Effective Communication in Business Setting and Their Caveats - Coursework Example

Effective Communication in Business Setting and their Caveats Module and number Facilitator’s Effective Communication in BusinessSetting and their Caveats I. Abstract This paper will tackle effective methodologies in business communication that are often overlooked. This dispels the common notion that presentation in bullets covering too many areas to be the most effective way of presenting complex information and ideas. Experts discourage such practice and instead proposed simple methods and interesting that can be traced back in the planning stage. This will also discuss the various caveats involving communication in an organization that is not limited to presentation itself. II. Introduction When communication in business is discussed, it is very typical to stereotype it as mere business presentations that is delivered through a face face linear interaction. It is typically associated with a speech accompanied by slides which many of those presentations fail meet their objectives. Business communication is not only limited to presentation. It encompasses the whole organization and transcends to every aspect in an organization where each component, materials, human resource, information are synchronized to attain the organization’s objective. The prevailing notion about presentation is incomplete just do not work and this paper will attempt to discuss the various facets of organizational communication that would make it more effective and relevant. III. Communication in business Business communications are often reduced to powerpoint presentations. Even with this limited perspective about communication, it is even ineffective because it does not engage the audience (Hynes and Stretcher, 2008). Most business presentations aren’t memorable. They look the same. They sound the same. Poor structure. Too long. Too boring. And if a business presentation isn’t engaging, and it isn’t memorable, how can it be effective? The key to an effective presentation isn’t design, but psychology and pedagogy. Pretty pictures are only the start. (Crawford, 2011). Communication is the bedrock of an organization. It became an organization because of people who are linked together through an agreed structure of hierarchy and functons that share a similar objective (Woods, 2004). Communication is the medium to relay the greater objectives of the organization and the enabler that makes team and organization function effectively and efficiently. It is used also to convince outside audience such as suppliers, customer and various stakeholders that would align them to the business objectives (Adler, 2010). a. Developing and Organizing the Presentations  Most ineffective presentations were not crafted well during in the drawing board and this resulted in the unstructured delivery of the presentation. As a result of its unstructured and disorganized presentation, it left the audience wondering what the presentation is trying to say and disengages the audience in the process (Denning and Dew, 2012). To effectively develop the presentation, it has to be organized in the planning stage to keep the essentials and to be able to find ways to make the presentation simple and clear. It is always better to concentrate on few important points than to drown the audience with information that do not stick or to cover everything with only a sentence or two per point (the most common mistake in presentation). This would also provide the opportunity to gauge the length of the presentation if there is a time limit given to the speaker. This would give the speaker a comfortable pace when he or she is already delivering the presentation thus freeing himself or herself from the anxiety of a hurried or abbreviated presentation. b. Type of Business Presentations   Informative – these are presentations that intends to convey straight information to a various audience that includes employees and outside audience. Reports and conference presentation usually falls on this category. Persuasive – persuasive presentation are those presentations that intends to align the audience with the organization’s objective. Marketing presentation, proposals, and some presentation during trade conferences falls on this category. Goodwill presentation – are usually public announcements that intends to bring good news to its audience with the objective of motivating them. Announcement of rewards, incentives and bonus usually falls under this category (Adler, 2010). c. Verbal and Visual Support in Presentations Business presentation often deals with data and numbers that could bore its audience. A typical business presentation often involves plenty of bullet points in an effort to communicate ideas in few words. Common experience tells that this just do not work (Luparelli, 2010). Instead, to have the visual support to a presentation more engaging, it is more advisable to make it distinctive with the use of animations, pictures and films. A branded slide can also be a good option for a presentation to stand out which is an imperative especially if one is communicating to an external audience say for example a trade conference or a client. d. Delivering the Presentation  One of the most common mistakes in presentation is covering everything in just few bullet points in a hope that the presentation is already simple enough to deliver complex or myriad information. It just drowns the audience with information and disengages them. Others spent too many visuals to the point that made the presentation trivial. While visuals such as film, picture and animation is a good idea, overusing it runs the danger that the presentation may not be taken seriously (Adler, 2010). The key to effective delivery is simplicity (which can be achieved by carefully planning the presentation) and not overusing visual aids. It is better to cover few important points than covering everything and loose the audience in the present. Also, a healthy balance must be achieved in using visual aids not to make it trivial but only engaging and interesting. A cliché goes that practice makes perfect. This is very applicable in business communication especially if one would deliver it to a large audience. By rehearsing, it is not recommended to have an impromptu speech or memorizing the whole spiels because both are unrealistic. Impromptu speeches can render one lost in the middle of a speech while there are very few people who could deliver a speech from the top of their head. Most effective public presentation only involves outline of the talk in a well structured manner. It is rehearsed several times with a mimicked audience for the speaker to have a realistic feel of the actual presentation. IV. Caveat of business communication Most business presenters become ineffective not because they were ill prepared or made poor presentation but because they are unaware about the characteristics of their audience. This is the type of miscommunication where one wonders why the presentation became ineffective when it worked the last time. This usually happens when the presentation uses a template. This caveat happens when the speaker did not consider the characteristics of the audience. Characteristics of the audience include level of understanding, background and other factors that makes them distinct from other audience. Speaking in technical terms to a group of engineers may be advisable but this is grossly ineffective to another audience such as marketing people. It should not be forgotten that a business presentation serves a professional purpose, and the tone of it should reflect that fact. An occasional joke or funny story can add a human touch to an otherwise boring subject, but too much humour is not a good idea. Jokes can often fall flat or, worse, offend the audience. Avoid jokes about sex, age, race, social class or language barriers. It is easy to see attempted humour as a simple way to make an audience like you. But the best way to win an audience over is to deliver a good, memorable presentation on the subject matter (Jaffe and Carsten, 2007). It is also worth mentioning one of the barriers in effective communication in an organization which are the organizational silos. They are barriers not during a presentation but on a day to day operation of a business that renders the organization ineffective. Organizational silos are units, departments or subgroups in an organization which has a tendency to protect themselves by keeping duplicate data and services that holds hostage the whole organization. Silos are counter-progressive because they hold their own goals ahead of the organizations objectives and makes implementation for change and improvement difficult. Silos can be likened to a clique in layman’s term which separates the group from the others by having their own sets of information and refusing to communicate them (Killman, 2006). The presence of silos in an organization are a disadvantage because the enterprise cannot act quickly “on opportunities that arise in a fast-paced business landscape, nor is it able to make productive decisions about how to change in order to seize these opportunities” (Kotter 2011). It renders an organisation less competitive because the organization is burden with bureaucracy and non-cooperation. It is best that organization adopt an open communication policy as exemplified by open organizations such as Google to avoid the development of such silos which are inimical to the free flow of information in an organization (Google, 2011). References Adler, Ronald B. (2010). Types of Business Presentation. http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0073385174/776535/SampleCh13.pdf [accessed June 10, 2012) Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda (2011). Ethics and Ethos in Financial Reporting: Analyzing Persuasive Language in Earnings Calls.. Business Communication Quarterly, 74(3): 298-312 Denning, Peter J; Dew, Nicholaas (2012), The Myth of the Elevator Pitch. Communications of the ACM, 55(6):38-40. Google (2011). The Google culture. http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/culture.html. [Accessed June 10, 2012]. Hynes, Geraldine E.; Stretcher, Robert H. (2008).A MISSING LINK IN BUSINESS SCHOOLS (2008).  Business Communication Quarterly, 71(2):207-211. 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