The Importance of Communication in the Corporate World - Assignment Example

What is the importance of communication in the Corporate World Background "Communication is the most used skill in almost every job. How you communicate your accomplishments to others is a reflection of the quality of your work. Sure, you must know how to do your tasks to accomplish great results but that is only a portion of professional success. Good communication skills are required to report your results to others, persuade colleagues to take action, and (most importantly at review time) sell your successes to management." Don Zatyko, Enterprise Program Manager Cost and Performance Analytics (Operational Excellence Group), Intuit. A survey was done by Robert Half of the 1,000 largest employers in the US. The survey found that 96% of the executives reported that today's employees must have good communication skills to get ahead (Ann Fisher, Fortune Magazine, December7, 1998. pp. 244) "Whenever I see a business document that has uncorrected typos and other grammatical mistakes, I wonder whether the author is (a) not very bright or (b) sloppy." Glenda K. Moehlenpah, CPA, CFP Financial Bridges New studies show there is a high correlation between communication skills and income. Even among college graduates, those with higher scores in literacy (use of printed and written information) earn 47 percent more than lower scoring graduates earn (Paul T. Decker et al., Education and the Economy: An Indicators Report (Washington, DC Government Printing Office. 1997, pp. 131) "The ability to write and communicate your thoughts clearly in a presentation is the most essential skill you need to achieve any success in business. If you have a great mind and great thoughts, but you are not able to express them, it's very hard to be successful." Carlos Dominguez, Vice President, U.S. Service Provider Organization, Cisco Systems, Inc. The Wall Street Journal comments additional support to the importance of communication, "To stand out from the competition, you must demonstrate the unwritten requirements that are now most in demand: leadership and communication skills." (D. Perry. "Do You Have the Skills Most in Demand Today" Career Journal from 'The Wall Street Journal', 2002) "Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after." Anne Morrow Lindbergh Peter Drucker, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and one of the most respected management consultants, educators, speakers, and writers of our time, made those observations about communication: "Colleges teach the one thing that is perhaps most valuable for the future employee to know. But very few students bother to learn it. This one basic skill is the ability to organize and express ideas in writing and speaking. As soon as you move one step from the bottom, your effectiveness depends on your ability to reach others through the spoken or the written word. And the further away your job is from manual work, the larger the organization of which you are an employee, the more important it will be that you know how to convey your thoughts in writing or speaking. In the very large organization..the ability to express one's own is perhaps the most important of all the skills a person can possess" Peter Drucker They are just a few quotes and researches. The list is long. From this point onwards, it should be clear that good communication skill is one of the most important reasons for achieving success in your professional life. Whatever position you have in business, your performances will be judged largely by your ability to communicate. If you perform (and communicate) well, you are likely to be rewarded with advancement. And the higher you advance, the more you will need your communication ability. Communication enables human beings to work together. In a business, it is the vehicle through which management performs its basic functions. Managers direct through communication, coordinate through communication, and staff, plan, and control through communication. All professions suffer from communication problems. In a recent survey 70% of people said they didn't understand their accountant, and a staggering 97% said the same thing about computer experts. What would the figure be for your industry If any person lacks communicational skills, he would be unproductive. He would create enigmatic situation both for himself and for others. He would gulp his words, would take long time to say anything and etc. Research aims: Communication is the life blood of any business organization. According to many it's the number one skill required in the corporate world. Through research we aim to find out the link between communication and success of the organizations. Our research will be based on first identifying the various communication methods used by the organizations. Then, we are going to find out the means of communication and their barriers and breakages. Finally, we are going to conclude whether communication is really important in success or do other factors play a bigger part. As a side research we will also find out how important communication skills are for individual people and how much chance of promotions do good communication skill put on an individual. Past surveys have put premium on those organizations and individuals who communicate well and our hypothesis will be that is communication really help organizations grow fast Methodology: For our research we have a questionnaire made out which we are going to send to the people in various organizations who are working at different level. First, we are going to identify which part in the organization requires most of the communication. Through this we are also going to find out where do you expect to find good communicators, whether in the top management, middle or at operational level. In the later part of our questionnaire we are going to find out how much important are the good communication skills in the promotions and raises. The sample size that we have chosen is 50 people. And our sampling method will be 'cluster'sampling, by selecting respondents from certain areas only (wikipedia.com/sampling). This is going to be cheap and better for us since we want to select the people only from a specific field or in other words our sample frame will include people in the corporate world only. This will be time-saving as we wont end up interviewing non-corporate people. And given our time constraint and other constraints this method suites all our requirements. 2b: Qustionnaire:How important is communication in the business world This questionnaire is going to answer all the question of our research. Firstly identifying which level in the organization needs to do the bulk of communication. Secondly, it's going to tell us whether is there any link between success and communication and promotions for employees and individuals or is this only a myth. We have designed the Different set of questions for different purposes that are going to help our research. Summaries of these question sets are: 1. What is your position in the organization you are working in Top __________ Middle __________ Operational Manager __________ 2. How much time in your job do you spend communicating Entire Day Most of the day Very rarely 3. Are you a good communicator Rate yourself on a scale of ten. With 1, being the lowest and ten, being the highest. _______________ 4. Have you ever been able to turn the table in your favor by communicating well Yes No 5. When was he last time you were promoted Recently __________ rarely ________ Way too back to remember _________ 6. Have you ever faced verbal disputes with your colleagues working in the same organization Yes______ No_________ 7. Were you able to resolve these disputes by rephrasing your questions Yes______ No ______ 8. Is there ever been a situation that you asked someone to do something and that person did something else Yes ______ No________ 9. How would you respond if someone disagrees with you Angrily _________ Listen to him ______ Ignore him ________ 10. Which type of communication is followed in your organization Written Oral through Computers 11. Did you ever wonder that your not communicating well is the reason you are not promoted frequently Yes No 12. Did you ever have any conflict with people outside your organization Like you ordered something and your suppliers delivered something else Yes _____ No _______ 13. How do rate your organization Top _________ Decent _______ Struggling _____ 14. Can your organization improve if communicate means are more effective Yes _________ No ________ 15. Does your employer prefer a person with good communication skills over a person with experience in CV Yes _____ No_______- 16. What barriers of communication do you think exist in your Organization Language _____ Chain of Management _____ Mediums ________ This questionnaire is going to answer all the question of our research. Firstly identifying which level in the organization needs to do the bulk of communication. Secondly, it's going to tell us whether is there any link between success and communication and promotions for employees and individuals or is this only a myth. We have designed the Different set of questions for different purposes that are going to help our research. Summaries of these question sets are: Questions 1-2, will help us in determine which levels in the organization need more communication than other. History tells us that it is the top management and middle management that are considered to be better equipped with communication skills because they have to communicate more. But time have changed and this survey will update us on which group requires the maximum communication. Questions 5-11 are going to tell whether it is really true that good communicators are often the ones who get promoted more than hard workers. In these questions first communication ability of the person will be judged and then based on it, we'll compare it with promotion results and this will help us determine whether the above notion is really true! Question 11-16 are going to judge the link between success of the organization with its ability to communicate well. After determining this, our focus will shift on the problems due to which communication barriers occur. We will also find out which communication method poses the most problems and has become outdated. Reference list: www.communication-skills-4confidence.com/importance-of-communication-skills.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics) Ann Fisher, "The High Cost of Living and Not Writing Well." Fortune, December 7, 1998. 244 Paul T. Decker et al., Education and the Economy: An Indicators Report (Washington, DC Government Printing Office. 1997), 131 Marie E. Flatley, "For and about Text Messaging". Business Education Forum (December 2003), 21, (forthcoming) Read More