Business Communication for Success Business Communication for Success [Author removed at request of original publisher] UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA LIBRARIES PUBLISHING EDITION, 2015

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Business Communication for Success Business Communication for Success [Author removed at request of original publisher] UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA LIBRARIES PUBLISHING EDITION, 2015. THIS EDITION ADAPTED FROM A WORK ORIGINALLY PRODUCED IN 2010 BY A PUBLISHER WHO HAS REQUESTED THAT IT NOT RECEIVE ATTRIBUTION. MINNEAPOLIS, MN Business Communication for Success by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. This book was produced using Pressbooks.com, and PDF rendering was done by PrinceXML. Contents Publisher Information x About the Author xi Acknowledgments xii Dedications xiii Preface xiv Chapter 1: Effective Business Communication 1.1 Why Is It Important to Communicate Well? 1.2 What Is Communication? 1.3 Communication in Context 1.4 Your Responsibilities as a Communicator 1.5 Additional Resources 3 7 16 20 25 Chapter 2: Delivering Your Message 2.1 What Is Language? 2.2 Messages 2.3 Principles of Verbal Communication 2.4 Language Can be an Obstacle to Communication 2.5 Emphasis Strategies 2.6 Improving Verbal Communication 2.7 Additional Resources 28 32 35 41 46 53 57 Chapter 3: Understanding Your Audience 3.1 Self-Understanding Is Fundamental to Communication 3.2 Perception 3.3 Differences in Perception 3.4 Getting to Know Your Audience 3.5 Listening and Reading for Understanding 3.6 Additional Resources 63 70 80 82 88 91 Chapter 4: Effective Business Writing 4.1 Oral versus Written Communication 4.2 How Is Writing Learned? 94 97 4.3 Good Writing 4.4 Style in Written Communication 4.5 Principles of Written Communication 4.6 Overcoming Barriers to Effective Written Communication 4.7 Additional Resources 102 107 111 116 120 Chapter 5: Writing Preparation 5.1 Think, Then Write: Writing Preparation 5.2 A Planning Checklist for Business Messages 5.3 Research and Investigation: Getting Started 5.4 Ethics, Plagiarism, and Reliable Sources 5.5 Completing Your Research and Investigation 5.6 Reading and Analyzing 123 128 137 142 149 153 5.7 Additional Resources 156 Chapter 6: Writing 6.1 Organization 6.2 Writing Style 6.3 Making an Argument 6.4 Paraphrase and Summary versus Plagiarism 6.5 Additional Resources 161 175 184 192 195 Chapter 7: Revising and Presenting Your Writing 7.1 General Revision Points to Consider 7.2 Specific Revision Points to Consider 7.3 Style Revisions 7.4 Evaluating the Work of Others 7.5 Proofreading and Design Evaluation 7.6 Additional Resources 198 201 211 217 221 225 Chapter 8: Feedback in the Writing Process 8.1 Diverse Forms of Feedback 8.2 Qualitative and Quantitative Research 8.3 Feedback as an Opportunity 8.4 Additional Resources 228 239 244 248 Chapter 9: Business Writing in Action 9.1 Text, E-mail, and Netiquette 250 9.2 Memorandums and Letters 9.3 Business Proposal 9.4 Report 9.5 Résumé 9.6 Sales Message 9.7 Additional Resources 256 265 270 277 286 290 Chapter 10: Developing Business Presentations 10.1 Before You Choose a Topic 10.2 Choosing a Topic 10.3 Finding Resources 10.4 Myths and Realities of Public Speaking 10.5 Overcoming Obstacles in Your Presentation 294 299 305 314 317 10.6 Additional Resources 323 Chapter 11: Nonverbal Delivery 11.1 Principles of Nonverbal Communication 11.2 Types of Nonverbal Communication 11.3 Movement in Your Speech 11.4 Visual Aids 11.5 Nonverbal Strategies for Success with Your Audience 11.6 Additional Resources 326 333 341 345 357 359 Chapter 12: Organization and Outlines 12.1 Rhetorical Situation 12.2 Strategies for Success 12.3 Building a Sample Speech 12.4 Sample Speech Outlines 12.5 Organizing Principles for Your Speech 12.6 Transitions 12.7 Additional Resources 362 366 373 376 378 383 386 Chapter 13: Presentations to Inform 13.1 Functions of the Presentation to Inform 13.2 Types of Presentations to Inform 13.3 Adapting Your Presentation to Teach 13.4 Diverse Types of Intelligence and Learning Styles 13.5 Preparing Your Speech to Inform 388 393 397 407 409 13.6 Creating an Informative Presentation 13.7 Additional Resources 415 419 Chapter 14: Presentations to Persuade 14.1 What Is Persuasion? 14.2 Principles of Persuasion 14.3 Functions of the Presentation to Persuade 14.4 Meeting the Listener’s Basic Needs 14.5 Making an Argument 14.6 Speaking Ethically and Avoiding Fallacies 14.7 Sample Persuasive Speech 14.8 Elevator Speech 14.9 Additional Resources 423 426 429 433 439 447 451 455 457 Chapter 15: Business Presentations in Action 15.1 Sound Bites and Quotables 15.2 Telephone/VoIP Communication 15.3 Meetings 15.4 Celebrations: Toasts and Roasts 15.5 Media Interviews 15.6 Introducing a Speaker 15.7 Presenting or Accepting an Award 15.8 Serving as Master of Ceremonies 15.9 Viral Messages 15.10 Additional Resources 459 461 465 468 471 474 476 479 481 484 Chapter 16: Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Business Communication 16.1 Intrapersonal Communication 16.2 Self-Concept and Dimensions of Self 16.3 Interpersonal Needs 16.4 Social Penetration Theory 16.5 Rituals of Conversation and Interviews 16.6 Conflict in the Work Environment 16.7 Additional Resources 487 489 493 497 503 511 518 Chapter 17: Negative News and Crisis Communication 17.1 Delivering a Negative News Message 17.2 Eliciting Negative News 520 530 17.3 Crisis Communication Plan 17.4 Press Conferences 17.5 Additional Resources 536 539 544 Chapter 18: Intercultural and International Business Communication 18.1 Intercultural Communication 18.2 How to Understand Intercultural Communication 18.3 Common Cultural Characteristics 18.4 Divergent Cultural Characteristics 18.5 International Communication and the Global Marketplace 18.6 Styles of Management 18.7 The International Assignment 18.8 Additional Resources 548 551 554 558 564 569 572 578 Chapter 19: Group Communication, Teamwork, and Leadership 19.1 What Is a Group? 19.2 Group Life Cycles and Member Roles 19.3 Group Problem Solving 19.4 Business and Professional Meetings 19.5 Teamwork and Leadership 19.6 Additional Resources 581 586 594 600 608 613 Please share your supplementary material! 614 Publisher Information Business Communication for Success is adapted from a work produced and distributed under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA) in 2010 by a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution. This adapted edition is produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing through the eLearning Support Initiative. This adaptation has reformatted the original text, and replaced some images and figures to make the resulting whole more shareable. This adaptation has not significantly altered or updated the original 2010 text. This work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. About the Author Business Communication for Success is adapted from a work produced by a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution. This adapted edition is produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing through the eLearning Support Initiative. Though the publisher has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution, this adapted edition reproduces all original text and sections of the book, except for publisher and author name attribution. Unnamed Author is the Shadle-Edgecombe Endowed Faculty Chair at Arizona Western College. He serves as the professor of speech communication with an emphasis in business communication for a combined campus partnership with the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University–Yuma. Unnamed Author is the author of The Basics of Speech Communication and The Basics of Interpersonal Communication, both currently published by Allyn & Bacon. Beyond his classroom experience, Unnamed Author regularly serves as a communications advisor to the industry. He has extensive experience and publications in the areas of health communication, safe and healthy work environments, and organizational and crisis communication. He has served as an evaluator for the United States National Institutes of Health’s Small Business and Innovative Research (SBIR) program since 1995. He served as an evaluator of educational programs for the Ministerio de Hacienda de Chile. His development of the Tenio Natural Reserve in Southern Chile has brought together people from around the world to preserve and restore indigenous flora and fauna. Their collective effort will serve for generations to come. Unnamed Author studied at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and at Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow School of Communication. He and his family divide their time between the United States and Puerto Montt, Chile. Acknowledgments I would like to say thank you to Jeff Shelstad for answering my e-mail. To say his model just makes sense is an understatement. I am honored to be a part of it all. Jenn Yee has been an excellent project manager. When I needed feedback she made sure it was available, and when I needed space to create, she helped facilitate it. Writing can be a solitary activity but she made the journey positive and productive. Elsa Peterson, you are wonderful. Your sharp eye for detail, consistent dedication to the text, and quick turnarounds on requests were invaluable to this project. I have never worked with a better developmental editor. Dan Obuchowski also offered valuable insight into the construction industry and practices that lends real-world credibility to this text. To my reviewers in the field, I appreciate all the specific feedback that contributed to clear improvements in the text. • Brenda Jolivette Jones, San Jacinto College – Central Campus (brenda.jolivette@sjcd.edu) • Christina McCale, Regis University (cmccale@regis.edu) • Billie Miller, Ph.D., Cosumnes River College (millerb@crc.losrios.edu) • Joyce Ezrow, Anne Arundel Community College (jezrow@aacc.edu) • Sally Lederer, U of M Carlson School of Management (sally@melsa.org) • Greg Larson, Salt Lake Community College (Greg.Larson@slcc.edu) • Gayla Jurevich, Fresno City College (gayla.jurevich@fresnocitycollege.edu) • Laura Newton, Florida State University (lpnewton@fsu.edu) • Judy Grace, Arizona State University (judy.grace@asu.edu) • Rita Rud, Purdue University (ritarud@purdue.edu) • Edna Boroski, Trident Technical College (edna.boroski@tridenttech.edu) Your words of encouragement and constructive criticism have made this effort worthwhile. Finally, to Lisa, my life partner, you are amazing. You were a draft recruit on this project and quickly learned the formatting requirements in short order. You are a valuable part of this team. Your relentless editing serves as a clear example of Strunk’s axiom: “Omit needless words.” This text is the better for it. Writing with you, like life, gets better with each year. Unnamed Author Puerto Montt, Chile Dedications For Lisa and our children, Mackenzie, John, and Katherine Preface Business Communication for Success (BCS) provides a comprehensive, integrated approach to the study and application of written and oral business communication to serve both student and professor. This series features chapters with the following elements: • Learning Objectives • Introductory Exercises • Clear expectations, relevant background, and important theories • Practical, real-world examples • Key Takeaways or quick internal summaries • Key terms that are easily identified • In-chapter assignments • Postchapter assessments linked to objectives and skills acquisition Each chapter is self-contained, allowing for mix-and-match flexibility and custom or course-specific design. Each chapter focuses on clear objectives and skill demonstrations that can be easily linked to your syllabus and state or federal requirements. Supported by internal and external assessments, each chapter features time-saving and learning-enhancement support for instructors and students. BCS is designed to help students identify important information, reinforce for retention, and demonstrate mastery with a clear outcome product. The text has three content categories: 1. Foundations 2. Process and products 3. Contexts The first three chapters form the core foundation for the study of oral and written business communication. The next sequence of chapters focus on the process of writing, then oral performance with an emphasis on results. The final sequence focuses on contexts where business communication occurs, from interpersonal to intercultural, from groups to leadership. In each of the process and product chapter sequences, the chapters follow a natural flow, from prewriting to revision, from preparation for a presentation to performance. Each sequence comes together in a concluding chapter that focuses on action—where we apply the skills and techniques of written or oral communication in business, from writing a letter to presenting a sales speech. These performances not only serve to reinforce realworld applications but also may serve as course assessments. All chapters are compartmentalized into sections so you can choose what you want to use and eliminate the rest, and here the beauty of it rings true—you can adapt and integrate content from other texts or your own work to truly make it fit your course and student needs. Chapter 1: Effective Business Communication Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing. –Rollo May I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. –Robert J. McCloskey, former State Department spokesman Introductory Exercises 1. Write five words that express what you want to do and where you want to be a year from now. Take those five words and write a paragraph that clearly articulates your responses to both “what” and “where.” 2. Think of five words that express what you want to do and where you want to be five years from now. Share your five words with your classmates and listen to their responses. What patterns do you observe in the responses? Write a paragraph that addresses at least one observation. Communication is an activity, skill, and art that incorporates lessons learned across a wide spectrum of human knowledge. Perhaps the most time-honored form of communication is storytelling. We’ve told each other stories for ages to help make sense of our world, anticipate the future, and certainly to entertain ourselves. The art of storytelling draws on your understanding of yourself, your message, and how you communicate it to an audience that is simultaneously communicating back to you. Your anticipation, reaction, and adaptation to the process will determine how successfully you are able to communicate. You were not born knowing how to write or even how to talk—but in the process of growing up, you have undoubtedly learned how to tell, and how not tell, a story out loud and in writing. You didn’t learn to text in a day and didn’t learn all the codes—from LOL (laugh out loud) to BRB (be right back)—right away. In the same way, learning to communicate well requires you to read and study how others have expressed themselves, then adapt what you have learned to your present task—whether it is texting a brief message to a friend, presenting your qualifications in a job interview, or writing a business report. You come to this text with skills and an understanding that will provide a valuable foundation as we explore the communication process. Effective communication takes preparation, practice, and persistence. There are many ways to learn communication skills; the school of experience, or “hard knocks,” is one of them. But in the business environment, a “knock” (or lesson learned) may come at the expense of your credibility through a blown presentation to a client. The classroom environment, with a compilation of information and resources such as a text, can offer you a trial run where you get to try out new ideas and skills before you have to use them to communicate effectively to make a sale or form a new partnership. Listening to yourself, or perhaps the comments of others, may help you reflect on new ways to present, or perceive, thoughts, ideas and concepts. The net result is your growth; ultimately your ability to communicate in business will improve, opening more doors than you might anticipate. As you learn the material in this text, each part will contribute to the whole. The degree to which you attend to 2 Business Communication for Success each part will ultimately help give you the skills, confidence, and preparation to use communication in furthering your career. 1.1 Why Is It Important to Communicate Well? Learning Objectives 1. Recognize the importance of communication in gaining a better understanding of yourself and others. 2. Explain how communication skills help you solve problems, learn new things, and build your career. Communication is key to your success—in relationships, in the workplace, as a citizen of your country, and across your lifetime. Your ability to communicate comes from experience, and experience can be an effective teacher, but this text and the related business communication course will offer you a wealth of experiences gathered from professional speakers across their lifetimes. You can learn from the lessons they’ve learned and be a more effective communicator right out of the gate. Business communication can be thought of as a problem solving activity in which individuals may address the following questions: • What is the situation? • What are some possible communication strategies? • What is the best course of action? • What is the best way to design the chosen message? • What is the best way to deliver the message? In this book, we will examine this problem solving process and help you learn to apply it in the kinds of situations you are likely to encounter over the course of your career. Communication Influences Your Thinking about Yourself and Others We all share a fundamental drive to communicate. Communication can be defined as the process of understanding and sharing meaning (Pearson & Nelson, 2000). You share meaning in what you say and how you say it, both in oral and written forms. If you could not communicate, what would life be like? A series of never-ending frustrations? Not being able to ask for what you need or even to understand the needs of others? Being unable to communicate might even mean losing a part of yourself, for you communicate your selfconcept—your sense of self and awareness of who you are—in many ways. Do you like to write? Do you find it easy to make a phone call to a stranger or to speak to a room full of people? Perhaps someone told you that you don’t speak clearly or your grammar needs improvement. Does that make you more or less likely to want to 4 Business Communication for Success communicate? For some, it may be a positive challenge, while for others it may be discouraging. But in all cases, your ability to communicate is central to your self-concept. Take a look at your clothes. What are the brands you are wearing? What do you think they say about you? Do you feel that certain styles of shoes, jewelry, tattoos, music, or even automobiles express who you are? Part of your self-concept may be that you express yourself through texting, or through writing longer documents like essays and research papers, or through the way you speak. On the other side of the coin, your communications skills help you to understand others—not just their words, but also their tone of voice, their nonverbal gestures, or the format of their written documents provide you with clues about who they are and what their values and priorities may be. Active listening and read...