Effective communication

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Description

Name: Ghada AlShaya

Event: How to become an effective communicator.

Date:  1 February 2019

Organizer: The Open University.

Presenter:  Anna Calvi

Location: Online.

 Anna explained ways of communication skills in helpful methods that easy to follow to improve these skills. Before this workshop, I did not have many information about communication, especially for workplace.

Communication skills are very important. Workshop has started with the meaning of business communication, which is the interaction between employees in a workplace for their daily operations.(Doyle, 2019)

There are two main form of business communication. The picture shows internal communication and it is included, downwards from top management to first line employees, upwards, which the opposite and horizontal between different departments. Second form is external communication and occurs when two or more companies interact with each other -business-to-business (B2B)-. Also, companies interact with clients(B2C).(Calvi, 2019)

It is significant that you know and understand your audience, how they think and believe and use language that suitable for them. Sometimes message between sender and receiver isn`t clear, so the presenter mentioned five key principles of business communication to avoid these problems, they are:

  • understanding your audience.
  • Strive for clarity
  • Understand the context of your communication
  • Have clear purpose in mind
  • Select appropriate medium
    (Calvi, 2019)

As lack of information multicultural context, Hofstede created six dimensions based on a survey that elaborated more in that. He found clear differences between outlooks and behaviors of different nations. Video below interestingly explain about it more.(YouTube, 2019)

The writer focus on face-to-face meeting form and its four main type, team, Information, brainstorming and decision-making. There are also telephone and virtual meetings, what makes these meetings successful is acronym by POSTPEC, preparation, objective, structure, timed, participatory, effective and chaired. The roles of chair are to arrange and control before and during the meeting.(Calvi, 2019)

Presentations are part of communication. People do presentations for many reasons such as sharing information, as physical or virtual. There are six key features that help a presenter to be an effective, they are:

  • knowing your audience
  • Having a clear goal
  • Structuring the presentation
  • Make it easy to follow by dividing the subject.
  • Make your presentation rich medium communication
  • Engage your audience
    (Calvi, 2019)

Before presentations answer these questions that could help you to be successful presenter:

  • What is the purpose of your presentation?
  • What is the context of my presentation?
  • Who are my target audience?
  • How do you feel about giving this presentation?
    (Calvi, 2019)

Process of planning presentation include clear structure, introduction, body and conclusion. Then, collect clear and necessary information. Support your presentation with materials like slides. However, after you done all these steps, you may feel stress and anxious before presentation. To avoid this problem, rehearsing many times until you feel ready, checking the room, sleep well and take breathing relax.(Skillsyouneed.com, 2019)

To encourage your audience to participate with you, use some of these methods:

  • Pace
  • pauses
  • Questions
  • Summarizing
  • Tone of voice
  • Repetition
  • Body language
    (Calvi, 2019)

Emails are part of communication skills. To write a professional and clear email, make it street forwards, include one topic, avoid jokes and emotions. Keep in your mind the purpose of writing and from whom to write. If the purpose of writing is discussing a problem, write by SCRAP structure. Each letter denote to a word. Explain Situation and Complication, write your Resolution, what Action you will do and Politeness means apology or thank the receiver.(Masters, 2019)

Many organizations do not just send emails, they create their own blog to communicate with external and internal stakeholders to encourage participating in company`s activities.(Calvi, 2019)

There are two kinds of persuasive documents, reports and proposals. Report present specific information for a situation such as overall performance and recommendations. Proposal is a document prepared to obtain approval be provide objective out of it.(Calvi, 2019)

To engage employees working in collaborative and smart way, organizations use Enterprise 2.0. – it is social networking websites that allows employees to build relationships and encourage innovation- ,such as wikis, and to create efficient shared media tool for organize, manage and write documents and work related requirements.(Calvi, 2019)

Overall, this workshop highlighted many important perspectives of business communication skills for instance challenges in communication, presentations and how to write professional emails and proposals, which are very effective to build confident. Provided knowledge that covers basics to move forward, which I needed, was very clear in this workshop. Presentation preparation process was so benefited to me, it contains the important part for me which is how to deal with stress before presentation. Regarding business emails and proposals, were not that interesting to me, as I am student now and for practices these ways it will be in my career.


After this workshop, I will focus on communication skills, presentations, emails, and trying to follow steps that mentioned, which will make me overcome my stress during social and education activities. I will focus on my audience and how to deal with them, not only the content I provide. To make my meetings very effective, I will provide the agenda within the invitation to ensure purpose out of it will be fulfilled and collaboration will be done in the best way. For my emails, I will focus on one topic that should be clear and deliver the message with all the detailed needed. I will read more articles and attend to workshops to keep improve myself, so after graduate I will be ready to start working without doubt my communication skills.

 References

 

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