BCM MIDTERM

Chapter 1: Succeeding in Business Communication

·      Research strategy must – provide you with data you needs, advance your purpose for communicating, generate enough evidence for your audience to accept

·      Primary – gathers new information; surveys, interview, focus groups

·      Secondary – retrieves someone else’s information; library and research

·      Population – group you want to make statements about

·      Sample – subset of the population

·      Sampling units – those actually sampled

·      Sampling frame – list of all sampling units

·      Response rate – percentage of people who respond

·      Average or mean – is calculated by adding up all the figures and dividing by the number of samples

·      Mode – the number that most often occurs

·      Median – the number that is exactly in the middle in a ranked list of observations

·      Range – the difference between the high and low figures for that variable

·      Verbal Communication – communication that uses words

·      Nonverbal Communication - communication without words; body language

·      Internal audiences – other people in the same organization: subordinates, superiors, and peers

·      External audiences – people outside the organization: customers, suppliers, distributers, unions, stockholders

·      Criteria for effective meetings – clear, complete, correct, follows conventions, saves the audiences time, builds goodwill, ethical.

·      Conventions – widely accepted practices that help people recognize, produce, and interpret different kinds of communications

·      Informative message- audiences reaction will be neutral

·      Positive or good news message – audiences’ reaction will be positive

·      Gatekeeper – the

·       to stop your message instead of sending it on to other audience

·      Primary audience – decides whether to accept your recommendations or act on the basis of your message

·      Secondary audience – may be asked to comment on your message or to implement your ideas after they’ve been approved

·      Auxiliary audience – may encounter your message but will not have to interact with

·      Watchdog audience – though it does not have the power to stop the message and will not act directly on it, has political, social, or economic power

·      Demographic characteristics – measurable features that can be counted objectively, such as income, education level, geographic region, and age

·      Psychographic characteristics – include personalities, values, interests, opinions, attitudes, beliefs, goals, and lifestyles

·      Intrinsic motivators – come automatically from using a product or doing somethings

·      Extrinsic motivators – are “added on”

·      Analyzing business communication – 1. What is your purpose in communicating 2. Who is your audience 3. How will the audience initially react to the message 4. What information must your message include 5. What benefits will your audience find convincing 6. How can you ensure that you communicate ethically

Chapter 2: Using Goodwill for Effective Communication

·      Communication channel – means by which you convey your message

·      Semantic analyses – providing feedback to advertisers about both products and audiences

·      You-attitude – communication style that looks at things from the audience’s point of view

·      Wordiness – having more words than the meaning requires

·      Passive voice – if the subject is acted upon

·      Impersonal expressions – omit people and talk about things

·      Parallel structure – in headings and lists facilitates readers’ comprehension of your message

·      How to create positive emphasis – 1. Avoid negative words and words with negative connotations 2. Beware of hidden negatives 3. Focus on what the audience can do rather than on limitations 4. Justify negative information by giving a reason or linking it to an audience benefit 5. Put the negative information in the middle and present it compactly

·      Tone – the implied attitude of the communicator toward the audience

·      Avoiding You-attitude – 1. Talk about the audience, not about yourself 2. Refer specifically to the customer’s request or order 3. Don’t talk about feelings, except to congratulate or offer sympathy 4. In positive situations, use you more than I, use we when it includes the audience 5. In negative situations, avoid the word you. Protect your audience’s ego. Using passive voice and impersonal expressions to avoid assigning blame

Chapter 3: Research and Evaluating Source Material

·      Survey – questioning a group of people

·       

·      Types of Surveys – face-to-face surveys, phone surveys, mail surveys, online surveys

·      Analyzing Numbers – average or mean: calculated by adding up all the figures and dividing by number of samples. Mode: the number that most often occurs. Median: the number that is exactly in the middle in a ranked list of observations. Range: the difference between the high and low figures for that variable

Chapter 4: Planning, Composing, and Revising

·      Composing – planning, writing, revising, editing, ANY ORDER

·      Overcoming Writer’s Block – prepare for writing, practice regularly and in moderation, talk positively to yourself, talk to other people about writing, brainstorm, free writing, clustering

·      Half Truths about Writing Business – write as you talk, never use “I”, never use “you”, never begin a sentence with and or  but, never end a sentence with a preposition, never have a sentence with more than 20 words or a paragraph with more than 8 lines, big words impress people, business writing does not document sources

·      Denotation – words literal meaning

·      Bypassing – two people using same word for different things

·      Connotations – words conveying an attitude you want

·      Ways to Make Writing Easier – use words that are accurate, appropriate, and familiar. Use technical jargon sparingly. Use active voice most of the time. Use verbs, not nouns, to carry the weight of your sentences. Eliminate wordiness. Vary sentence length and sentence structure. Use parallel structure. Put your readers in your sentences. Begin most paragraphs with topic sentences. Use transitions to link ideas.

Chapter 5: Communicating Across Cultures

·      Culture - is a shared set of attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and customs passed on and learned by the members of a community

·      Intercultural Competence - a set of cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills and characteristics that support effective and appropriate interaction in a variety of cultural contexts.

·      Ethnocentrism - assuming one’s own culture is the norm while judging different approaches and behaviors as nonstandard.

·      Global Agility - a willingness to relax our customary procedures and allow for new ways of interacting in order to achieve our communicative purposes

·      Outsourcing – sending corporate work to other companies

·      Offshoring - opening whole operational facilities in other countries

·      High-context cultures - A culture in which most information is inferred from the context, rather than being spelled out explicitly in words.

·      Low-context cultures - context is less important; most information is explicitly spelled out.

·      Lingua Franca – a common language used among speakers of other languages; English

·      When working with other cultures:

o   Learn some language basics

o   Learn about the culture and history

o   Learn about basics of oral conversation

·      Verbal Communication – provides information

·      Non-verbal communication – adds the “flavor”, attitude, emphasis, and emotion

·      Proxemics – the distance people want between themselves and other people in ordinary

·      Monochronic Culture – focus on clock time

·      Polychronic Culture – focus on relationships

·      Benefits to Working in Teams – multiple perspectives, tackling large projects, fosters creativity, manages risks, produce better results

·      Ground Rules for Teams – start on time, attend regularly, come prepared, share your work, respect other opinions, if you have problems with a person tell them, leave meeting with clear understanding

Chapter 6: Working and Writing in Teams

·      Area or Developmental Teams - teams where team members all come from the same area of the organization and report to the same supervisor. tend to be permanent and work on a continuous project or an ongoing series of projects working toward a larger goal.

·      Interarea or Cross-Functional Teams - made with experts from different areas, jobs, or functions within an organization. Some teams produce products; provide services; recommend solutions to problems; or generate communications, documents, or presentations. Some of these teams are permanent and some are temporary.

·      Problem-Solving, Trouble-Shooting, Task-Force Teams - tend to be temporary, put together for a single purpose, and have team members whose expertise can inform the problem or the solution. A task force, a term first used by the U.S. military to mean “a special operation under a unified command,”13 is typically limited to an emergency situation.

·      Project Teams - formed for the purpose of completing a project. Project teams have team members from a variety of areas within an organization, and they are disbanded once the project is completed.

·      Self-Managed or Self-Directed - teams that have the power to implement their ideas within an organization. These teams tend to work in an extremely collaborative manner and are fluid and flexible in their hierarchy.

·      Minutes - Records of a meeting, listing the items discussed, the results of votes, and the persons responsible for carrying out follow-up steps.

·      Contribution Card – your developmental goals, steps you need to take to move toward you goals, knowledge and experience you can bring to bear on this project, ways to leverage the range of your knowledge and experience

·      Basic Rules of Politeness for Meetings – cell phone on vibrate, turn off email notifications, refrain from texting or interacting with social media accounts

·      Online Meeting Rules – test your tech Wi-Fi, mic, camera, and screen sharing, log in a few minutes early, mute mic when not speaking, host turn off notifications, turn on your video, uncluttered background

·      Positive Roles and Actions for Teams – seeking/ giving info and opinions, summarizing, synthesizing(pulling ideas together), evaluating, coordinating, encouraging, checking feelings, relieving tenson, active listening, solving interpersonal problems

·      Negative Roles and Actions for Teams – blocking, dominating, clowning, over speaking, withdrawing

·      Effective Team Members – Positive attitude toward the team, self-aware, committed to putting in their best efforts to complete the teams work, willing to help team members in need, reliable, autonomous, communicate well, actively share ideas

·      Devil’s Advocate – give fair hearing and argues against point to look for possible flaws

·      Steps in Conflict Resolution – 1. Make sure that people involved really disagree 2. Check everyone’s info is correct. 3. Discover the need the person is trying to meet. 4. Search for alternatives. 5.repair negative feelings.

·      Paraphrase – repeat your own words of the verbal content of the critics message

·      You attitude – speaks in accusing attitudes using you statements

·      Omnibus Motion – allows a group to approve many items together rather then voting on them separately

·      Agenda – foundation of a good meeting: meeting plan

1.    How does good communication benefit business?

a.    By improving teamwork, efficiency, enhancing relationships, and reducing misunderstanding

2.    List and describe the two categories of documents.

a.    Internal (used within a company; emails or reports) and external (sent outside the company; proposals or contracts)

3.    Explain the basic criteria for an effective message.

a.    Clear, concise, complete, correct, considerate of the audience

4.    What are the factors to consider when conveying an ethical message?

a.    Honesty, transparency, fairness respect, and cultural sensitivity

5.    Describe power and politeness

a.    Power (the ability to influence others) Politeness (using respectful language to maintain good relationships)

6.        How do you reduce bias in business communication?

a.        Gender-neutral, avoiding stereotypes, focus on facts, and respect diversity

7.        List and explain the three different types of research strategies.

a.        Primary (collecting new data; surveys, interviews) Secondary (using existing data; articles, reports) Quantitive vs. qualitative research (numeritive vs. descriptive data analysis)

8.        What is a Focus Group, and what are its pros and cons?

a.        Group discussion for gathering opinions, pros: in-depth and interactive, cons: can be biased and expensive

9.        What is Causation?

a.        When one event directly causes another

10.  What is Correlation?

a.        A relationship between two variables, but not necessarily cause and effect

11.  List and explain the different type of problematic content.

a.        Bias – prejudice in favor or against a person that is unfair; unfair language

b.        Jargon – overly technical words

c.        Ambiguity – lack of clarity

d.        Offensive language – inappropriate or disrespectful terms

12.  List several items that describe the way good writers write. 

a.        Clear, concise, organized, audience-focused, grammatically correct

13.  Describe ways to make your writing easier to read.

a.        Use short sentences, bullet points, active voice, and simple words

14.  Describe and provide an example of active and passive voice.

a.        Active (the manager approved the request) Passive (the request was approved by the manager)

15.  List several guidelines for constructing sentences.

a.        Keep sentences short, use active voice, avoid redundancy, and be specific

16.  What do you look for when you revise?  Edit?

a.        Revise – content, organization, clarity. Edit – grammar, punctuation, spelling

17.  How do you catch typos?

a.        Proofread multiple times, read aloud, use spell-check, have someone else review

18.  Describe Cultural Awareness. 

a.        Understanding and respecting different cultural norms and communication styles

19.  Describe Monochronic cultures & Polychronic cultures.

a.        Monochronic - time is linear, punctuality is important; US and Germany

b.        Polychronic – Flexible with time, multitasking is common; middle east and Latin America

20.  List and describe the benefits of working in teams.

a.        Improved creativity, better problem solving, shared workload, increased efficiency

21.  List and explain ground rule for working in teams.

a.        Listed under chapter 5

22.  Explain the characteristics of successful teams.

a.        Clear goals, string leadership, good communication, mutual respect, accountability

23.  List best practices for effective meetings.

a.        Have an agenda, start on time, keep discussions focused, encourage participation, follow up

24.  List and explain the steps in drafting a collaborative document. 

a.        Plan – define goals and roles

b.        Draft – write initial content

c.        Revise – review for clarity and consistency

d.        Finalize – edit and approve the final version