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Lesson 1: Understanding Business Communication Overview This lesson is designed to help you understand that communication is the glue that holds organizations together. As you read Chapter one of the textbook , think of the various ways that people in business communicate. Think, too, about the role that communication plays in the activities of organizations. Take the time to analyze your own communication skills and preferences and develop a plan to improve your weak areas. Good communication skills shape the impressions you make on others. They enable you to perceive and respond to your audience’s needs and to influence your audience to think in a particular way. Because others understand successful communicators, they are often exceptionally effective and productive employees, and they tend to advance rapidly in their careers. The formal communication channel is patterned after a company’s official organizational structure. Information that passes through formal channels flows up and down the hierarchy, as well as across the lines of authority. In actual practice, however, each organization has a powerful informal communication network that encompasses all the casual conversations and messages occurring between employees regardless of their position in the hierarchy. Because the informal network winds through the hierarchical structure in no set pattern, it is often called the grapevine. Communication is a six-phase process: The sender has an idea, transforms the idea into a message, and transmits the message, the receiver gets the message, interprets the message, and reacts to the message by sending feedback. The eight major barriers to communication are differences in perception and language; poor listening; emotional interference; cultural differences; physical distractions; information overload and message competition; incorrect filtering; and closed or inadequate communication climate. Effective communicators overcome communication barriers by fostering an open communication climate, committing to ethical communication, increasing their intercultural awareness, adopting an audience-centered approach, using technology wisely and responsibly to obtain and share information, and creating and processing their messages effectively. Media richness is a medium’s ability to convey a message by means of more than one informational cue, to facilitate feedback, and to establish personal focus. Face-to-face communication is the richest medium because it is personal, provides both immediate verbal and nonverbal feedback, and conveys the emotion behind the message. Objectives
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