978-0073403267 Chapter 2 Key Lecture Points, Teaching Tips, and In-Class Exercises

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Module 2

Adapting Your Message to Your Audience

LO 2-1 Understand expectations from your organization.

LO 2-2 Define audiences for messages.

LO 2-3 Apply strategies for audience analysis with PAIBOC.

LO 2-4 Apply strategies for individual and group audience analyses.

LO 2-5 Apply strategies for audience needs analysis.

LO 2-6 Adapt messages for audiences.

LO 2-7 Choose channels for audiences.

Module Overview

Module 2 discusses ways for students to adapt messages to audiences. It identifies the five types

of audiences and strategies to shape messages to meet different audience needs. It also discusses

the tools writers can use, such as demographics and psychographics.

Because it discusses seminal concepts in business communication, Kitty and Steve recommend

Module 2 be covered early in your course. Students should return to it as they analyze audiences

for the messages they write and the presentations they give.

As with all modules, Kitty and Steve recommend that you read Module 2 thoroughly before

reviewing the discussion that follows.

Teaching Tip: Students often believe that regardless of the class, audience

expectations on writing assignments remain the same. Have them discuss situations

where they found themselves following the writing guidelines and expectations of

previous instructors only to discover that guidelines and expectations had changed

with their audience. What steps did the students take to analyze the new audience?

What “clues” did the new instructor reveal as to his or her expectations? How did

the instructor reveal them? What did they learn about the importance of audience

analysis from the experience?

In-Class Exercise: Individually or in groups, have the students spend 15-20 minutes

discussing who they believe are the audiences for movies—the latest romantic

comedy, action thriller, and literary drama. What are the characteristics of each

audience? How do the students know?

What’s in This Supplement

This supplement is organized around the major questions posed in Module 2. It covers

Part 1: Key Lecture Points, Teaching Tips, and In-Class Exercises Page 19

Part 2: Answers to Textbook Assignments Page 33

Part 3: Appendixes of Handouts/Transparency Masters Page 37

PowerPoint presentations can be found at our Web page at www.mhhe.com/bcs6e.

Questions (with answers) suitable for quizzes are in the Instructor’s Test Bank. For student

practice quizzes with answers, see our Web page.

Part 1: Key Lecture Points, Teaching Tips, and In-Class Exercises

Understanding what your organization wants LO 2-1

Just as every sport has rules about scoring, so, too, do workplaces have rules about what

“counts.” But often these rules are not spelled out nor communicated directly to employees. For

every expectation discussed in an employee handbook, there are probably several others that

never get spoken of overtly or that require employees to observe and listen carefully to determine

what organizations seek.

This concept may be obvious to some of your students but quite novel to others. If we are to

believe the anecdotal information about challenges many companies face today, a sizable number

of incoming workers could use greater awareness of how (and why) to adapt.

Teaching Tip: Think back to your own experiences adapting to an organization’s

culture. For instance, how did you figure out what spaces were okay for socializing

versus which were strictly for quiet and work? How did you know what to wear, and

more importantly, what clothing, colors, and styles to avoid? How did you identify

leaders? Heroes? Role models? Share some of your observations with your class,

and ask students already in the workforce what strategies and experiences they rely

on to make choices.

As PP 2-4 and PP 2-5 suggest, several strategies to help employees adapt exist:

Ask your boss, “What parts of my job are most important? What’s

the biggest thing I could do to improve my work?”

Listen to the stories colleagues tell about people who have succeeded

and those who have failed.

Observe.

Teaching Tip: Remind students that they likely will make

mistakes—adaptation in any circumstance is governed by trial

and error—and one of the hardest realities to accept is how

much isn’t explained to employees when the arrive for that first

day on the job. But we survive!

Who is my audience? LO 2-2

More people than you might think!

Students often are surprised to learn that audiences for their messages may be complex and more

than one person. Understanding these concepts takes time—but it’s time well spent!

Kitty and Steve support the audience-centered approach to communication. By keeping the

audiences in mind, writers and speakers are more likely to create effective messages for those

audiences.

Key to understanding the importance of audience is defining the five types of audiences (p. 20),

as described in PP 2-6.

The five kinds of audiences:

1 Initial audience

2 Gatekeeper

3 Primary audience

4 Secondary audience

5 Watchdog audience

For messages going to multiple audiences, writers should use the primary audience and the

gatekeeper to decide on message detail, organization, level of formality, and technical terms and

theory.

Teaching Tip: Students often confuse gatekeepers with initial audiences.

Emphasize that while gatekeepers can also be the initial audience, the initial

audience does not have to be a gatekeeper. Initial audiences simply are the first to

receive the message. Students also should understand the importance of secondary

audiences. For instance, a letter to an employee announcing a benefits change may

not only affect the employee but also his or her spouse or domestic partner.

Figures 2.1 and 2.2 (p. 21) help students to visualize how audiences work. A key concept

illustrated in both figures is the multiple roles that audiences can take. For instance, in Figure

2.1, the boss is both the initial audience and the gatekeeper. The figures also help students

understand the “real world” application of audience—both figures suggest the multitude of

audiences possible for a business message.

(Students must remember, however, that the primary audience will most affect how the writer

approaches creating the message.)

In-Class Exercise: Individually or in groups, have students spend 10-15 minutes

identifying key audiences for common messages. Good general examples are

applying for a job where several levels of executives will review the application or a

familiar advertisement for a product or service. Have the students brainstorm how

the message intended for the primary audience would be affected by additional

audiences (which they also must identify) and their needs or concerns. For more

specific scenarios, consider assigning Exercise 2.8 (p. 33).

Why is my audience so important? LO 2-3

To be successful, messages must meet the audiences’ needs.

Some students resist the notion that audience plays so important a role

in communication, assuming instead that the writer or speaker should

be privileged.

But successful messages always meet the audiences’ needs. To help

students better understand the effect of audience on a message, have

them consider audience and PAIBOC (introduced in Module 1). PP

2-12 and PP 2-13 discuss PAIBOC and audience analysis.

PAIBOC (pp. 22-24) refers to six areas writers should consider when

composing messages. Five of those areas relate to audience:

P What are your purposes in writing or speaking?

A Who is (are) your audiences? How do members of your audience differ?

I What information must your message include?

B What reasons or reader benefits can you use to support your position?

O What objections can you expect your reader(s) to have? What negative elements of your

message must you de-emphasize or overcome?

C How will the context affect reader response? Think about your relationship to the reader,

morale in the organization, the economy, the time of year, and any special circumstance.

PAIBOC allows students to quickly identify the six key areas in planning messages and

designing messages. Make sure students understand what each component of PAIBOC

represents.

A simplified model of two-person communication with feedback,

stressing the importance of audience, is the focus of Figure 2.3 (p.

23). Its principal parts are described on PP 2-14 and PP 2-15.

Students should understand from this figure the principal actions

that take place in both sending and receiving a message:

Perception

Interpretation

Choice/Selection

Encoding/Decoding

Teaching Tip: Most students are aware of the concept

of codes and codebooks. Use this to help explain the

encoding/decoding process. For instance, once a

message is put into secret code, the receiver must have the codebook in order to

decipher, or decode, the message. Similarly, business messages sent in the wrong

code make no sense to the receiver. They are just as secret.

Channel

Noise

Teaching Tip: Emphasize to students that noise can occur at any point during the

message transmission, such as when the sender uses jargon that the receiver will not

understand or telephones a business after hours. While senders cannot control all

noise factors, students should keep in mind those under the sender’s control—

language, how and when the message will be sent, and the form the message will

take.

In-Class Exercise: Individually or in groups, have the students spend 15-20 minutes

recounting frustrations they’ve had sending or receiving messages. These could be

at work, at school, or in their personal lives. Have them identify what they believe

were noise factors. Ask the students to list what steps could have been taken to

minimize the noise.

To better understand channels, have students in groups analyze some or all of the channel

possibilities in Exercise 2.9 (p. 34).

What do I need to know about my audience(s)? LO 2-4

Everything that’s relevant to what you’re writing or talking about.

Kitty and Steve believe the more a writer knows about the audience when composing, the more

likely the message will succeed. Many students, however, are uncertain what steps can be taken

to assess audience.

A key to understanding audience is empathy, or putting oneself in the audiences’ shoes.

Empathy requires students to imagine themselves as the audience and to anticipate and

understand the audiences’ emotional, psychological, and physical needs. Therefore, writers must

avoid being self-centered.

In-Class Exercise: Form groups of two students each. Have Student A share a

(non-traumatic) story with Student B about a significant interaction with another

person in which Student A was displeased or misunderstood. Then, have Student B

assume the role of Student A in the situation, while Student A assumes the other role.

Role play, re-creating the event as best possible. Afterward, have each student

discuss what they thought and felt during the role play. How do Student B’s

thoughts and feelings compare to what Student A actually thought and felt in the

original situation? What did Student A learn about the other person? Repeat with

Student B’s story.

Beyond empathy, five additional concepts about audience can

help, all of which are illustrated on PP 2-16 and discussed in

detail on PP 2-17 through 2-20:

Knowledge

Demographic Factors

Teaching Tip: Such “objective” information may be attractive to students,

particularly those who come from fields of study that privilege it. Emphasize that

making hasty generalizations about audience from demographics is dangerous. For

instance, belonging to one ethnicity or another does not guarantee loyalty to a

particular product or service, even if it is more likely to be used by members of that

group. Students must understand that demographics are just one of many tools at

their disposal.

Values and Beliefs

In-Class Exercise: Have students form groups of 3-5 and spend 15-20 minutes

completing Exercise 2.9 (p. 34), which offers insight into the dimensions of

demographics and psychographics. Afterward, consider challenging the assumptions

students have made—what do they base their conclusions on? Are there any groups

left out of their analysis? Why? What might these issues suggest about the

limitations of demographics and psychographics?

Personality—Different personality types may require different strategies for working

with them. For instance, an introvert may prefer to read information while an extravert

may prefer to have a phone or a face-to-face conversation.

In-Class Exercise: Take 15-20 minutes to have students individually or in groups

recount experiences with supervisors who preferred to have information in writing

versus those who wanted the information orally. Which wanted more detail? Which

might have delayed making decisions? Which might be introverted? Extraverted?

What other dimensions might be represented? Why do the students think so? Have

them consider the values applied to these terms. All have strengths and weaknesses,

but do the students privilege some personality dimensions more than others? Should

they?

Past Behavior

Teaching Tip: The world seems to be changing at ever-increasing speeds. To

illustrate this concept, have students spend 10-15 minutes comparing fads popular

this year to those two years ago. Five years ago. Ten years ago. Are there any

constants? What is different? What might the actions of the past suggest about the

future? Ask the students what they think the “shelf life” is for information in a

constantly changing world.

Additional concepts students should remember are discourse community

and organizational (or corporate) culture. Use PP 2-21 through PP 2-23

to illustrate these concepts.

Discourse Community

Organizational or Corporate Culture

Norms of Behavior in an Organization

While there may be similarities, each discourse community and

organizational culture can be quite different from the next. Differences

can even exist among (and within) departments and subsidiaries within

the same organization. Students must use a combination of observation,

research through asking colleagues questions, and trial-and-error to learn

these differences.

Spend at least 10 minutes defining and explaining organizational culture

and discourse communities and how they affect both spoken and written

messages. Use this terminology throughout your discussion of audience

and throughout the course as you discuss assignments students will

write.

Teaching Tip: A common reaction from students to some

business communication concepts is “That’s not how we do it in my company.”

Take this opportunity to discuss discourse community and organizational culture.

What might the practice in question reveal about either? Ask the class if they believe

such a practice would work in a different discourse community or organizational

culture. Why or why not?

The concept of discourse communities is crucial: it explains in part why some documents

“succeed” on a particular job even though they would not get high grades in your course.

Teaching Tip: Make your course expectations and standards of grading for

assignments clear to your students. In effect, your classroom is one discourse

community, and students certainly will have to adapt to your standards throughout

the course. Invite them to ask questions and practice skills to assess its boundaries.

In-Class Exercise: Choose 3-4 different organizations and list them on the board.

Microsoft, the Walt Disney Corporation, Wendy’s International, etc., are good places

to start; a good source for this information would be the company Web sites, such as

www.microsoft.com; http://disney.com; www.wendys.com. For 15 minutes, have students list

what similar and dissimilar qualities each might have with regard to organizational

culture. For instance, who might the heroes be? Where might casual dress be

acceptable? How might success be determined? At the conclusion, take a quick poll

of how many students might want to work for each. Take another five minutes to

discuss with students why some organizations might seem more or less appealing.

Let students share why.

Now that I have my analysis, what do I do with it? LO 2-5

Use it to plan strategy, organization, style, document design, and visuals.

If writers know their audience well, many of their audience analysis

decisions will be unconscious or “instinctive.” More commonly,

though, writers will need to consider five areas during audience

analysis. These are illustrated in PP 2-24 for use in a 15- to 20-minute

discussion.

Strategy

Organization

Word Choice

Teaching Tip: What students perceive as “academic” language may be different

from that of their instructors. Ask the students to share what kind of words the term

brings to mind. What specific examples are problematic? What language would

they substitute? Would the change accurately convey the same information?

Document Design

Photographs and Visuals

Teaching Tip: Though most students inundate themselves daily with such visual

images as movies, magazines, music videos, and Web pages, few consider the power

and content of the images they see. Help them by using a common advertisement

featuring images of people. From those images, have the students share their

perceptions. Who is the ad aimed at? What assumptions has the advertiser made

about that audience? Its needs and lifestyle? Who is excluded from the ad? If the

image is non-inclusive, what might the effect be on overlooked individuals?

In-Class Exercise: Locate two different messages from your college or university. A

good example might be a letter explaining to students a policy or procedure, such as

applying for financial aid, registering for classes, or moving into the dormitory.

Contrast that with a letter to alumni requesting donations or a memo to staff and

faculty explaining a contractual or human resources issue. For 15-20 minutes, have

students as a class review each message to decide how strategy, organization, style,

and if applicable, document design and visuals are used by the writer to

communicate the message. What other audiences might these messages be

addressed to? What assumptions have the writers made about the audiences? If time

permits, ask students if they see opportunities for revision that might better

communicate the message to the audiences.

What if my audiences have different needs? LO 2-6

Focus on gatekeepers and decision makers.

When it’s not possible to meet all audience members’ needs, writers

should focus on gatekeepers and decision makers first, shown in PP

2-25.

Writers should look to these factors when composing:

Content and choice of details.

Organization.

Level of formality.

Use of technical terms and theory.

Teaching Tip: Use Appendix 2-A through Appendix 2-D to show students two

examples of how different audiences may have different expectations concerning an

issue. In these examples—one aimed at workers and the other at the boss—the same

general issue about work efficiency during a holiday is addressed. Let students see

that different audiences will have different expectations and that the writer will

choose content and expression accordingly.

How do I reach my audience(s)? LO 2-7

Important messages may require multiple channels.

The communication channel a writer or speaker chooses can affect the success of the message.

The advantages of each kind of message and considerations for communication channels include

(illustrated on PP 2-26 through PP 2-30):

A written message (PP 2-27) makes it easier to

Present many specific details of a law, policy, or procedure

Present extensive or complex financial data.

Minimize undesirable emotions.

(Because paper messages are more formal, email should be used primarily for routine messages

to people writers know.)

Writers should choose carefully the channel they use to communicate a message. Channels can

vary according to

Speed.

Accuracy of transmission.

Cost.

Number of messages carried.

Number of people reached.

Efficiency.

Ability to provide goodwill.

An oral message (PP 2-28) makes it easier to

Answer questions, resolve conflicts, and build consensus

Use emotion to help persuade the audience.

Get immediate action or response.

Focus the audience’s attention on specific points.

Modify a proposal that may not be acceptable in its original form.

As PP 2-29 shows, channels have a variety of properties. For both oral and written messages

Adapt the message to the specific audience.

Show the audience members how they benefit from the idea,

policy, service, or product.

Overcome any objections the audience may have.

Use you-attitude and positive emphasis.

Use visuals to clarify or emphasize material

Specify exactly what the audience should do.

Last Word: Emphasize to students that while it’s unrealistic to expect to know

everything about their audiences, using what they know—and taking steps to learn

what they don’t—often is a winning combination. They should also be prepared to

make mistakes, as even in the best of situations, there is always room for error. The

goal is to minimize the potential for errors and to maximize the learning from them for

the future.