Chapter 13: Communication P a g e | 1
Effective Management 7th Edition
Chapter 13: Communication
Pedagogy Map
This chapter begins with the learning outcome summaries and terms covered in the chapter, followed by a
set of lesson plans for you to use to deliver the content in Chapter 13.
Lesson Plan for Lecture (for large sections)
Lesson Plan for Group Work (for smaller classes)
Assignments with Teaching Tips and Solutions
Highlighted Assignments Key Points
What Would You Do? Googles new CEO faces the challenge of eliminating the
bureaucracy that has paralyzed Google.
Management Team Decision Students are asked to craft a communications policy that will
help a global company communicate effectively with its
facilities all over the world.
Additional Assignments Key Points
Management Decision While social media may provide efficient communications,
there are several challenges to be met when it is implemented
across an entire company.
13-1 Explain the role that perception plays in communication and communication problems.
Communication is the process of transmitting information from one person or place to another. Perception
is the process by which people attend to, organize, interpret, and retain information from their
environments. Perception is not a straightforward process. Because of perceptual filters such as selective
perception and closure, people exposed to the same information stimuli often end up with very different
perceptions and understandings. Perception-based differences can also lead to differences in the
13-2 Describe the communication process and the various kinds of communication in
organizations.
Communication within an organization depends on the communication process, formal and informal
communication channels, one-on-one communication, and nonverbal communication. The major
13-3 Explain how managers can manage effective one-on-one communication.
One-on-one communication can be managed by choosing the right communication medium, being a good
listener, giving effective feedback, and understanding cross-cultural communication. Managers generally
prefer oral communication because it provides the opportunity to ask questions and assess nonverbal
Chapter 13: Communication P a g e | 3
13-4 Describe how managers can manage effective organization-wide communication.
Managers need methods for managing organization-wide communication and for making themselves
accessible so they can hear what employees throughout their organizations are thinking and feeling.
Email, collaborative discussion sites, televised/videotaped speeches and conferences, and broadcast
Terms
acquaintance time
active listening
address terms
affective cultures
coaching
communication
communication medium
company hotlines
conduit metaphor
constructive feedback
counseling
cross-cultural communication
decoding
defensive bias
destructive feedback
discussion time
formal communication channel
fundamental attribution error
hearing
horizontal communication
informal communication
channel (“grapevine”)
kinesics
listening
monochronic cultures
neutral cultures
noise
nonverbal communication
perceptual filters
polychronic cultures
schedule time
selective perception
self-serving bias
survey feedback
televised/videotaped speeches
and meetings
upward communication
Lesson Plan for Lecture
Pre-Class Prep for You: Pre-Class Prep for Students:
Review the chapter and determine what
points to cover.
Bring PPT slides.
Read Chapter 13, bring book.
Warm Up Begin Chapter 13 by asking students to propose a metaphor for communication in
organizations. (For example, communication is the grease on the cogs of productivity.)
Doing so will help you see what students think the role of communication is in the
business environment.
Topics PowerPoint Slides Activities
13-1 Communication
and Perception
13-1b Perception
Problems
13-1d Self-Perception
1: Communication
2: What Would You Do?
4: Basic Perception
Process
7: Attributions in the
13-2 Kinds of
Communication
13-2b Communication
Channels
13-2c Coaching and
13-2d Nonverbal
Communication
9: The Interpersonal
Communication Process
12: Formal
Communication Channel
13: To Improve
Communication Channel
15: Grapevine
Communication
Networks
16: Managing Grapevines
17: Coaching
18: Counseling
Consider playing the
telephone game quickly
a student in the first row
something like, There will
be a hiring freeze until
even simpler, The
company will be moving its
sales division to Kansas in
the summer. What
message is heard or
understood by the students
in back of the class?
Chapter 13: Communication P a g e | 5
13-3 Managing One-on-
One Communication
13-3a Choosing the Right
Communication Medium
13-3c Giving Feedback
13-3d Improving Cross-
Cultural Communication
20: Communication
Medium
21: Hearing and Listening
22: Listening
24: Clarifying,
Paraphrasing, and
Summarizing Responses
for Active Listeners
25: Empathetic Listening
26: Giving Feedback
27: Giving Constructive
Feedback
28: Cross-Cultural
Communication
Polychronic Cultures
33: Temporal Concepts
Ask students if they think
active listening requires
verbal responses, like the
ones listed in Exhibit 13.4.
13-4 Managing
Organization-Wide
Communication
13-4a Improving
13-4b Improving
Reception: Hearing What
Others Feel and Think
34: Improving
Transmission
35: Organizational
Silence
Management Workplace 37: Plant Fantasies Launch video in slide 37.
Questions on slide can
guide discussion.
Conclusion
Possible assignments:
2. Assign students to review Chapter 13 and read the next chapter on your syllabus.
Remind students about any upcoming events.
Chapter 13: Communication P a g e | 6
Lesson Plan for Group Work
Pre-Class Prep for You: Pre-Class Prep for Students:
Review the material to cover and modify your
lesson plan to meet your needs.
Create a sculpture out of at least 10 Legos,
Duplos, Mecano, or other Lego-type blocks
and try to use several of the parts in different
situations (e.g. build a simple car). Calculate
how many groups you will have if you put 3
Read Chapter 13, bring book.
Warm Up Begin Chapter 13 by asking students to propose a metaphor for communication in
organizations. (For example, communication is the grease on the cogs of productivity.)
Doing so will help you see what students think the role of communication is in the business
environment.
Content
Delivery
Introduce the chapter and present What Is Communication? (Sections 13-1 and 13-2).
After presenting perception and communication channels, consider breaking for the
following activity on downward communication:
“Commander”
Divide the class into groups of 3 students and tell them that each group will need a
commander, a runner, and a builder. Separate the builders from the group and put
them in a separate room (or just out of sight). For the duration of the exercise,
builders cannot speak and can only follow orders given by the runner.
Give the commanders the sculpture you have built as well as a box containing enough
Present the content on Coaching and Counseling and Nonverbal Communication (Sections
13-2c and 13-2d).
Chapter 13: Communication P a g e | 7
If you have time, try the following group activity:
“Age Old Problem”
Have students sit down in no defined order and tell them that until the exercise is over,
how many mistakes there are.
This task normally sounds really easy at first, but the challenge comes with
communicating the small differences in months and days. There is no single way to
achieve this task quickly. Be prepared to witness some amazing solutions. One group of
students developed a blinking code to communicate their birthdays, which worked quite
well.
Lecture on Managing One-on-One Communication (Section 13-3).
After covering Sections 13-3a to 13-3c, break for the follow up to the Commander
activity:
“Commander Take Two”
Divide your class into groups of 3 students each and repeat the Commander exercise
with the following variation: Allow the builder and commander to communicate
Conclude with Managing Organization-Wide Communication (Section 13-4).
Conclusion
Assignments:
Chapter 13: Communication P a g e | 8
Assignments with Teaching Tips and Solutions
What Would You Do Case Assignment
What Really Happened? – Solution
GOOGLE
In the case you learned that Google is trying to diversify, but it faces intense competition in every market.
In response, co-founder Larry Page, who had been Googles CEO for 3 years at start-up, returned to the
CEO position, replacing Eric Schmidt, who had been CEO the last 10 years. Lets see what happened and
find out what steps CEO Larry Page, an admitted introvert, is taking to combat paralyzing bureaucracy,
increase upward communication, and improve company-wide communication at Google.
Today, Google is a much larger, more complicated company. But the biggest problem is that paralyzing
bureaucracy has slowed the company. As technology companies grow, this often happens. In fact, the key
reason you became CEO again was to streamline decision making and communication, and create
clearer lines of responsibility and accountability. But how do you do that in a company of 30,000 people?
As you learned in Chapter 1, managers fulfill three major roles while performing their jobs: interpersonal
As Google grew, CEO Larry Page became frustrated with the difficulty that Googles product managers
and engineers had trying to launch new Google products and services. Page would give mid-level
engineers approval to make changes to improve Googles search engine, but Googles internal processes
took weeks before the changes were even considered or approved by other parts of Googles management
structure. For example, one of the reasons that Google trails Amazon and Apple at online storage for
One of the ways in which Page hopes to jumpstart decision making at Google is through a commitment to
using data in the decision-making process. Heres how it would work: When Sean Knapp was a software
engineer at Google, he said, Why dont we put five ads on the top of the search-results page? At the
time, Google used just two and Knapp figured that Google could get more advertising revenue per page
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While answering questions and making decisions by data is a key part of Googles culture, its likely to
become even more important with Page as CEO because of his track record of reversing his opinions
when data show that hes been wrong. Doug Merrill, formerly Googles chief information officer, says,
Larry would wander around the engineers and he would see a product being developed, and sometimes
he would say, Oh, I don’t like that. But the engineers would get some data to back up their idea, and the
amazing thing was that Larry was fine to be wrong. As long as the data supported them, he was okay with
it. And that was such an incredibly morale-boosting interaction for engineers.
If Page consistently does this as CEO, several good things will happen to Googles communication and
A related problem is that top management is increasingly isolated from middle– and lower-level
managers and employees who are responsible for the research and project management that are keys to
Google’s success. So, what might you do to improve upward communication within the company?
Upward communication flows from lower levels to higher levels in an organization. Upward
communication is used to give higher-level managers feedback about operations, issues, and problems; to
help higher-level managers assess organizational performance and effectiveness; to encourage lower-level
Today, with 24,000 employees and 6,000 more to be hired, Googles top management suffers from the
same communication problems found at similar-sized companies, namely, that it infrequently interacts
with lower level managers. As the number of managers and levels increase in a fast-growing company, it
becomes increasingly difficult to communicate directly with those in the lower and middle ranks.
To overcome this problem, and to unfreeze Googles paralyzed decision making, CEO Larry Page
emailed Googles engineering and product managers asking them to write to him, in 60 words or less,
A second, but not often used, method of increasing upward communication is giving more authority,
responsibility, and independence to managers at lower levels in the company. In other words, if its
difficult for top managers to hear what they need to hear from those at lower levels, then give the people
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freedom, Rubin and his team made the smart decision to abandon plans for making a Google phone and to
instead focus on building the Android operating system that could be used by smartphone manufacturers
throughout the world. Today, as a result of that decision, Android phones have a larger market share than
Apples iPhone. Page has used the same approach with Salar Kamangar, YouTubes CEO.
Finally, what can Google do to communicate effectively on an organization-wide basis in a company that
has dozens of product lines and hundreds of research projects, and will soon have 30,000 employees?
Although managing one-on-one communication is important, managers must also know how to
communicate effectively with a larger number of people throughout an organization. But organization-
wide communication also means finding ways to hear what people throughout the organization are
thinking and feeling. This is important because most employees and managers are reluctant to share their
thoughts and feelings with top managers. Surveys indicate that only 29 percent of first-level managers
Another step that Page has taken to increase organization-wide communication is establishing a bullpen
session every afternoon during which he and Googles other top executives sit in a public area outside the
board room in Building 43. The idea is that employees know theyll be there at the same time every day
and that they can approach them directly to discuss any issue. Page also expects the bullpen sessions to
improve communication among Googles top executives.
Finally, Page has begun an internal tour at Google in which he visits with people and departments
Management Team Decision
TALKING ACROSS TIME ZONES
Purpose
One of the biggest challenges in doing global business is communicating with people from all over the
world. The difficulty, of course, doesnt have to do with making phone calls or sending emails, but
finding the right time. With offices and personnel in multiple time zones, it can be quite a challenge to
find one time during which people can sit down for a conference call. This case will give students an
opportunity to think about how best to communicate across multiple time zones.
Setting It Up
You can introduce this case by presenting students with a short scenario: Imagine for a moment that your
best friend or significant other has moved to China. The time difference is 13 hours, but you need to find
a good way to communicate regularly. How would you do it?
Questions
1. In your opinion, what communication method would be ideal for an organization that has offices
in many different countries?
While students responses will vary, they should reflect awareness of the advantages and
disadvantages of the two kinds of communication media that are discussed in the chapter. Oral
communication includes face-to-face and group meetings through telephone calls,
videoconferencing, or any other means of sending and receiving spoken messages. Oral
2. Is it necessary to sacrifice speed in communication for the sake of a global presence? That is, can
a company have both a global presence and an efficient, timely means of communication?
Chapter 13: Communication P a g e | 12
3. What cross-cultural issues should you keep in mind as you create a new communication system?
As discussed in the text, there are a number of things that a savvy manager should do to find
Practice Being a Manager
AVOIDING COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
Exercise Overview and Objective
In this role-play students are placed in a rather ambiguous situation. One of the waitstaff in a luxury
restaurant seems to be having some problems, but what sort of problem and how serious is not clear. The
manager of the restaurant needs to address the situation through either coaching or discipline. In addition
to the waitstaff (Dennis/Denise) and restaurant manager (Christy/Chris) roles, one student in each small
group will play the role of communication consultant (D.J/R.J.). The objective of this exercise is to give
students the opportunity to practice communicating effectively in a coaching/disciplining situation.
Preparation
No student preparation is required for this exercise. You may want to assign students in advance to small
groups of 3-4. If time allows, you should rotate roles to allow each student to view the situation from a
different perspective. Each role-play conversation sequence should take only 5 7 minutes.
Each group should start its first round of conversation with one student assigned to the role of
waitstaff (Dennis/Denise), one student in the role of restaurant manager (Christy/Chris), and one or two
students in the role of communication consultant(s) (D.J./R.J.).
In-Class Use
Encourage students to carefully read the facts of the scenario (Step 1) before they engage in the role-play.
Communication consultant(s) should be prepared to take notes on the interaction between the waitstaff
person and the restaurant manager. These consultant/observers should use the chapter reading as a
framework for their observations/recommendations, and they should make specific observation notes
Chapter 13: Communication P a g e | 13
After students have played each role one time, or at the point when you must call time on the role-
play sessions, move directly to class debriefing and discussion. The following questions (from Step 5)
may be used to frame this discussion:
What challenges face the communicators in this scenario?
Which role was most difficult for you, and why?
Why is it important for managers to coach and discipline effectively?
Why might managers avoid (or underutilize) this form of communication?
Self-Assessment
HOW DO YOU LISTEN?
This assessment helps students identify how they listen.
In-Class Use
Give students 5 7 minutes to complete the inventory. Give students a moment to add their raw score and
then go over what the scores mean (see below under Scoring). The research supporting this inventory can
Scoring
Scoring instructions follow the assessment. Students scores will fall between 10 and 50. Once students
calculate their raw scores, have them plot them on the following continuum.
50 45 38 28 0
| | | | |
Active Involved Passive Detached
Active
The active listener gives full attention to listening when others are talking and focuses on what is being
Involved
The involved listener gives most of his or her attention to the speakers words and intentions. This person