; the following section offers a number of helpful guidelines.

Guidelines for Collaborative Writing (1 of 2)

Select Collaborators Carefully

Agree on Goals Before You Start

Give the Team Some Time to Bond

Clarify Individual Responsibilities

In any collaborative effort, recognize that team members coming from different backgrounds may have different work habits or priorities. To collaborate effectively, everyone involved must be flexible, open to other opinions, and focused on team objectives rather than on individual priorities. The following guidelines will help you work together more successfully:

Select collaborators carefully. Choose a combination of people who have the experience, information, and talent needed for each project.

Agree on project goals before you start. Starting without a clear idea of what you hope to accomplish will lead to frustration and wasted time.

Give your team time to bond before diving in. Make sure people can get to know each other before being asked to collaborate.

Clarify individual responsibilities. This is essential because team members will be depending on each other.

Guidelines for Collaborative Writing (2 of 2)

Establish Clear Group Processes

Avoid Writing as a Group

Use Compatible Technologies

Seek Feedback from the Team Often

Establish clear processes. Make sure everyone knows how the work will be managed from start to finish.

Avoid writing as a group. Group writing can be a slow, painful process, so assign the actual writing to one person or divide larger projects among multiple writers.

Make sure tools and techniques are ready and compatible across the team. Minor details such as different versions of software can delay projects.

Check to see how things are going along the way. Don’t assume that everything is working, just because you don’t hear anything negative.

Technologies for Collaborative Writing (1 of 2)

Content Management System

Organized Approach

Controlled Access

Wiki

Flexible Approach

Open Access

A variety of tools are available to help writers collaborate on everything from short documents to entire websites. The simplest tools involve software tools such as commenting and change tracking.

Writing for websites often involves the use of a content management system, which organizes and controls website content and includes features that help team members work together on webpages and other documents. These systems range from simple blogging systems on up to enterprise systems that manage web content across an entire corporation. Many systems include workflow features that control how pages or documents can be created, edited, and published.

In contrast to the formal controls of a content management system, a wiki is a website that allows anyone with access to add new material and edit existing material. Public wikis allow any registered user to edit pages; private wikis are accessible only with permission. A key benefit of a wiki is the freedom to post new or revised material without prior approval.

Technologies for Collaborative Writing (2 of 2)

Groupware

Shared Knowledge

Cloud Computing

Shared Workspaces

Intranets

Extranets

Teams and other work groups can also take advantage of groupware or collaboration platforms. These technologies let people communicate, share files, review previous message threads, work on documents simultaneously, and connect using social networking tools. These systems help companies capture and share knowledge from multiple experts, bringing greater insights to bear on tough challenges.

Shared workspaces are online “virtual offices” that give everyone on a team access to the same set of resources and information. You may see some of these workspaces referred to as intranets (open to employees only) or extranets (available to employees and to outside parties by invitation only).

Collaboration via Mobile Devices

Unified Communication

Voice and Video Calling

Voice and Video Conferencing

Instant Messaging

Real-Time Collaboration

Mobile devices add another layer of options for collaborative writing and other communication projects, particularly when used with cloud computing. An important aspect of mobile collaboration and mobile communication in general is unified communication, which integrates such capabilities as voice and video calling, voice and video conferencing, instant messaging, and real-time collaboration software in a single system. By minimizing or eliminating the need to manage multiple communication systems and devices, unified communication promises to improve response times, productivity, and collaboration efforts.

Giving and Responding to Constructive Feedback

Offering Constructive Criticism

Focus on the process and outcomes.

Provide clear guidelines for improvement.

Receiving Constructive Criticism

Don’t get defensive or deny the feedback’s validity.

Use the feedback to accept the quality of your work.

Aside from processes and tools, collaborative communication often involves giving and receiving feedback about writing efforts. Constructive feedback, sometimes called constructive criticism, focuses on the process and outcomes of communication, not on the people involved. In contrast, destructive feedback delivers criticism with no effort to stimulate improvement.

When you’re giving feedback, avoid personal attacks and give the person clear guidelines for improvement. When you receive constructive feedback, resist the urge to defend your work or deny the validity of the feedback. Instead, use the feedback to learn and to improve the quality of your work.

Summary of Discussion (2 of 6)

In this section, we discussed the following:

Guidelines for Collaborative Writing

Technologies for Collaborative Writing

Collaboration via Mobile Devices

Giving and Responding to Constructive Feedback

The next section will cover Making Your Meetings More Productive.

Making Your Meetings More Productive

LO 2.3 List the key steps needed to ensure productive team meetings, and identify the most common meeting technologies.

Much of your workplace communication will occur in meetings, so to a large degree, your ability to contribute to the company—and to be recognized for your contributions—will depend on your meeting skills. As useful as meetings can be, though, they can be an aggravating waste of time if they aren’t planned and managed well.

Preparing for Meetings

Careful Preparation and Planning Tasks

Clarify the Purpose of Your Meeting.

Select the Participants for the Meeting.

Choose the Meeting’s Time and Venue.

Set and Share the Purpose of the Meeting.

Successful meetings start with thoughtful preparation. After you have confirmed that a meeting is necessary, proceed with the following planning tasks:

Clarify your purpose. Informational meetings allow participants to share information and perhaps coordinate action. Decision-making meetings involve persuasion, analysis, and problem solving.

Select participants for the meeting. The rule here is simple: Invite everyone who really needs to be involved, and don’t invite anyone who doesn’t need to be there.

Choose the venue and the time. Online meetings are often the best way to connect people in multiple locations or to reach large audiences. For onsite meetings, review the facility and the seating arrangements. If you have control over the timing, morning meetings are often more productive because people are generally more alert and not yet engaged with the work of the day.

Set and share the agenda. People who will be presenting information need to know what is expected of them, non-presenters need to know what will be presented so they can prepare questions, and everyone needs to know how long the meeting will last. In addition, the agenda is an important tool for guiding the progress of the meeting.

Article Review Professional Communication In Today’s Digital, Social, Mobile World

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