Business Communications

Lesson ThreeFJU/AIEDLDr. M. ConnorBased on Excellence in Business Communication,5/e Thill and Bovée

Busy communications life

You’ll face a variety of communication assignments in your career, both oral and written.

Some of your tasks will be routine, needing little more than jotting down a few sentences on paper or keyboarding a brief e-mail message.

Others will be more complex, requiring reflection, research, and careful document preparation

Stand out

People are bombarded with messages at work every day, so you want yours to stand out as being well done.

Your messages must be:

PurposefulAudience-centeredConcise

Purposeful:

Business messages provide information, solve a problem, or request the resources necessary to accomplish a goal.

Every message you prepare will have a specific purpose.

Audience-Centered:

Business messages help audiences understand an issue, collaborate on establishing a goal, or take some action.

So every message you prepare must consider the audience’s point of view.

Concise:

Business messages respect everyone’s time by presenting information clearly and efficiently.

Every message you prepare will be as short as it can be without detracting from the subject.

Goal of business writing

The goal of effective business writing is to express your ideas rather than to impress your audience.

One of the best ways to do so is to follow a systematic writing process.

What is the three-step writing process?

The specific actions you take to write business messages will vary from situation to situation, but these generalized steps will help you write more effective messages.1. Planning2. Writing3. Completing

Planning:

Think about the fundamentals of your message.

Clarify your purpose in communicating, and analyze audience members so that you can tailor your message to their needs.

Gather the information that will inform, persuade, or motivate your audience.

More planning

Then adapt your message by selecting the channel and medium that both suit your needs and meet your audience’s expectations.

And finally, establish a good relationship with your audience.

Planning business messages is the focus of this week’s lecture.

Writing:

Once you’ve planned your message, organize your ideas and being composing your first draft.

This is when you commit your thoughts to words, create sentences and paragraphs, and select illustrations and details to support your main idea.

Writing business messages will be the focus of next week’s lecture.

Completing:

Now that you have your first draft, step back to review the content and organization for overall style, structure and readability.

Revise and rewrite until your message comes across clearly and effectively;

then edit your message for details such as grammar, punctuation and format.

Final steps

Next produce your message, putting it into the form that your audience will receive.

And finally, proof the final draft for typos, spelling errors and other mechanical problems.

We will be covering this material next week.

How does the three step process work?

Because so many of our business messages are composed under pressure and on a schedule that is often anything but realistic, dividing your time among the three steps can be a challenge.

In some cases, your audience may expect you to get your message out in record time—sometimes only minutes after speaking with a client or attending a meeting.

But even if you only have 30 minutes, try to give yourself enough time to plan, write and complete your message.

General rule of thumb

Try to use about half of your time for planning—for deciding on purpose, getting to know your audience, and immersing yourself in your subject matter.

Use less than a quarter of the time writing your message.

Then use more than a quarter, what’s left, for completing your message. That way you won’t shortchange the important

steps of revising and proofreading.

Chart

Planning

Writing

Completing

Analyzing your purpose and audience

For a business message to be effective, its purpose and its audience must complement one another.

You must know enough about your purpose and audience to shape your message in a way that serves both.

So you begin planning your message by being as specific as you can about the purpose of the message.

Then you analyze your audience as thoroughly as possible.

Define your purpose:

All business messages have a general purpose: to inform, to persuade, or to collaborate with your audience.

Purpose shapes content

The overall purpose determines both the amount of audience participation you need and the amount of control you have over your message.

To inform:

To inform your audience, you need little interaction.

Audience members absorb the information and accept or reject it, but they don’t contribute to message content.

You control the message.

To persuade:

To persuade your audience, you require a moderate amount of participation.

You need to retain a moderate amount of message control.

To collaborate with audience members:

You need maximum participation.Your control of the message is minimal

because you must adjust to new input and unexpected reactions.

Business messages also have a specific purpose.

That purpose may be clear and straightforward, such as placing an order

Or it may be more complex, such as convincing management to hire more part time workers during the holiday season.

Defining specific purpose

To help you define the specific purpose of your message, ask yourself what your audience should do or think after receiving your message.

Then state your specific purpose as precisely as possible, even identifying which audience members should respond.

Is it worth it?

You must also consider whether your purpose is worth pursuing at this time.

Too many business messages serve no practical purpose, and writing useless memos can destroy your credibility, your believability—based on how reliable you are and how much trust you evoke in others.

If you suspect that your ideas will have little impact, wait until you have a more practical purpose.

Four questions to ask yourself:

Is your purpose realistic?Is this the right time?Is the right person delivering your

message?Is your purpose acceptable to your

organization?

Is your purpose realistic?

If your purpose involves a radical shift in action or attitude, go slowly.

Considering proposing the first step and viewing your message as the beginning of a learning process.

Is this the right time?

If an organization is undergoing changes of some sort, you may want to defer your message until things stabilize and people can concentrate on your ideas.

Is the right person delivering your message?

Even though you may have done all the work, achieving your objective is more important than taking the credit.

You may want to play a supporting role in delivering your message, if, for example, your boss’s higher status could get better results.

Is your purpose acceptable to your organization?

If you receive an abusive letter than unfairly attacks your company, you might wish to fire back an angry reply.

But your supervisors might prefer that you regain the customer’s goodwill. Your response must reflect the organization’s priorities.

Develop an audience profile

Ask yourself some questions: Who are your audience members? What are their attitudes? What do they need to know? And why should they care?

The answers to these questions will indicate which material you’ll need to cover and how to cover it.

Friends or stranger?

If you’re communicating with someone you know well, audience analysis is relatively easy. You can predict the personas reaction pretty well, without a lot of research.

On the other hand, your audience could be made up of strangers—customers or suppliers you’ve never met, a new boss or new employees, so you’ll have to learn about the members of your audience before you can adjust your message to serve them.

Things to look at:

Identify the primary audience.Determine audience size.Determine audience composition.Gauge your audience’s level of

understanding.Estimate your audience’s probable

reaction.

Identify the primary audience.

If you can reach the decision makers or opinion molders in your audience, other audience members will fall into place.

Key people ordinarily have the most organizational clout, but occasionally a person of relatively low status may have influence in one or two particular areas.

Determine audience size.

A report for wide distribution requires a more formal style, organization and format than one directed to three or four people in your department.

Also, be sure to respond to the particular concerns of key individuals.The head of marketing would need different

facts than the head of production or finance would need.

Determine audience composition.

Look for common denominators that tie audience members together across differences in culture, education, status, or attitude.

Include evidence that touches on everyone’s area of interest.

To be understood across cultural barriers, consider how audience members think and learn, as well as what style they expect.

Gauge your audience’s level of understanding.

If audience members share your general background, they’ll understand your material without difficulty.

If not, you must educate them.

But...

But deciding how much information to include can be a challenge

As a guideline, include only enough information to accomplish your objective. Everything else is irrelevant and must be eliminated.

Otherwise it will overwhelm your audience and divert attention from important points.

If audience members do not have the same level of understanding, gear your coverage to your primary audience (the key decision makers).

Estimate your audience’s probable reaction.

Next week we’ll discuss how audience reaction affects message organization. If you expect a favorable response, you can state conclusions and recommendations up front with less evidence. If you expect skepticism, you can introduce conclusions gradually, with more proof. By anticipating the primary audience’s response to certain points, you can include evidence to address those issues.

Investigating necessary information

When writing long, formal reports, you will have to do research to locate and analyze all of the information relevant to your purpose and your audience.

We will talk about this and do some work with this later in the term.

Less formal research

However, many other kinds of business messages require much less formal information gathering techniques.

You can collect information informally by:

Considering others’ viewpoints. Browsing through company files.Chatting with supervisors or colleagues.Asking your audience for input.

Considering others’ viewpoints.

You might put yourself in someone else’s position to consider what others might be thinking, feeling or planning.

Browsing through company files.

Your own filing cabinet may be a rich source of the information you need for a particular memo or e-mail message.

Chatting with supervisors or colleagues.

Fellow workers may have information you need or they may know what your audience will be interested in.

Asking your audience for input.

If you’re unsure of what audience members need from your message, ask them—whether through casual conversation (face-to-face or over the phone), informal surveys or unofficial interviews.

The key to effective communication

Determining your readers’ informational needs and responding to them.

A good message answers all audience questions.

Find out exactly what your audience wants to know

In many cases your audience’s information needs are readily apparenta customer asks a specific question, for

instance.

Vague requests

But sometimes people are vague about what information they need, often because they either haven’t thought things through or they simply don’t know what they need to know.

By restating a vague request in more specific terms, what you think the audience is asking for, you can get the requester to define his or her needs more precisely.

Think ahead for goodwill

Try to think of information needs that your audience may not even be aware of.

Include any additional information that might be helpful, even though the requester didn’t specifically ask for it.

Although adding information like this lengthens your message, doing so creates goodwill.

Provide All Required Information

Once you’ve defined your audience’s information needs, be sure you satisfy those needs completely.

The journalistic approach.

Check to see whether your question answers whowhatwhenwherewhyhow

Many messages fail to pass the test.

Be Sure the Information is Accurate.

There’s no point in answering all of your audience’s questions if the answers are wrong.

Your organization is legally bound by any promises you make, so be sure your company is able to follow through.

Check with the appropriate people before you make the commitment.

Minimize mistakes

By double-checking everything you write or say.

Be sure to review any mathematical or financial calculations.

Check all dates and schedules.Examine your own assumptions and

conclusions to be certain they are valid.

Be Sure the Information is Ethical

Honest mistakes are certainly possible. You may sincerely believe that you have

answered someone’s questions correctly and then later realize that your information was incorrect.

If that happens, the most ethical thing for you to do is to contact the person immediately and correct the error.

Most people will respect you for your honesty.

Unethical omissions

Messages may be unethical simply because information may be omitted.

Of course, as a business professional, you may have legal or other sound business reasons not to include every detail about every matter.

So how much detail should you include? Include enough detail to avoid misleading

your audience.

Be Sure the Information is Pertinent

Remember that some information will be of greater interest and importance to your audience.

Try to figure out what points will especially interest your audience.

Then give those points the most attention.

Adapting your message to serve your audience and purpose

By now you know why you’re writing, you know the audience you’re writing for, and you have most of the information you need.

Before actually beginning to write

You need to figure out how to make it serve both your audience and your purpose.

To adapt your message, you may need to decide matters as detailed as whether to include a date on your Web site materials.

Mainly, you need to select a channel and medium that fit your purpose and satisfy your audience’s expectations.

Select the Appropriate Channel and Medium

Selecting the best channel and medium for your message can make the difference between effective and ineffective communication.

When selecting a channel, you must consider the media within each channel.

Oral channel

The oral channel includes media such as face-to-face conversation, speeches, videotape, voice mail, phone conversations, and so on.

The written channel

A written channel includes media such as letters, reports, e-mail, faxes, flyers and so on.

Decisions

No matter what channel and medium you use, do your best to match your selection to your message and your intention.

Governs style and tone

Your channel and medium also govern the style and tone of your message.

For instance, you wouldn’t write an e-mail message with the same level of formality that you would use in a memo.

Media richness

The value of a medium in a given communication situation.

Richness is determined by a medium’s ability to:

Convey a message by means of more than one informational cue (visual, verbal, vocal)

Facilitate feedbackEstablish personal focus

Making a choice

Choose the richest media for non-routine, complex messages.

See the chart on the next slide.

Media richness chart

LEANER RICHER

Unaddressed documents

Addressed documents

Telephone and e-mail Face-to-face

Including fliers, bulletins and standard reports

Including notes, memos and letters

Including voice mail and teleconferencing

Including conversations, meetings, presentations, videoconferences

Rich media

Use rich media to extend and humanize your presence throughout the organization, to communicate caring to employees, and to gain employee commitment to organizational goals.

Lean media

Use leaner media to communicate simple, routine messages.

Face-to-face communication is the richest medium because it is personal, it provides both immediate verbal and nonverbal feedback, and it conveys the emotion behind the message.

But it’s also one of the most restrictive media because you and your audience must be in the same place at the same time.

Factors in the choice

Your intentions heavily influence your choice of medium.

Time and cost also affect medium selection.

When choosing the appropriate medium, don’t forget to consider your audience’s expectations.

Cultural differences

Some cultures tend to favor one channel over another.

For example, the US, Canada and Germany emphasize written messages, whereas Japan emphasizes oral messages—perhaps because its high-context culture carries so much of the message in nonverbal cues and “between the lines” interpretations.

Oral media

Primary oral communications media include face-to-face conversation (the richest media), telephone calls, speeches, presentations and meetings.

Your choice between face-to-face conversation and a phone call would depend on audience location, message importance, and your need for the sort of non-verbal feedback that only body language can reveal.

Your purpose is to collaborate with the audience

Small meetings, Conversations, and Interviews.

In general, the smaller the audience, the more interaction among the members.

If your purpose involves reaching a decision or solving a problem, select an oral medium geared toward a small audience.

Also

Large meetings, conventions and presentations.

At the opposite extreme are formal presentations to large audiences, which are common at events such as sales conventions, shareholder meetings, and ceremonial functions.

Their formality makes them inappropriate for collaborative purposes that require audience interaction.

Written media

Written messages take many forms. At one end are the scribbled notes people use to jog their own memories. At the other end are long, formal reports that rival magazines in graphic quality.

Advantages

Regardless of the form, written messages have one big advantage.

They let you control and plan the message. A written format is appropriate when the

information is complex, when a permanent message is needed for future reference, when the audience is large and geographically dispersed, and when immediate interaction with the audience is either unimportant or undesirable.

Letters and memos

Most letters and memos are relatively brief documents, generally one or two pages.

Memos

The workhorses of business communication, used for the routine day-to-day exchange of information within an organization.

Memo form:

In general, memos lack salutation. They use a TO, FROM, DATE, and SUBJECT heading to emphasize the needs of the readers who usually have time only to skim messages.

Good memos discuss only one topic tone is conversational.

Letters

Letters frequently go to outsiders, and they perform an important public relations function in addition to conveying a particular meaning.

Form letters

Many organizations rely on form letters (and sometimes form memos) to save time and money on routine communications.

Boilerplates

A variation of the form letter is the boilerplate, a standard paragraph that can be selected to suit an occasion or audience.

Three standard types

1) routine, good news, goodwill messages

2) bad news messages3) persuasive messages. We will be spending at least a week,

sometimes more, on each of these categories.

Reports and proposals.

Reports and proposals are factual, objective documents that may be distributed to insiders or outsiders, depending on their purpose and subject. They come in many formats, including preprinted forms, letters, memos, and manuscripts. In length, they range from a few to several hundred pages. They are generally more formal in tone than a typical business letter. We will be spending a number of weeks on them, and you will be writing a formal business report as your final project.

Electronic forms

In general, use electronic forms of communication for speed, to overcome time-zone barriers, and to reach a widely dispersed audience personally.

Voice mail

Can be used to replace short memos and phone calls that need no response. Reduces paperwork.

Teleconferencing

An efficient alternative to face-to-face meetings

Not good for negotiation.

Videotape

Often effective for getting motivational messages out to a large number of people.

Computer conferencing

Allows users to meet and collaborate in real time while viewing and sharing documents electronically.

We use this in this course when we chat on MSN Messenger. I can give students real time help at barely

any cost to either party.

Faxing

Good way of getting hard copies to distant places, but remember, it lacks privacy.

E-mail

Offers speed, low cost, increased access to other employees.

Very useful tool, but be careful.We can get careless with language on e-

mail.You can’t write in txt code on business e-

mail U cn type txt mss in e-mail. U look s2pid

E-mail addresses

Also, if you use your private e-mail address for business (including school business), make sure you have an appropriate address.

I’m not impressed receiving an e-mail from Sexybabexxx@hotmail.

Or even Mangafan, meatnbunz, and you get the picture. Save that for your friends, please.

Best is to have a professional address like one from school or a company (my connor@fillibabba.com address).

Website

Offers interactive communication through hyperlinks, allowing readers to absorb information non-sequentially.

They can take what they need and skip everything else.

Disadvantages

Electronic forms have their disadvantages, such as tactless remarks causing tension.

Stupid e-mails get leaked to the media all the time.

E-mail has the same privacy as a postcard.Remember that before you complain about

your boss!

Establishing a good relationship with your audience

Think about who you are and who your audience is. Are you old friends with common interests, or are

you total strangers? Are you equal in terms of status, experience, and

education, or are you clearly unequal?

Your answers to these questions will help give you the right impression in your message.

Be yourself!

Probably the best thing you can do to establish a good relationship with your audience is to be yourself.

People can spot falseness very quickly, so just be you and be sincere.

Things to remember

Remember to:use the “you” attitude, emphasize the positive, establish your credibility, be polite, use bias-free languageproject the company’s image

Use the “You” Attitude:

That means speaking and writing in terms of your audience’s wishes, interests, hopes and preferences.

You can adopt the “you” attitude by replacing terms that refer to yourself and your company with terms that refer to your audience.

For example

Instead of saying:To help us process this order, we must ask

for another copy of the requisition.Say this:

So that your order can be filled promptly, please send another copy of the requisition.

And

Instead ofWe are pleased to announce out new flight

schedule from Atlanta to New York, which is every hour on the hour.

Use this:You can now take a plane from Atlanta to

New York every hour on the hour.

Finally

Instead of this:We offer the printer cartridges in three

colors: blue, black and green.Use this:

Select your printer cartridge from three colors: blue, black and green.

Things to remember

Too many businesses have an “I” or “we” attitude.

Using the “you” attitude needs some finesse or you might end up with some very awkward-sounding sentences.

It’s not meant to be manipulative or insincere.

It’s the thought that counts

Not the pronoun you choose to use.If you’re talking to a retailer, try to think

like a retailer.If you’re talking to a production

supervisor, put yourself in that position. If you’re dealing with a dissatisfied

customer, imagine how you would feel at the other end of the transaction.

Sometimes avoid the ”you” attitude

There are times that you should definitely avoid using the “you” attitude.

If using it will make you sounds dictatorial or that sounds impolite.

Mistakes

Also avoid it when someone makes a mistake.

Then you will want to minimize ill will by pointing out the error impersonally.

You might say, “We have a problem” instead of “You caused a problem.”

Emphasize the positive

Another way of establishing a good relationship with your audience is to emphasize the positive side of your message.

Most information, even bad news, has some redeeming feature.

Explain what you have done, what you can do and what you will do—not what you haven’t done, can’t do or won’t do.

Establishing your credibility

People are more likely to respond positively to your message if they have confidence in you.

If you’re unknown to your audience members, you’ll have to earn their confidence before you can win them to your point of view.

Credibility

You want people to trust that your word is dependable and that you know what you’re doing.

If you’re communicating with a familiar group, your credibility has been established, so you can get right down to business.

An unknown or hostile audience?

First, show an understanding of your audience’s situation by calling attention to the things you have in common.

If you’re talking to people in the same field, you might say, “as a fellow teacher (or whatever), I’m sure you can appreciate this situation.”

Building credibility

You can also gain your audience’s confidence by explaining your credentials, but be careful not to sound pompous.

Your title or the name of your organization might be enough to impress your audience with your abilities.

If not, you might mention the name of someone who carries clout with your audience. Something like “Professor Jones suggested I write to you.”

Give good information

Your credibility is enhanced by the quality of the information that you provide.

If you support your points with evidence that can be confirmed through observation, research, experimentation or measurement, audience members will recognize that you have the facts, and they’ll respect you.

Be polite

Being polite is another good way to earn your audience’s respect.

By being courteous to members of you audience, you show consideration for their needs and feelings.

Express yourself with kindness and tact. Although you may be tempted now and then to

be brutally frank, try to express the facts in a kind and thoughtful manner.

Higher-ups

Use extra tact when writing and when communicating with higher-ups and outsiders.

Don’t let the informality of e-mail trap you into mistakes of initimacy or brusqueness.

Be prompt!

Promptness is a sign of courtesy, and it’s something very important when you’re dealing with Westerners.

Remember, most Europeans have a different view of time than most Asians.

Use Bias-free Language

Most of us think of ourselves as being sensitive, unbiased, ethical and fair.

But being objective and fair isn’t enough. You must also appear to be fair.

What to avoid

Bias-free language avoids unethical blunders in language related to gender, race, ethnicity, age and disability.

Make every effort to change biased language.

Gender bias

Avoid sexist language by using the same label for everyone. For instance, don’t call a woman a chairperson and

a man a chairman. Either call them both chairperson or even just chair.

Reword sentences to use they instead of he or she, or worse, he/she.

In the US and Britain, the preferred title for women is Ms, unless the individual asks to be addressed as Miss or Mrs. or has some other title such as Dr. or Prof.

Racial and ethnic bias

The central principle is to avoid language suggesting that members of a racial or ethnic group have stereotypical characteristics.

The best solution is to avoid identifying people by race or ethnic origin unless such a label is relevant, and it rarely is.

Age bias

Remember, the West has a bias against older people.

We mention age only when it is relevant. When referring to older people, avoid

such stereotypical adjectives such as spry or frail.

Disability bias

No painless label exists for people with physical, mental, sensory or emotional impairment.

Avoid mentioning it unless it’s necessary.

Project the company’s image

Even though establishing a good relationship with the audience is your main goal, give some thought to projecting the right image for your company.

When you communicate with outsiders, serve as a spokesperson for your organization.

If you must, subordinate your own style to that of the company.