978-0073530406 Chapter 5

Unlock access to all the studying documents.

View Full Document

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-1

Chapter 5

Communication

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

While great managers need not be highly charismatic or gifted speakers, they do need to be able

to deliver a persuasive message either in person or in print. Great managers process information

and translate it into coherent messages that others can easily understand. They listen well, and

can accurately interpret communication from others. This chapter focuses on models for creating

and presenting persuasive messages, active listening and overcoming common barriers to

effective communication.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

KNOWING OBJECTIVES

1. Explain how the curse of knowledge creates a barrier to effective communication

2. Describe the fundamental elements of persuasion

3. Describe the key elements in making a communication “sticky”

4. Articulate methods for overcoming common weaknesses in presentations

5. Explain the barriers to active listening

6. Describe the strategies for listening more effectively

DOING OBJECTIVES

1. Create a persuasive message that communicates personal credibility and evidence, while

arousing people’s emotions

2. Deliver a presentation that incorporates strategy, structure, support, style and

supplements

3. Choose the appropriate media for communication in various circumstances

4. Communicate your wishes using empathy and unambiguous statements

5. Know what and how to communicate in a crisis situation

6. Actively listen to gain shared understanding

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-2

KEY STUDENT QUESTIONS

When faced with the topic of communication, students most often want to know how to

communicate across corporate boundaries – a common question is “How can I communicate

more effectively with my boss?” or “How can I communicate more effectively with my

subordinates?” In answering these questions, stress the following two key points:

1. Any communication that takes the perspective of the listener into account is likely to be

2. Presentations that incorporate ethos, pathos, and logos are likely to be persuasive regardless

of the audience.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

A. Communication = sharing information with other people in order to reach a common

understanding

2. Communication skills can be learned and developed

B. Traditional Communication Model

1. Sender transmits message to a receiver

2. Receiver decodes the message and sends feedback message back to initial sender

multidimensional, depending on several links in the system

C. Communication Myths

1. If you have a strong case, everyone will be convinced

a. People are influenced by who presents the evidence and how it is presented

2. If communicated enough times, your communications are effective

a. Most messages are forgettable

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-3

b. Communication is often rated as among the biggest weakness of managers

3. Words mean what they mean

a. Words carry different meanings in different contexts and to different people

anyone else

6. Listening is a passive activity

a. Hearing may be passive, but to truly listen requires active work

II. Creating Persuasive Messages

A. Overcoming the Curse of Knowledge

1. The first step to becoming a better communicator is understanding why

communication so often fails

2. Gifted experts often fail as teachers and coaches because they do not how to

sticky and persuasive messages

B. Audience Analysis

1. Develop an argument that will speak to your audience

4. Ask your audience what they expect and prefer

C. Fundamental Elements of Persuasion: Ethos, Pathos, Logos

1. People align their attitudes and behaviors with those of the speaker based on personal

credibility (ethos), emotional appeals (pathos), and logical arguments (logos)

2. It is best to incorporate all three when making a presentation

3. Ethos: Personal credibility

b. To enhance your ethos:

ii. Establish your authority and/or expertise

4. Pathos: Arousing others’ emotions

a. Pathos = an appeal to the audience’s emotions

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-4

b. Most effective when speakers use stories and examples that are highly relevant to

their listeners, or when emotions are aroused in a way that prompts their

compliance with the message.

5. Logos: Appealing to logic

a. Two ways to enhance logos

i. Construct logically sound arguments in support of their position

ii. Find evidence in support of those claims

b. Two basic kinds of arguments:

i. Inductive – moves from talking about specific things to generalizing

iii. Inductive and deductive reasoning work only if listeners accept each piece of

the argument.

6. Use of evidence

a. Use valid evidence that is relevant to your audience

common mistake is to rely too heavily on just one element

D. Making Messages Sticky: The SUCCES Model

1. Simple – find the core of the idea

2. Unexpected – grab attention with surprise

3. Concrete – illustrate your ideas in ways that are tangible and easy to grasp

a. Look for simple and well-known images and examples

4. Other ways to make messages sticky

a. Vivid details

b. Anti-authorities – sometimes messages are more believable when heard from

e. Stories – bring ideas to life by showing not telling

III. Delivering Powerful Messages

A. The Basics of Effective Presentation: The Five S’s of Effective Presentation

1. Strategy – Make your presentation choices based on the answers to five questions:

a. Good planning is critical

b. Consider your goals, audience, and general persuasion approach

2. Structure

a. Get to main point quickly

b. Begin with the end in mind

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-5

c. Barbara Minto approach to structuring a message:

i. Start with statement audience will agree with

iv. Use the rest of the speech to explain why your recommendation will solve the

problem

3. Support – Provide evidence which backs up your point

a. If you have moderate credibility, evidence will probably increase your persuasive

effectiveness. Speakers with low credibility are almost always seen as more

credible when they cite evidence

qualifications are provided

e. Using irrelevant evidence or poorly qualified sources may provide an effect

opposite to what the speaker intends

4. Style – deliver your speech in a compelling way

a. Show enthusiasm and passion

5. Supplement

a. Be prepared to answer questions

b. Gather additional evidence to support your claims.

justification during a Q&A session, if needed

c. Be able to talk about costs

d. Paraphrase difficult questions, and then ask listener if you’ve understood correctly

e. Listen carefully

f. Specify when you want questions at the beginning of your presentation

B. Presenting Plans Bosses (and Others) can Approve of

1. Four key components for a proposal

a. What is the plan?

ii. Next list concrete actions to support the strategy

b. Why is the plan recommended?

c. What important goals will the plan help us achieve?

d. How much will the plan cost and what are the risks?

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-6

C. Effective use of PowerPoint and Visual Aids

1. Advantages of visual aids

a. Hold audience attention

b. Enhance memory

2. Tips for effective visual aids

a. Know your goal – e.g., persuasion, providing information

b. Be learner-centered

c. Dual channels

i. People have separate information processing channels for visual and verbal

material

ii. Present information that taps into multiple channels

d. Limited capacity

e. Active processing

i. Include elements that will encourage the audience to actively process the

information

IV. Choosing Your Communication Medium

A. Information Richness = the potential information-carrying capacity of a communication

channel, and the extent to which it facilitates developing a common understanding

between people

1. Media high in information richness can transmit more information

2. Media can be high in richness in one of three ways

a. Feedback – Rich media allow for immediate feedback, non-rich media offer a

c. Personal or impersonal – Rich media encourage and facilitate personal contact

3. Face-to-face communication is typically highest in information richness and includes

nonverbal information

4. Written communications have lower information richness and lack nonverbal

information

a. Some written communications utilize emoticons like type-written faces to convey

nonverbal information

B. Topic complexity

1. Low complexity situations are routine, minor matters.

a. High complexity situations often require input from several people for resolution.

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-7

b. Handle low complexity topics with media that are low in information richness,

and handle high complexity topics with media that are high in information

richness

c. Take the recipient’s comfort level with a particular communication channel into

account when choosing a channel

C. About e-mail

a. Any e-mail you write on a work computer can be, and probably is, monitored by

c. Before “dashing off” an e-mail, make sure it is professional – complete, clear, and

not easily misinterpreted

V. Active Listening

A. The Paradox and Importance of Active Listening

1. Hearing is the physical reality of receiving sounds – listening is an active process that

6. Listening to customers can increase sales and customer satisfaction

B. Traps and Barriers to Active Listening

1. The Tendency to Evaluate

2. Misreading Nonverbal Cues

3. Personal Focus

4. Thinking is Faster than Speaking

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-8

b. To correct the disparity, try to guess where the speaker is going, and confirm it or

5. Selective Perception/Filtering

6. Tendency to Advise

C. Tips for Good Listening

1. Know Your Objective

a. Empathize

b. Analyze

c. Synthesize

D. Actively Interact

1. Active listening requires conscious effort

2. Ask informed and thoughtful questions that put people at ease, engage them, and

prompt thoughtful responses

a. Paraphrase the speaker’s comments in your own words

b. Frequently mirror back what the speaker has said and your empathy for their

position

c. Make supportive comments

E. Stay Focused

1. Don’t allow your mind to drift into random thoughts

2. Think of listening as a treasure hunt – look for nuggets of valuable information

CASES

Tableau

Suggested answers to case questions:

1. Answers will vary. Students will likely interpret the story to mean that FedEx employees

2. Stories carry more “punch” than other types of messages for a variety of reasons. Stories

are often about people, and we are wired to think and care about people more than we are

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-10

manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.

one child who is suffering from poverty and hunger rather than if we were presented with

statistics about poverty in the United States. Stories convey specific and concrete imagery

so that we can vividly imagine what happened. In comparison, we have a more difficult

time visualizing theories or data.

3. Good stories use strong imagery so that people can clearly visualize the situation. Stories

“MANAGE WHAT” SCENARIOS

1. Selling an Idea to Your Boss

Debrief is found at the end of the chapter.

3. Fixing a Typically Bad PowerPoint Presentation

PowerPoint is not an inherently bad way to deliver presentations. In fact, PowerPoint

presentations can be done very effectively! But don’t get so tied up in the bells and whistles

of the technology that you forget to attend to the message itself. You need to start by

considering the goal of the presentation – if you don’t know it yourself, then ask your boss to

help clarify the goal. If the goal is to convey information, your PowerPoint will be different

than if it is to persuade or stir action in employees at your firm. Because the presentation is

about using social media for internal communications, you will likely want to focus more on

persuasion than on conveying too many dry facts, figures, and statistics.

You will also want to consider the audience (other employees at the firm) and make the

presentation.

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-11

4. Actively Listening to Understand a Problem: Debrief

Debrief is found at the end of the chapter.

MANAGEMENT LIVE

5.1 Tappers and Listeners – The Curse of Knowledge

This Management Live describes an experiment in which people were asked to either tap the

rhythm of a song or to listen to someone else tapping and to guess what song was being tapped.

Listeners correctly identified the songs only 2.5 percent of the time yet tappers thought that

listeners would guess the correct song 50 percent of the time! This experiment shows that just

because something is obvious to you doesn’t mean that it is obvious to other people. Especially if

you have unique access to information or expertise in a particular area, you might not realize that

other people don’t know what you know.

This experiment would be easy to replicate in class. Even though students have read the chapter

in advance and should be aware of the outcome, having the class demonstrate the finding for

themselves would likely enhance learning and memory for the concept. Of course, with previous

knowledge of the outcome of the experiment, tappers might downwardly adjust their estimates of

Alternatively, the instructor can conduct a different exercise that conveys the same point. Keysar

and Bly (1995) conducted a study which utilized outdated idioms like “The goose hangs high.”

The researchers told some participants that the phrase “the goose hangs high” meant that “things

look good.” The other participants were told that the phrase meant “things look bad.” Next,

participants were asked what an uninformed person would believe the idiom meant. Each group

thought that the uninformed person would perceive the meaning they were given as correct. In

other words, they thought that their newfound knowledge would be automatically known to

outcome back to the class.

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-12

Reference:

5.2 Getting to the Core: A Six-Word Long Story

This Management Live suggests that we can convey a lot of information and even emotion in

just a few words. Students should challenge themselves to try to compose their own six-word

5.3 Risks in Promiscuous Sexual Activity: The Power of Testable Credentials

This Management Live describes a very unique tactic that the NBA took to teach new players

about the risk of HIV/AIDS. Unfortunately, it seems that many messages don’t seem to “stick”

with us – instead of listening to experts and people who have more experience than we do, we

often want to learn for ourselves. The instructor might wish to lead a class discussion about this

Management Live. Some possible questions are listed below.

Class Discussion Questions:

1. Do you think the message was more effective at changing players’ behaviors than it

would have been if they brought in a doctor or former player who had contract

HIV/AIDS? Why or why not?

2. Do you think it was ethical for the NBA to send the message in this way? Why or why

not?

3. How could this strategy be incorporated into other kinds of messages that we often want

to convey to young people (e.g., staying in school, the dangers of doing drugs, smoking,

drinking and driving)?

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-13

5.4 Presentation War Stories

Students will likely identify with some of the “presentation war stories” told in this Management

Live. Most students probably have given at least one presentation that flopped or didn’t go

exactly as planned.

Students should break into small discussion groups and discuss their past experiences of

“presentations gone wrong.” What happened? What was the primary problem (e.g., not knowing

the audience, technology glitches)? What tips and strategies from the chapter could have been

implemented to improve the presentation?

5.5 What Google Can Teach us about Picking the Right Communication Channel

This Management Live discusses the importance of picking the right communication channel to

convey different information. Importantly, technology is not always the answer to sending

messages. As evidenced at Google, where technology dominates, posters taped to doors was an

effective way to draw attention. If the audience is being overloaded in one channel, presenters

might want to try to send their message through another channel. Or, presenters can alter the

Students should read the section in the chapter about communication channels as they relate to

information richness and topic complexity. Next students should consider the following

messages and discuss which communication channel would be most effective in each scenario

and why.

1. Managers at a shipping facility are concerned by the number of back injuries employees

are suffering due to improper lifting techniques. Workers have already been trained on

proper lifting, so how can management get the message to “stick”?

2. A college professor wants her students to participate in a research project in the evening.

How should she send this message so students will notice it and participate?

3. An employee is frustrated by his job. He feels like his boss doesn’t give him enough

direction about the goals and expectations of the job. How can he best communicate this

message to his boss?

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-14

TOOL KIT

5.1 The Effective Presentation Checklist

Instructions:

Have students review “The Effective Presentation Checklist” from the Tool Kit and the rules for

creating effective PowerPoints and visual aids. Their assignment (which should be given in

advance, so that they have time to prepare) is to deliver a 5 minute presentation with visual aids

to the class. Topics might include:

• Why You Should Buy _____ (anything from the generic “organic produce” “fuel-

efficient cars” to the specific “an iPod, ” “Abercrombie & Fitch clothes”).

• The Benefits of _____ (anything the audience might not know about, from “owning a

poodle” to “living in a blended family” – the goal here is to persuade the audience to want

to do something.)

• Important Things to Know About _____ (anything from “eating right” to “Saudi Arabia”

– the goal is to give the audience information they didn’t have before.)

The instructor should print copies of the “Presentation Evaluation Form” below. When the

speaker gets up to present to the class, the class should have the Presentation Evaluation Form in

front of them. At the end of the presentation, ask the class to give the presenter feedback on one

or two things the presenter did RIGHT (no negative feedback allowed in front of the class).

Then ask the class to give ALL written feedback to the presenter so that person can improve his

or her skills.

Presentation Evaluation Form

Does this presenter:

Circle One

Suggestions for Improvement

1. Tailor presentation to the

audience?

Yes No

2. Effectively use nonverbal

behavior (e.g., eye contact,

gestures)?

Yes No

3. Make a strong first

impression?

Yes No

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-15

4. Make a memorable final

statement?

Yes No

5. Tell a compelling story?

Yes No

6. Eliminate the extraneous?

Yes No

7. Appear to have rehearsed?

Yes No

8. Appear comfortable with

technology?

Yes No

9. Utilize effective visual aids?

Yes No

5.2 Choosing your Medium: Written vs. Verbal

Instructions:

Instructors should print off copies of the checklist in Tool Kit 5.2 and the messages below.

Students will read the messages and use the Tool Kit checklist to determine if the message

should be put in writing or communicated verbally. Students should explain their answers.

Messages:

1. An employee has violated company policy about disclosing confidential information with

internal promotion. But Diego doesn’t want his other employees to think that he is

singling out Monique for the promotion to their exclusion.

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-16

5.3 Making E-mails Reader-Friendly

This is an important Tool Kit for students because many of them will be using e-mail to

communicate with managers and other employees. It is critical to establish good habits about e-

mail and avoid sloppy mistakes that can reflect poorly on them.

Instructions:

Ask students to go to the “send” folder in their school or primary email account. Students should

locate at least five messages that they sent that were of a professional nature (e.g., asking a

professor a question, emailing a resume to a potential employer, responding to a question from

an officer in a student organization). Students should print off those messages and see if they

conform to the recommendations in Tool Kit 5.3. Were the messages reader-friendly? Which

recommendations did they violate? What could they change to make the messages more

professional and reader-friendly?

5.4 Tips for Good Listening

This exercise involves reading a brief passage to students, and asking them to answer questions

related to the story. If necessary, the story can be read twice to insure student understanding.

Step 1

Pass out the following questionnaire:

True or False? What Really Happened?

Circle One

T ? F

1. The woman appeared after the caregiver had finished work for the day.

T ? F

2. The person who took the prescriptions was a woman.

T ? F

3. A woman demanded the prescriptions.

T ? F

4. The person who opened the prescription pad was a man.

T ? F

5. The woman demanded prescriptions of the caregiver.

T ? F

6. The story concerns exactly three people: the doctor, the woman who

demanded prescriptions, and the member of the police force.

T ? F

7. The doctor grabbed the blank prescriptions.

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-17

Step 2

Read the following story to students:

A doctor was just finishing up work for the day when a woman appeared,

Step 3

Once the students have finished circling their choices, ask them to share their answers with the

class. The correct answers are shown below.

True or False? What Really Happened?

Circle One

1. The woman appeared after the caregiver had finished work for the day.

(The doctor had finished work for the day – don’t know if the caregiver

and doctor are the same person.)

2. The person who took the prescriptions was a woman. (The story says

that blank prescriptions were grabbed, but it doesn’t say by whom.)

3. A woman demanded the prescriptions.

4. The person who opened the prescription pad was a man. (This

statement assumes that the “caregiver” was a man, but that information

is not given.)

5. The woman demanded prescriptions of the caregiver. (The story

doesn’t say who the recipient of the woman’s demand was.)

6. The story concerns exactly three people: the doctor, the woman who

demanded prescriptions, and the member of the police force. (Again,

this statement assumes that the doctor and the caregiver were one and

the same, and that the doctor, person demanding the painkiller

prescription, and the police are all different.)

7. The doctor grabbed the blank prescriptions. (The story doesn’t say who

grabbed the blank prescriptions.)

Chapter 05 – Communication

5-18

Most students will get many of these answers wrong, helping them to realize that listening is

much more difficult than it appears.

Step 4

Use the following questions to stimulate discussion about the listening process:

1. What assumptions did you make about the individuals described in the story?

How did those assumptions affect your ability to hear details accurately?

2. Is there ever a time when making assumptions in advance can influence your

listening skills positively? If not, why not, and if so, under what circumstances?

3. What advice would you give to someone who wanted to improve their listening

skills, based on the results of this exercise?