[SOLVED] Communication Strategies | essaysclick

Week 5 Discussion – Communication Strategies
This week in our class we are looking at how to communicate technical information to a non-technical audience, as well as how to communicate to different audiences or stakeholders. Based on my experience in the corporate environment, I see a lot of one size fits all communication products and fellow coworkers not understanding the importance of addressing different audiences through separate communication products.

For this week’s discussion, describe how you currently approach communication in your workplace (or current setting). Have you found that your communication strategies differ from those discussed in the class? If so, do you think you will be able to apply some of the concepts within the class to your current setting?

NOTE: Please ensure your posts are substantive, high-quality, Master’s caliber posts that are well-organized, well-researched, and appropriately formatted including proper APA citations/references.  Post content should integrate both personal experience/knowledge with assignment/academic/textbook materials and concepts.  Please review the Discussion Board section in the Syllabus for additional guidance.

Primary Post

Response Posts: Between Thursday and Sunday:  For any two primary posts, provide responses to your classmates.  Response Posts must be made on at least two different days/times.

Russell
For communication in my workplace, I tailor my communication based on my audience. When communicating with my coworkers that work in the powerhouse, we are very detailed, data-driven, and technical in our conversations because we understand the same language and know what is being discussed. This is in alignment to what technical conversations should contain (Bolick, 2022). For example, when discussing a project with my coworkers, we use technical details, set expectations, and are very upfront about what needs to be done. This form of communication extends to the vendors we work with as well.
However, when communicating with a non-technical audience, the conversation is tailored to the individual. In the powerhouse, we communicate with a wide range of other departments including: IT, finance, trades maintenance (electrical, plumbers, painters, etc.), engineering, waste operations, procurement, and upper management. Depending on the person I am commuting with and their understanding of what we are discussing, I will tailor my communication to ensure they understand. For example, when I am discussing with procurement the importance of a purchase order and why it needs to be issued ASAP, I provide non-technical and relevant information to allow my procurement contact to understand me. This is just like what we learned from this weeks module detailing non-technical conversations need to be tailored to the audience, provide definition of terms, contain examples, and only contain the information necessary for the conversation (Bolick, 2022). For the conversation I had with the procurement contact, I explained the high-level importance of the project and what delays could do to the project schedule and how that impacts the powerhouse operations. For this example, I only discussed relevant information at a high-level to get my point across.

References:
Bolick, Christopher. (2022). PJM6210 Lesson 5.1: Know the Audience. Northeastern University.

Maxx
In my professional setting, I work within a software department where I work closely with the various project teams. All of us have at least a basic understanding of common software ideas and practices so there is not a communication barrier within the various teams. That barrier does cross though when we involve other parties; sales, management, etc. so we need to change our communication methods to fit the different parties. While in the class settings, I generally do not change my communication style, more so provide finer details and explanations, in my workplace I do change the way how I communicate ideas and changes to various parties.
Using the ideas discussed in this week’s topic, it is important to differ between technical and non-technical audiences. For example, when presenting to non-technical audiences it is better to provide examples and high-level overviews (Bolick, slide 5, 2022) instead of the technical jargon that the representatives would not understand. Using this as an example, when talking to the non-technical party for a software related product I would not tell them the specifics / intense details as to why we need this product, I would take it to a high-level understanding of what this product can do and how it can benefit our department in the future. Vice versa, when it comes to the technical audience, the discussion for this product would be more intense and offer more of a pro and con scenario.
This happened to me a couple months ago when we were purchasing a new memory leak tool for our department. To quickly explain, a memory leak is a software bug class where data loaded into memory is not removed once it is no longer needed (Radich, 2021). This kind of bug leads to performance issues and can cause applications to run for minutes on end. Within the software team, we came up with a list of five different memory leak tools to use and decided which one to select based on pros and cons, what tools actually work with our compilers, etc. Once all of that was taken care of, I took it to purchasing and told them we need this license for our software products to prevent issues in the field. It was high level enough for them to understand and no questions were asked after that, resulting in the new license.
References:
Bolick, Christopher. (2022). PJM6210 Lesson 5.1: Know the Audience. Northeastern University.
Radich, Q. (2021, May 5). Preventing memory leaks in windows applications – win32 apps. Win32 apps | Microsoft from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/win7appqual/preventing-memory-leaks-in-windows-applications

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