BCOM 3360 EXAM 2 CH5-9

Identifying reader benefits and constraints

- For many messages, this is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT planning step - Your readers respond when you provide them with something that they value

Setting Up the Message Framework

- Most business arguments employ a DIRECT or DEDUCTIVE approach -They begin by stating the PRIMARY MESSAGE:position or recommendation - then they lay out the SUPPORTING reasons and CONCLUDE with a call to action -The call to action in many cases is a more detailed and elaborate version of the initial position or recommendation. -may adopt a more INDERICT or INDUCTIVE approach, in which you will provide supporting reasons first followed by the primary message. -In all messages, however, the importance of framing and arranging supporting ideas to accentuate the main idea remains the same.

Information Gathering Components

-Identify the business problems. -Analyze the business problems. -Clarify objectives.

CH:5 Plan: get the content right

-This is all done BEFORE you work on your final draft. -AIM Planning Method (Drafting stage) AUDIENCE-Analyze your audience. IDEA-What are the best ideas to tackle the problem? Identify your problem, goal, outcomes. Research, plan, gather information, analyze best channel for your message. MESSAGE - refine your message. What are the key points you want to make?

Setting Expectations

-especially when you are in management and supervisory roles. -young business professionals—especially first-time managers—are not comfortable with telling others what to do. -nervous about overstepping their authority and disrupting a friendly feeling with subordinates. Yet, setting expectations is directly tied to your credibility and ability to foster interpersonal trust in the workplace.

Other Social Media Tools

-other communication tools exist on social networking platforms. Furthermore, Enterprise 2.0 platforms are constantly evolving and adding communication tools. You would be wise to experiment with all the communication tools available on these platforms so you can identify and use the channels best suited for your audiences.

Focus on the Positive Rather Than Negative Traits of Products and Services

Emphasize what products and services are rather than what they are not

TABLE 6.13 The Most Annoying Buzzwords

Leverage At the end of the day Reach out Synergy It is what it is Solution Viral Think outside the box Game changer On the same page Disconnect Customer-centric Value-add Do more with less Circle back Downsizing Cutting edge Overworked

Social Media

Social media use also presents a variety of risks. For companies, social media can lead to lower productivity when employees use them for social and entertainment purposes, release confidential and proprietary information, post inappropriate comments that lead to reputation loss for companies, and go around lines of authority. On an individual level, social media can lead to major credibility loss (discussed further in

After Brief Small Talk, Direct the Conversation to the Issues at Hand

callers appreciate a few light comments to start a conversation, but be careful not to let this initial small talk drag on. Most effective business calls get to the issues at hand within one to two minutes.

information gathering

collecting as many relevant facts as possible, and making sound judgments about what the facts mean and imply. You are making sense out of often complex and confusing pieces of business information.

Anticipating reactions

envision how others will respond to your message. How will the readers think, feel, and act as they read it.

Respond Promptly

expect fast responses to emails. business professionals found that most business professionals expect an email response within one to four hours. Younger professionals are more likely to expect a response immediately

Display a Can-Do, confident attitude

focus on actions you can accomplish, and demonstrate a realistic optimism. Be careful not to exaggerate or set unrealistic expectations

routine messages, you can accomplish the AIM planning process fairly quickly

generally are working with straightforward matters and your audience is likely to respond positively, you don't need much time for AUDIENCE ANALYSIS or INFORMATION GATHERING. Still, make sure to identify and gather relevant, accurate, and up-to-date information.

Share Conversation Time Equally

great opportunity to deepen relationships and get work done when each person shares conversation time equally. Make sure you're not dominating a conversation by taking up more than your fair share of speaking time. Similarly, if your conversation partner is taking too much of the time, politely interject now and then to balance the speaking time.

Message Development

identifying and framing the primary message and setting up the logic with supporting points and a call to action

avoiding unsupported generalizations

issue boils down to providing supporting facts for your claims.

Use Bulleted and Numbered Lists

often use lists in business writing. When you set these items apart with bullets or numbers, your readers notice and remember the items more easily

Use Your Webcam Effectively

power of group video calls is the ability to have rich conversations full of nonverbal cues. You lose this advantage unless you carefully position your webcam so you are speaking directly to your listeners. Make sure that you've got good lighting and a clean background. Also, maintain direct eye contact with your webcam as much as possible so that other meeting participants can see your interest level and understand your nonverbal cues.

Start the Call with Purpose and Take Charge

professionals make a judgment within the first few minutes about the importance of the call. Unless you get people interested and engaged quickly, many participants will tune out and start multitasking.

Follow Up on Agreements

professionals often don't follow through on commitments they make to each other on calls. This happens most often when neither person documents the content and agreements of their conversation. Consider sending a message within a few hours of your call while the conversation is still fresh in your minds. This dramatically improves the likelihood that you will accomplish your shared objectives.

Components of Announcements

1.Gain attention. 2.Give announcement. 3.Provide details. 4.Call to action.*5. State goodwill.

Components of Appreciation Messages

1.Give thanks. 2.Provide rationale. 3.State goodwill.

Components of Apologies

1.Make acknowledgment. 2.Express regret. 3.Take responsibility. 4.Offer commitment. 5.State goodwill.

Components of Claims

1.Make claim. 2.Provide rationale. 3.Call to action. 4.State goodwill.

Reviewing Your Message

reviewing process includes three interrelated components: conducting the FAIR test, proofreading, and getting feedback (not generally needed for routine messages). These reviewing components ensure that you show fairness, get the message right, avoid errors, and get perspectives from trusted colleagues. For short, routine messages (one to four paragraphs), expert business writers can often check for fairness and proofread in just a few minutes. For long, important messages, such as business proposals or business plans, the reviewing stage may take weeks or months.

Keep It Simple

the goal is to get your message across in an easy-to-read manner. As you design your document, focus first on easy navigation for your reader. Avoid formatting features that distract from the main message.

Highlight Key Words and Phrases

highlight ideas or phrases, consider using bold, italics, or underlining to draw and keep your readers' attention. Typically, you will apply this type of formatting sparingly; if you use too much special formatting, your main ideas will not stand out. In general, apply only one type of formatting to a highlighted word or words (i.e., only bold or italics, not bold and italics)

Be an Active Contributor and Join Communities

make sure you contribute regularly and respond to the comments and work of others. As an example, for individual blogs, those employees who gain the largest followings (and thus a reputation for thought leadership) regularly make blog entries and other posts two to three times per week. Online communities are excellent places to network and participate with professionals in your organization and those with shared professional interests outside your organization. Your company's digital platform will likely offer many ways to join online communities. Some communities are built around committees, task forces, and teams with specific charges or tasks. Other communities are built around shared professional interests, such as finance or project management. These communities are often called COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE and allow you to share and learn from other professionals in your area. Yet other communities are focused on personal interests and hobbies. Generally, actively participating in these communities will open up many professional and learning opportunities.

Avoid Sending Instant Messages after Work Hours

new communication tools lead to professionals blurring the line between personal time and work time. IM, compared to emails and other communication tools, may be considered even more intrusive when sent after hours because of the expectation of immediate responses.

Speak with a Pleasant, Enthusiastic Voice

nonverbal behaviors are often reflected in your voice. Consider sitting up straight or standing up, breathing deeply, intonating clearly, gesturing, and even smiling as you would if you were in person. These nonverbal actions will often carry through in a pleasant, professional voice and help you avoid a monotone. From time to time, consider listening to your recorded voice to pick up on ways in which you can speak more professionally and energetically.

Get Feedback

one of the best ways to ensure that your communication is effective and fair is to get feedback from others: to get advice, criticism, or information about how good or useful sth is

Proofread

rereading your entire document to make sure it is influential and accurate. You might consider rereading each sentence several times, each time with a different focus. On your first pass, place yourself in the position of your audience members. Imagine how they will respond. On your second pass, check for problems with writing style and language mechanics.

Avoid Wordy Prepositional Phrases

- eliminating extra words allows you to get your ideas across as efficiently as possible - you will often find that you can reduce word count by 30-40 percent simply by converting many of your prepositional phrases into single-word verbs

Message Development Components

- frame the primary message - set up the structure and logic of the message

Audience Analysis Components

-Identify reader benefits and constraints. -Consider reader values and priorities. -Estimate your credibility. -Anticipate reactions. -Consider secondary audiences.

Avoiding Exaggeration

-slanting, exaggeration impacts readers' perceptions of your overall credibility as well as the credibility of the message. - Be careful not to make exaggerated claims

Use Action Verbs When Possible

-want to project a positive, can-do, action-oriented tone whenever possible. -. Using action verbs focuses on the goal of coordinating action in the workplace and livens up your writing. Also, it usually reduces word count. -First, find nouns that you can convert to action verbs. (example, have a meeting becomes meet or have a discussion becomes discuss.) -Second, find forms of the verb to be (e.g., be verbs such as is , are , am ) and convert them into action verbs. (example, The food bank is a great place for new skill development becomes The food bank gives you many opportunities to develop new skills.)

Use Active Voice

-way to immediately improve your writing is to use active rather than passive voice in most sentences. Active voice and passive voice contain the following grammatical patterns: Active voice: Doer as Subject + Verb + Object Passive voice: Object as Subject + Be Verb + Verb + Doer (Optional) Active voice: The food bank provides training for all social ambassadors. Passive voice: Training is provided to all social ambassadors. Using active voice in writing includes many benefits. active voice is the preferred writing style for most business writing, passive voice is sometimes better when attempting to avoid blaming others or sounding bossy.

Create a Complete and Professional Profile

-your profile, you provide information about yourself, such as your position, contact information, professional interests, and current projects. You can usually provide a picture and list personal interests outside of work. Profiles are an excellent way of finding people within an organization with needed expertise or shared professional interests. Profiles as part of enterprise social software systems appear much like those in Facebook and LinkedIn. -chance for colleagues and clients who do not know you well to learn about your professional background, abilities, and interests. Colleagues in your organization who do not know you well may be more likely to contact you for projects and other opportunities based on what they learn from your profile

Analyzing the Business Problem(s)

1) uncover relevant facts 2) Making conclusions 3) taking positions -Facts: are statements that can be relied on with a fair amount of certainty (most things are not absolutely certain in the business world) and can be observed objectively. - Conclusions: are statements that are reasoned or deduced based on facts. -Positions: are stances that you take based on a set of conclusions. In the workplace, you will often make recommendations, which are a type of position.

Ensure Ease of Reading

1. Provide a Short, Descriptive Subject Line -If it is not clear and compelling, recipients may not open the message right away. -Good subject lines are generally 5 to 10 words long. 2. Keep Your Message Brief Yet Complete -Get to the point within three or four sentences, and keep your paragraphs about half the size of those in business documents—ideally 30 to 50 words long. -most critical information at the beginning 3. Clearly Identify Expected Actions -contain specific and clear requests so that recipients know exactly how to respond. In many cases, you can place these directions in the subject line for greatest clarity. 4. Provide a Descriptive Signature Block -provide clear contact information 5. Use Attachments Wisely -Messages that are more than several paragraphs long are typically appropriate as attachments. Also, pictures and other graphics, spreadsheets, databases, and many other types of files are nearly always more appropriate as attachments.

Maintain Professionalism and Appropriate Formality

1.Avoid Indications That You View Email as Casual Communication -Certain casual ways of writing and formatting appear unprofessional—for example, using all lowercase letters or nonstandard spelling (i.e., hey barbara, how r u), using excessive formatting (i.e., flashy background colors, unusual fonts), providing extraneous information in the signature line (i.e., favorite quotations), and typing in all caps for full phrases and sentences (IMPLIES ANGER). Humor and sarcasm, too, can be misinterpreted in digital communications, even among close colleagues. Furthermore, even when considered funny, it can draw attention away from your central message. Casual forms of communication in email can be appropriate for close colleagues with whom you work often. 2.Apply the Same Standards of Spelling, Punctuation, and Formatting You Would for Other Written Documents -review your message for typos, spelling, punctuation, or grammatical problems before sending it. For important messages, consider first composing with word processing software. This will help you apply a higher level of seriousness. In addition, you'll be able to use spell-check and grammar-check features that are more reliable than those within email systems. Finally, you can ensure that you do not inadvertently send the message without making sure it is polished and complete. 3.Use Greetings and Names -Typically, professionals with blue and hub MVSs (see Chapter 2) (those with the strongest people-orientation) show a stronger preference for greetings and names. If you're having an ongoing email exchange with a blue or a hub and you notice that he or she is using a formal greeting in each email, consider reciprocating. On the other hand, if you're a blue or a hub and like to see greetings and names in every email but your colleagues are not doing so, avoid getting hung up on it. Assume that they view emails much like memos or that they view excessive use of greetings and names in back-and-forth email chains as repetitive and unnecessary.

Emphasize what products and services are rather than what they are not

Find ways to avoid terms that unnecessarily focus on differences and may imply opposing or even adversarial relationships or positions

Close with Appreciation

you should find a way to express appreciation to your conversation partner. Simple phrases such as "thanks for taking the time to . . ." or "it has been great to get your ideas about . . ." can end the call on a warm note and pave the way for easier follow-up.

Avoid Empty Phrases

Phrases that simply fill space without adding additional meaning. Common in conversations, but not needed for written messages.

how can you stay responsive to others yet focus enough to achieve peak performance in your work tasks?

- 7.1.Check digital messages just four to five times each day at designated times. -try not to check your messages more than every 45 minutes. 2.Wean yourself off checking your mobile devices constantly. -variety of anxieties, such as FOMO (fear of missing out) and FOBO (fear of being offline), drastically cut many professionals' productivity. 3.Develop strategies to manage your inbox. -strategies include LIFO (last in, first out), reverse chronological, and inbox zero. LIFO is most common and involves top-down reading of your email list; helps you deal with your most current emails. Some of the older email messages sometimes involve issues that have been worked out already. The risk is you may read and respond to a more current message without the context needed from prior messages. -The REVERSE CHRONOLOGICAL solves this problem by ensuring you see the original messages first. It also rewards people in the order they sent messages to you. Yet, you may also expend time reading and responding to issues that have already been addressed or solved. -INBOX ZERO is a strategy of immediately taking action on every email and keeping your inbox empty by the end of each session. You can use a variety of email tools such as filters and rules to efficiently read and respond to your most important email. 4.Turn off message alerts. 5.Use rich channels such as face-to-face and phone conversations to accomplish a task completely. 6.Reply immediately only to urgent messages. 7.Avoid unnecessarily lengthening an email chain. -shorten email chains by placing statements such as "no reply necessary" in the subject line. 8.Use automatic messages to help people know when you're unavailable.

Avoid It Is/There Are

- Readers Naturally Want To Know Precisely WHO or WHAT The Subject Of A Sentence Is, Particularly In Business Writing, Where Specificity Is So Important; - Most Sentences That Begin With IT IS Or THERE ARE Fail To Provide A Specific Subject And Generally Contain More Words Than Necessary.

Use Short Sentences in Most Cases

- short sentences allow your readers to comprehend your ideas more easily - for routine messages, aim for average sentence length of 15 or fewer words -For more analytical and complex business messages, you may have an average sentence length of 20 or fewer words. -Of course, you will often deal with complex ideas and need to go above 20 words in some of your sentences. -When sentences had 10 words or fewer, readers had nearly 100 percent comprehension. - Once sentence lengths reached around 20 words, comprehension dropped to about 80 percent. -Thereafter, comprehension dropped rapidly. Sentence lengths of 28 words resulted in just 30 percent comprehension.

Making Apologies

--colleagues sometimes let one another down. Differences in communication style, personality clashes, and careless comments are sometimes factors in personal offenses. Business professionals who are high in emotional intelligence notice how their actions impact others. When they intentionally or unintentionally do harm, they seek to improve the workplace relationships right away. In some cases, making apologies is the appropriate response. -First, they help repair working relationships so that you can refocus on solving problems together. Second, they can rebuild your reputation. When you've made offenses or mistakes that harm others, your credibility is weakened. Your reputation for competence, caring, and/or character may be questioned. -Typically, an apology includes the following elements: ACKNOWLEDGMENT of a mistake or an offense, an expression of REGRET for the harm caused, acceptance of RESPONSIBILITY, and a COMMITMENT that the offense will not be repeated. Effective apologies should be timely and sincere. -Apologies are ineffective when they are vague and clichéd. For the apology to be effective, others must sense that the apologizer is sincere, genuine, and acting without an agenda. Effective apologies must focus on others, not you. During an apology, if the recipient decodes any behavior as defensive, it casts doubt on the apologizer's sincerity.6 -Before apologizing, consider the business implications. If you are dealing with customers and clients, an apology may imply legal responsibility. For serious matters, you might seek the company's legal counsel. Internally, an apology may become a permanent record in a performance review or other files (in rare situations). So, you might consider the potential costs of an apology to your company and your career. Generally, however, apologies for routine mistakes and offenses pose little risk to either your company or your career. They are likely to restore and perhaps even enhance your company's and your personal credibility.

Be Careful about Abbreviated Language, Emoticons, Acronyms, and Emoji

-Abbreviated language, acronyms, emoticons, and emoji are some of the fun features of instant messaging. Until you know the IM style of others in the workplace, you should err on the side of complete sentences and standard language conventions. -In Figure 7.11 , you will notice how Jaclyn uses a short message to tell Haniz the location of a business meal. Jaclyn uses complete sentences and standard language conventions, while Haniz uses abbreviated language and acronyms. Haniz should consider adopting more standard language conventions to match Jaclyn's style. On the other hand, Jaclyn should notice that Haniz enjoys using some abbreviated language. Jaclyn might consider using some nonstandard language conventions when instant messaging with Haniz.

User 2.0

-Actively creates and shares content online. -Can express opinions and even change the content presented. -Customizes web pages and content -Peer-to-peer programs are the main communication tools. -Connects from mobile devices. -Connected online all the time.

Make Your Messages Authentic and Friendly

-Authenticity is key to effective social media messages. Social media readers expect sincerity and the raw truth. Your messages should not come off as spin and should not contradict who you really are. Be clear about your intentions. Your messages should also have a friendly tone. However, authenticity and friendliness do not mean sloppy writing or rudeness. When engaging in collaborative writing, keep a friendly tone even when you disagree with others. Avoid any urges to delete the comments of others or engage in edit wars.

Use Blogs and Status Updates for Team Communication

-BLOGS are posts that are arranged chronologically, similar to a journal format. Traditionally, most blogs have included entries by just one or a few individuals, although many provide the option for reader comments. Increasingly, teams and other professional groups write blogs. In the workplace, they allow business professionals to share their ideas and experiences. By focusing on specific topics and areas of expertise, bloggers can attract and connect with other employees with similar professional interests.8 A variety of blog types have emerged in the workplace, including individual expert blogs, company executive blogs, company team blogs, company update blogs, company crisis blogs, and internal company blogs. -Blog posts are excellent opportunities for leaders, managers, and supervisors to keep employees aware of announcements and updates. By using the comment features on these blogs, employees can ask questions and share their opinions. This helps create a more interactive, transparent decision-making process within organizations, business units, and teams. -Status updates (also known as MICROBLOGS) are short comments that typically contain just a few sentences. The most popular public social networking platform for microblogs is Twitter. As part of enterprise social networking platforms, status updates are tools for broadcasting quick announcements and urgent information. Members of a network can also use them to ask questions that need immediate responses. They are particularly useful in teams so team members can coordinate their efforts effectively. -Organizations are increasingly using team blogs and project blogs (many-to-many communication). TEAM BLOGS are typically organized around formal work teams, and PROJECT BLOGS are organized around particular projects that generally involve temporary teams. Team and project blogs are excellent ways to place all of the team's communications in a single place, such as updates, progress reports, problem-solving discussions, project timelines and goals, announcements, and a variety of other coordination tasks. These team and project blogs are also excellent for sharing success stories to build and shape organizational and team culture.

Protect Privacy and Confidentiality

-Be careful about not spreading—purposely or inadvertently—sensitive or confidential information. - -Because emails are so convenient to send, even the rare mistake in an address line can result in damaging professional consequences.

Don't Ask Questions You Can Get Answers to Yourself

-Be careful about overusing this approach to getting information, especially when you can get the information yourself without much effort. When professionals ask questions and offload their own work via instant messages or emails too often, they get reputations as takers rather than givers.

Focus on Content

-Blogs, wikis, forums, and even news feeds are collaborative tools;intended to help you work more effectively with your team members, other colleagues, and clients. -primary goal is not to entertain; it is to provide value to others and increase your professional, not social, credibility -content of your posts should focus on your work projects, meetings, shared goals, experiences, and expertise and knowledge.

Improving Ease of Reading with Writing Style

-Completeness Provide all relevant information. Be accurate. Be specific. -Conciseness Control paragraph length. Use short sentences. Avoid redundancy. Avoid empty phrases. Avoid wordy prepositional phrases. -Natural Style Use action verbs when possible. Use active voice. Use short and familiar words and phrases. Use parallel language. Avoid buzzwords and figures of speech. Avoid it is/there are.

MANAGING YOUR DIGITAL COMMUNICATION EFFICIENTLY

-Constantly checking incoming messages—emails, texts, IMs, and other digital messages—or simply hearing message alerts distracts business professionals from concentrating on the tasks at hand. As you are bombarded with incoming messages, your productivity decreases for two reasons: You are distracted from your immediate tasks, and you try to multitask. Interruptions from digital messages, or e-interruptions, are extremely costly to your performance. One recent study found that the average worker several hours per day due to interruptions. Many of these distractions are email and other incoming messages. On average, professionals check their email or texts every six minutes, which amounts to 80 e-interruptions in an eight-hour day! -Distractions affect your performance for much longer than the few moments you take to acknowledge and respond to incoming messages. A Microsoft study found that it takes 15 minutes on average to refocus after an interruption. Furthermore, these disruptions have been shown to reduce attention spans, increase stress, and even reduce creativity. The cost to companies is enormous. Intel estimates that large companies lose about $1 billion per year because of email overload.

Make Your Content Accessible

-Contributing to blogs and wikis increases your organization's knowledge. However, if other people can't find and use your contributions, you have not accomplished your purpose. By naming, labeling, indexing, and tagging (applying keywords to your blogs and other posts) well, you help others find your informatio -consider using links to your files to help others open them immediately.

Audience Analysis

-Effective business communicators possess an uncanny ability to step into the shoes of their audience members. They think about their audience's needs, priorities, and values. -They envision how their readers will respond when getting the message—in thought, feeling, and action. They also consider how the message will affect their working relationships. -Effective business communicators regularly take the following actions to tailor their messages to others: identify reader benefits and constraints, consider reader values and priorities, estimate personal credibility, anticipate reactions, and consider secondary audiences.

Providing Directions

-Messages that provide directions share many similarities with those that set expectations. The primary distinction is that directions typically include specific—often step-by-step—guidelines for accomplishing particular tasks. -describing step-by-step procedures is so specific, insufficient detail can frustrate your readers. For routine matters, you are generally safe reviewing your own work and making sure it is complete. For more technical and complicated procedures, make sure you have several people test the procedures to find where you can better clarify the steps involved. -In messages with procedures and directions, make the steps stand out clearly by enumerating each one. This helps your reader keep track of progress completing the tasks. Steps that are written in narrative form within a paragraph are typically difficult to follow.

Setting the Tone of the Message

-One of your primary goals as a communicator is to express your messages in ways that respect and inspire others. -Readers judge a message partially by its tone—the overall evaluation the reader perceives the writer to have toward the reader and the message content. Readers will judge your message based on how positive and concerned they think you are.

Avoid Redundancy

-One way to reduce word count and make your messages easier to read is to avoid redundancies, which are words or phrases that repeat the same meaning. - For example, consider the phrase past history; history can only be past, so there's no need to use both words. By eliminating redundancies, you can reduce overall word count

Identify Yourself

-Other than for people you text or IM often, you can't be certain whether you're part of your message recipients' address lists. Simply stating your name ("Hi. This is Jaclyn . . .") will help avoid confusion in many cases.

User 1.0

-Passively reads and searches for content. -Depends on content creator; does not express own opinion. -Gets the web as is. -Email is the main communication tool. -The computer is the main access point. -Connected online for time-limited sessions.

Strategically choosing a communication channel involves three basic considerations related to their limitations: richness, control, and constraints.

-RICHNESS involves two considerations: the level of immediacy and the number of cues available. IMMEDIACY relates to how quickly someone is able to respond and give feedback. In high-immediacy communication, people have immediate access to a variety of CUES, including social cues (turn-taking), verbal cues (tone of voice), and nonverbal cues (gestures, facial expressions). Generally, face-to-face communication is considered the richest, since each person involved can get immediate verbal and nonverbal feedback. Richer communication typically leads to more trust-building, rapport, and commitment. It is generally the most efficient way to accomplish communication objectives quickly and is less likely to lead to misunderstandings.3 -CONTROL refers to the degree to which communications can be planned and recorded, thus allowing strategic message development. PLANNING implies that the communication can be tightly drafted, edited and revised, rehearsed, and otherwise strategically developed before delivery. PERMANENCE refers to the extent to which the message can be stored, retrieved, and distributed to others. Control may be your primary concern for many important communications. -CONSTRAINTS refer to the practical limitations of coordination and resources. COORDINATION deals with the effort and timing needed to allow all relevant people to participate in a communication. RESOURCES include the financial, space, time, and other investments necessary to employ particular channels of communication. A meeting of ten corporate employees who fly in from different cities is a high-constraint communication that requires extensive coordination and resources. -basic level, communication channels can be divided between the spoken and the written. Spoken messages in the workplace are generally high in richness but low in control. -However, they cannot prepare a set message (low planning) or keep a permanent record that can be reviewed and distributed to others (low permanence). -Written business communication complements the weaknesses of spoken business communication and vice versa.

Write: get the delivery right

-Set the right tone -Apply a clear and concise style -Focus on navigational design

Avoiding Slanting the Facts

-Slanting means presenting only those facts that are favorable to your position. -To maintain your credibility, avoid slanting in all cases. --While slanting may provide short-term benefits, many executives and managers have lost a lifetime of credibility when their gross misrepresentation was exposed. -At a minimum, when readers notice that you have slanted the facts, they will be skeptical of the logic and reasoning of your entire message

Improving Ease of Reading with Natural Style

-The closer you match your writing style to the way your readers think and talk, the easier it is for them to process the information you present. -Ease of processing means your readers need less mental effort to understand your message, which is especially important for readers who are busy and preoccupied with other work challenges. - Use Action verbs when possible - Use active voice - Use short and familiar words and phrases - Use parallel language - Avoid buzzwords and figures of speech - Avoid It Is/ There are

Principles of Effective Emails

-Use for the right purposes. -Ensure ease of reading. -Show respect for time. -Protect privacy and confidentiality. -Respond promptly. -Maintain professionalism and appropriate formality. -Manage emotion effectively. -Avoid distractions.

Improving Ease of Reading with Conciseness

-When you write concisely, your message is far easier to read. Conciseness does not imply removing relevant information. Rather, it implies omitting needless words so that readers can rapidly process your main ideas. -language should be efficient. -few words as possible. 1. Control paragraph length 2. Use short sentences 3. Avoid redundancy 4. Avoid empty phrases 5. Avoid wordy and prepositional phrases

Expressing Sympathy

-When your colleagues and other close professional contacts encounter personal losses—such as the sickness or even the passing away of loved ones—it is appropriate for you to extend your sincere sympathies. Although you may have maintained strictly professional relations with others, expressing condolences, concern, and support can help them cope with personal grief and pain. -The foremost requirement of any expression of sympathy is that it be sincere. These difficult moments are challenging and awkward. You may feel uncertain about what to say, which words to use. Your genuine concern will compensate for any deficiencies in the words you use. Typically, keep your expressions of sympathy brief. For deaths, state your support and concern to the person who has experienced the loss. Make the note personal by mentioning the deceased person by name and your positive impressions and memories. When possible, handwrite your expression of sympathy on a nice card

Using You-Voice, We-Voice, Impersonal Voice, and I-Voice Appropriately

-You-Voice:Use when focus is solely on the reader. Avoid: when pointing out the mistakes of others or when the statement may be presumptuous. -We-Voice:Use when focus is on shared efforts, interests, and problems. -Impersonal Voice:Use when rational and neutral analysis is expected. -I-Voice:Use with nonthreatening verbs (i.e., think, feel) when there is bad news, difference of opinion, or even blame involved.

Be Accurate

-accurate information is true, correct, and exact. -You should aim for accuracy in facts, figures, statistics, and word choice. -Inaccuracies may result from miscalculations, misinformation, poor word choice, or simply typos -Accuracy, like specificity, strongly impacts your readers' perceptions of your credibility. -Just one inaccurate statement can lead readers to dismiss your entire message and lower their trust in your future communications as well.

Organize Your Dashboard to Control Your Communication and Information Flow

-all social software systems contain a DASHBOARD, your front page when you log in, which operates as your communication and information hub. Your dashboard gives you many opportunities to learn and connect with others. By setting up your dashboard strategically, you can learn more about the people in your organization and develop business expertise each day. You can also allow others to learn more about you and enhance your credibility within your organization. -display the features that most interest you. For most teams, displaying status updates and other project notifications should be most prominent. You can also display your mail, your schedule, the communities you belong to, people you follow in the organization, and even use plug-ins for external social readers to learn more about your industry and your field

Avoiding Faulty Cause/Effect Claims

-analyze business issues, you are often trying to identify causes and effects. -For example, when proposing new initiatives, you will generally claim that your actions will cause a certain result. -The ability to precisely predict effects is always tricky, so choose your language and reasoning carefully. -If readers are troubled by one of your cause/effect claims, they will become increasingly picky about your reasoning throughout the message

Show Respect for Others' Time

-email communication is so convenient, some people overuse and even abuse it. -professional, relevant, easy to read, and other-oriented. 1.Select Message Recipients Carefully -make sure the email is necessary and relevant for each of your message recipients. 2.Provide Timelines and Options -By clearly providing timelines and schedules, you minimize the number of emails needed to coordinate your efforts, thus saving time. By providing options, you show respect for your colleagues' schedules. 3.Be Careful about Using the Priority Flag -too often set the priority flag on such emails, your colleagues may become annoyed, perceiving you as pushy. -you need something urgently, mention it politely in the subject line or use a rich communication channel such as a phone call to gain buy-in. 4.Let Others Know When You Will Take Longer Than Anticipated to Respond or Take Action -can't respond to a request made in an email, reply immediately and explain how soon you can respond in full. 5.Avoid Contributing to Confusing and Repetitive Email Chains -Three features contribute to email chains: forward, copy, and reply to all. The forward feature allows you to send any message you receive to others with the click of the mouse. As always, make sure that those you are forwarding the message to need to see the email.

Write Posts for a Professional Blog

-business professionals have opportunities to build personal brands with social media tools. One of the best ways of establishing thought leadership is to create blog posts that focus on areas of expertise or interests. Many professionals create their own blogs (many free platforms exist such as WordPress and Medium). Other professionals post their entries on well-known social networking platforms such as LinkedIn. While you can distinguish yourself on these external platforms, you can also write blog posts on enterprise social networking platforms that help give you a reputation of expertise within your organization. -several strategies on your own professional blogs. First, develop a theme that readers easily recognize and that captures your areas of expertise or interests. Second, make sure your blog posts maintain a professional, fun, and helpful tone. Third, make sure your content is accurate. You can quickly gain a reputation as an expert with strong posts yet gain a reputation as a novice if there are obvious mistakes in your content. Most blog writers enhance their credibility by providing hyperlinks to their source or reference material. This helps readers make judgments about the quality of your posts. Also, make sure your content is interesting and front-loaded. You've got only 5 to 15 seconds to draw your readers in, so make sure you capture their interest immediately. Finally, stay responsive to your readers' comments. You can often learn what your readers are looking for by sifting through comments. Because so many styles exist for professional blogs, you should read the blogs of popular business and management bloggers to figure out some options that might work for you.

Respect the Time and Autonomy of Your Readers

-business world can be a hectic, deadline-filled environment. In many situations you will want fast responses. -If you show consideration for others' time as well as for their sense of autonomy, you will often achieve your intended results more effectively than if your words sound bossy and demanding

Providing all Relevant Information

-challenge is to judge which information is relevant for your message. -After all, providing too much information can distract your readers and weigh down your document. On the other hand, not providing enough information can leave your reader wondering how to respond. -The key to providing all but only relevant information is to plan, write, and review your message strategically. Repeatedly asking yourself what information is necessary for the purpose of your message will help you accomplish this.

Use Short and Familiar Words and Phrases

-choose short, conversational, and familiar words. - Using longer, less common words to "sound smart" rarely pays off. They slow processing and distract from your message. They may even inadvertently send the signal that you are out of touch, quirky, or even arrogant

Establish Rules with Your Colleagues for Instant Messaging in Meetings

-common during meetings in some organizations. Texting can be used to prompt team members about topics to cover, give quick updates as needed to team leaders, ask for information from colleagues or clients outside of the meeting, and assist teammates in a variety of ways. -pay attention to the culture of texting at your company. Of course, even where texting is encouraged in meetings, it can also be abused (see Figure 7.13). In any case, discuss with your teammates what you consider appropriate in meetings. Similarly, use the messaging app or platform that is recommended and supported by your organization.

Congratulations and Celebrations

-congratulations are typically reserved for major professional milestones: securing a major deal, getting an important new client, reaching a work anniversary (i.e., ten years of service), gaining a promotion, and even reaching retirement. For close colleagues and clients, professionals should also celebrate many nonprofessional milestones: marriages, births, graduations, home purchases, and other major life events. Typically, you should express deep and positive emotion in congratulation messages. It's appropriate to project a tone of joy and happiness. Also, you should consider validating others for their milestone. For someone who has been promoted, you could express how well deserved the promotion is. For someone who has just purchased a home, you could express what a good decision it is. Finally, since milestones generally represent the beginning of a new journey, you should consider expressing confidence in their future. For someone who has secured a major deal, you might suggest it's the beginning of securing other deals. For someone who has just married, you could express your confidence in a long and happy union. Many professionals differ as far as the level of formality for these messages, but they generally ensure these messages are emotional, validating, and forward looking.

Avoid Rescheduling Meeting Times or Places

-convenient way of saying you're running a few minutes late. While slightly changing meeting plans via IM is handy in rare cases, avoid doing so unless absolutely necessary. Many professionals have gained reputations as not being reliable because they frequently adjust meeting times and locations at the last minute via IM. In situations where you must change plans, consider placing a call as a show of courtesy and as a way of efficiently and clearly adjusting plans.

Respect Boundaries and Avoid Oversharing

-division between professional and private lives is becoming increasingly blurred. Stay observant about where your colleagues draw lines to preserve their lives away from work. -Similarly, notice the frequency with which your colleagues and other contacts appreciate new posts and other social media content. Some employees gain a reputation for oversharing in overall content. They may also overshare when they post so much more than their colleagues that they appear domineering or self-centered.

USING SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS FOR COMMUNICATION WITHIN ORGANIZATIONS

-dramatic impacts in the workplace. Various research suggests that productivity can grow by between 10 and 25 percent. -social software tools you can expect to use in the workplace: dashboards, user profiles, blogs and status updates, and discussion forums (usually simply called FORUMS). We focus on these tools for a few reasons. They are among the most widely used and most effective social tools, and they involve significant written communication.

Concern for Others

-facet of business communication, focusing on others is important. It is a basic component of your credibility (caring). -In content and form, your message should show that you have the interests of your audience in mind. -Therefore, avoid any sense of self-centeredness. Also aim for a tone that is inviting—that implies your interest in your readers' opinions, feelings, needs, and wants.

Solve Problems with Discussion Forums

-forums allow team members and colleagues to continue holding conversations between meetings. As a result, important team conversations stay more current and fresh in each team member's memory. Some business professionals prefer forums over face-to-face meetings because forums allow them to make thoughtful, carefully prepared, and well-documented comments. Typically, introverts express themselves more easily in forums. So, using face-to-face meetings together with forums creates a work environment that brings out the contributions and best ideas of all team members. However, forums are not always successful. Generally, you should help your teams avoid the following actions that hinder productive team communication: 1.Avoid leading posts. 2.Avoid ignoring competing points of views. 3.Avoid strong, rigid language. 4.Avoid complaining 5.Avoid blaming. 6.Avoid off-topic points. 7.Avoid excessively short or lengthy posts 8.Avoid sarcasm.

Review: Double-check everything

-get feedback -ensure your message is fair -make sure to proofread

CH6 Improving Ease of Reading with Completeness

-goal of completeness means that your message provides all the information necessary to meet that purpose. -Your colleagues, clients, and other contacts expect complete information so they can act on your message immediately. - Otherwise, they will need to contact you to get additional information or, worse yet, ignore your message altogether. -achieve completeness with three basic strategies: (1) providing all relevant information (2) being accurate (3) being specific.

Be Responsive and Help Others

-good member, you respond positively to the requests of others and help when possible. As you gain a reputation for responding and helping others, you can expect that other community members will respond and help you.

Framing the primary message

-involves showcasing a message from an overarching theme. -It focuses a reader or listener on a certain key idea or argument and highlights the premises and support for this key idea or argument. -Strategic communicators consider alternative frames before they settle on the one that will be most compelling. -Ideally, it should be a vivid statement with rational and emotional appeal

Avoiding Either/Or Logic

-main characteristics of critical thinking is to remain flexible and open to alternative explanations and options. In business, you will always want to stay aware of alternative ways of solving the same problem. -Furthermore, most of your readers will respond better to you when they view you as flexible and open to other ideas (including their own)

Avoiding Weak Analogies

-make sense of business issues, you will often try to identify analogies with other organizations, people, or things. -Strong analogies serve to bolster your arguments. -However, weak analogies may lead to inaccurate conclusions and recommendations. Be sure that the analogies you make are based on close and relevant similarities

Manage Emotion and Maintain Civility

-managers cite the lack of emotion in emails as positive. They see email as a channel that allows the exchange of messages in minimal form—objective, task-based, and straightforward. -Business professionals often want to invoke some emotion—perhaps enthusiasm or a sense of urgency. Even when senders intend to convey a relatively nonemotional message, recipients may experience an emotional reaction. -emails tend to elicit either the neutrality effect or the negativity effect. The NEUTRALITY EFFECT means that recipients are more likely to perceive messages with an intended positive emotion as neutral. That is, the sender may wish to express enthusiasm about an event, but the receiver decodes the information without "hearing" the enthusiasm. The NEGATIVITY EFFECT means that recipients are more likely to perceive messages that are intended as neutral as negative. The effects of emotional inaccuracy due to the neutrality and negativity effects can lead to conflict escalation, confusion, and anxiety. -asynchronous electronic communications can lead to feelings of anger and frustration more so than in face-to-face communications. First, people often feel comfortable writing things they would not say in person.18 This level of directness is often perceived as rudeness by others. -The second aspect of asynchronous electronic communications that can lead to anger and frustration is CYBER SILENCE, which is nonresponse to emails and other communications. During the nonresponse stage, message senders often misattribute explanations for the silence. They sometimes wonder if message recipients are purposely avoiding or even ignoring them. As the length of time between messages increases, they often experience more frustration and anger. -message sender, grant the benefit of the doubt to your recipients when responses take longer than you expected. Instead of getting frustrated, consider giving them a phone call. Keep in mind that they may have different expectations about a reasonable time frame to respond to your email. If they routinely take longer than you expect, politely mention that you would appreciate quicker responses.

CH7 Strategically Selecting Channels for Communication

-many useful communication tools and technologies for getting in touch with your colleagues, your customers, and other contacts. -Having so many options, however, also presents dilemmas about selecting an appropriate COMMUNICATION CHANNEL—the medium through which a message is transmitted. Examples of communication channels include emails, phone conversations, and face-to-face dialogue. Each communication channel has strengths and drawbacks -means that you choose the one that is best able to meet your work objectives. quick phone call or text message is the most efficient way to figure out a meeting time. Other times you will need a face-to-face meeting to clarify misunderstandings about projects. In many of your working relationships, you'll use many communication channels—email, social media, calls, face-to-face conversations—on a daily or weekly basis.

Evaluate the Meta Message of Instant Messaging

-meta messages, the overall but often underlying messages that others decode from your communications. Because professionals hold so many attitudes toward instant messaging, think about how they'd interpret your use of IM. One colleague might decode your instant message as saying, "You're not important enough for a phone call." Another colleague might decode the sameinstant message as saying, "I want to keep you in the loop, so I'm messaging you."

Responding to Inquiries

-most important strategies for responding to inquiries is to set off each question so your readers can quickly identify responses to particular questions. You generally can do this using bullets or numbered lists and/or special formatting (i.e., bold or italics). When choosing between bullets or numbered lists, consider whether the order of the items is important. If the order is important, use numbered lists. Otherwise, use bullets. Also, consider telling your readers where to get additional and more specific information by providing links to FAQ web pages or other relevant web pages.

Using Social Media Ethically

-social media—even private use—complicates your relationship with your employer. -online reputation is at stake with social media use; the reputation and performance of your company is at stake as well. The line between what you believe is private use of social media and your role as an employee can be murky because your private actions can damage your employer and hurt your career. -constantly try to understand evolving norms for social media use in a professional context. For your own protection and that of your company, become familiar with your company's acceptable-use policies for social networking websites.

Instant Messaging in the Workplace

-most popular features on mobile phones. -Instant messaging is ideal for short and simple business messages that contain announcements, questions, confirmations of plans, quick tips, support, and congratulations. Most business professionals consider IM a less formal communication channel than email. -relatively new and undeveloped form of communication in the workplace, and attitudes toward it vary significantly. -Many professionals consider IM impersonal, uninteresting, rude, intrusive, or inadequate. On the other hand, many professionals associate IM in the workplace with exactly the opposite qualities: warm and personal, nice, less intrusive than calls, fun, inviting, and helpful.

Use Email for the Right Purposes

-not rich—meaning lacking in virtually all verbal and nonverbal cues associated with face-to-face communication and lacking immediate feedback—they are best suited for routine, task-oriented, fact-based, and nonsensitive messages. Emails may be used to praise others but should rarely be used to criticize others -email com. has a few constraints (low cost, little coordination) and high control (the writer can think them out carefully, and they provide a permanent record) -rarely appropriate for sensitive or emotional communication tasks

COMMUNICATING IN THE WORKPLACE IN THE SOCIAL AGE

-online communication tools used in business—social networking, blogs, messaging, discussion forums, and others—are driving profound changes in how people connect and collaborate in the workplace. These changes are so profound that workplace culture is moving into a new era: from the Information Age to the Social Age -The SOCIAL AGE is an era in which people engage in networked communication, collaborate across boundaries, and solve problems communally.2 However, even though the communication technologies that have paved the way for the Social Age are changing rapidly (in months and years), workplace culture is relatively slow to change (in years and decades).

Read, Listen, and Learn

-online information, you can take steps on a weekly basis to learn more about your areas of expertise, your industry, and other topics of interest. Using social reading platforms (such as LinkedIn, Feedly, or Flipboard), you can weed out less relevant information and efficiently access information to develop your knowledge and skills. Ideally, you will set apart at least several hours per week to read and learn with a social reader. To make the best use of these platforms, consider the following strategies: 1.Identify the 20 to 50 sources of information that are most helpful to you. 2.Use hashtag and other topical searches to track important information to you. -addition to following sources of information, wisely using automated searches allows you to get relevant information for your professional interests. You can use a variety of platforms to automate this process. 3.Take time to read important articles and posts. -You will learn more deeply and notice you are more informed than many of your peers by setting aside at least a few hours per week for dedicated, comprehensive reading of key articles and posts in your area. Commit to taking enough time to process this information well. 4.Recognize and praise the contributions of others. -Make sure to like and compliment the well-developed content of others. Many of your colleagues and other contacts will greatly appreciate your well-crafted, specific praise. They'll also likely return that appreciation when you post your own content.

The evolution of the Internet during the past 20 years from WEB 1.0 to WEB 2.0 platforms is the primary driver of the Social Age.

-original Internet, referred to as WEB 1.0, most web pages were read-only and static;Web 1.0 communication tools are primarily passive and static. -Internet evolved, referred to as WEB 2.0, what emerged was the read-write web, where users interact extensively with web pages—authoring content, expressing opinions, and customizing and editing web content among other things. Web 2.0 communication tools, often referred to as SOCIAL MEDIA, include social networks, blogs, wikis, gaming, podcasts, and information tagging;Web 2.0 communication tools are interactive, customizable, and social. USER 1.0 refers to an individual who primarily uses and prefers Web 1.0 tools USER 2.0 refers to an individual who primarily uses and prefers Web 2.0 tools emerging Social Age involves adopting many workplace norms and values from users of Web 2.0 tools. companies are adopting social networking platforms that contain Web 2.0 communication tools (also called enterprise social software and Enterprise 2.0) in the workplace platforms contain many of the features available on social networking websites: user profiles, status updates or microblogs, blogs, co-authoring tools or wikis, shared files, and group messaging or chat boxes. They often include a variety of other communication and collaboration tools as well, including online audio and video calls, shared work spaces, calendars, and private messaging (or email) systems. Thus, most companies—especially medium- to large-sized businesses—are increasingly moving toward corporate intranets that contain both Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 tools.

Building Connections with Phone Conversations

-phone calls generally allow business professionals to connect more deeply, resolve problems more quickly, make important decisions better, and manage conflict more effectively. -increased use of mobile phones in people's personal lives has actually led to a downward trend in calls.

Schedule and Plan for Your Phone Calls

-phone conversations are much like meetings, so consider sending an invitation with an agenda to your conversation partner. For less formal conversations, at least plan your purpose and major points to cover. Out of respect for your conversation partners' time, let them know roughly how long the call will take.

Positivity

-positive attitude in the workplace improves work performance, allows more creativity, provides more motivation to excel, facilitates more helpfulness between co-workers, and gains more influence on clients and customers. -Bottom line, your ability to remain positive and exude optimism in your communications can strongly influence others.

Writing Blogs for External Audiences

-stakeholders expect an insider view of organizations. One effective way of telling the story of your organization is through blog posts. Usually, these posts originate on a corporate website. Then, these posts are generally linked to a variety of public social networking platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. Also, many professionals now write blogs about their professional interests. These blogs are a powerful way of personal branding. In this section, we'll discuss these two forms of writing blogs for external audiences.

Avoid Relying Too Heavily on the I-Voice

-subject of a sentence almost always becomes the focus or emphasis. -Generally, place the focus on your reader (you-voice), your shared interests with the reader (we-voice), or simply the business issue at hand (impersonal voice)

Message Structure for Public Relations Messages

-press-release style, which still accounts for most written PR messages, the main components include a headline, dateline, the story, a boilerplate, and contact information. The HEADLINE immediately captures the attention of stakeholders. Next, the DATELINE allows readers to identify when the story occurred. Then, the PR STORY—whether it's announcing a product launch, an act of charity, an event, or some other type of notable corporate activity—is written in third person in what is often referred to as INVERTED PYRAMID STYLE. The STORY should answer the basic questions of WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, and WHY quickly within the first paragraph. The story then provides supporting details—the second tier of the inverted pyramid. At the end of the PR story, a BOILERPLATE or POSITIONING STATEMENT briefly explains background about the company: the nature of its business, its products and services, its customers, and its UNIQUE SELLING POSITION, meaning what distinguishes it from competitors. Typically, minor PR announcements are just 100 to 300 words, and major announcements are generally 500 to 800 words. -common approach to PR messages is the op-ed style. Traditionally, a corporate leader would write an opinion piece in first person about a challenge or issue shared by the company and the public. As with press releases, the scope of the op-ed approach for PR has grown. Just a decade ago, op-eds were written for newspapers and other periodicals on an irregular basis. Now, however, the op-ed style is common on corporate blogs, where business leaders can regularly share their opinions and experiences.

Creating Effective Emails

-primary form of written business communication. -business professionals spend between 20 and 50 percent of their time reading and writing email

Idea Development for Public Relations Messages

-primary goal of PR is to create distinctive brand value for a company, any individual message should be considered a piece in this larger effort. So, the first step is to clarify your company's brand and, through discussion, gain a shared sense of the brand message. Without this agreement among colleagues, a company may produce nonunified, perhaps even confusing, messages. -PR messages center on drawing positive attention to products and services, especially those that are newly launched, recently improved, or recently awarded or otherwise recognized. Developing your ideas for PR messages involves understanding these products and services completely and accurately. Furthermore, it involves identifying which products and services the company intends to highlight. Thus, it requires discussions of the company's strategy for promoting various products and services. Once you have done all this, you are ready to act much like a news reporter. You gather accurate and reliable information that tells a compelling story of what the company has done.

Write Posts for Your Organization

-primary goal of blogs for organizations is effective public relations (PR). Traditionally, PR was viewed as media relations, and the primary vehicles for PR messages were press releases. Over the past several decades, during the Information Age, the scope of PR broadened and it became a key component of the marketing mix. PR has been defined as "the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the various publics on whom its success depends."10 In other words, PR is fundamentally about BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS with employees, customers, communities, the media, and other stakeholders. -primary goal of building these relationships is to improve corporate reputation or credibility. Elliot Schreiber, one of the foremost authorities on public relations, defined CORPORATE REPUTATION on the Institute for Public Relations website: From the perspective of the organization, reputation is an intangible asset that allows the company to better manage the expectations and needs of its various stakeholders, creating differentiation and barriers vis-à-vis its competitors. From the perspective of stakeholders, reputation is the intellectual, emotional and behavioral response as to whether or not the communications and actions of an organization resonate with their needs and interests -Definition reveals several key aspects of reputation. First, it is an asset; it has value. Studies suggest that reputation directly contributes to between 3 and 7.5 percent of annual revenues. For some companies, reputation can increase revenue even more. Second, having a positive reputation is not enough. A company's reputation must differentiate it from its competitors. Third, a primary goal of public relations is managing the expectations of stakeholders. And most important, through public relations, a company develops a reputation that delivers value to stakeholders based on their own needs and interests.

Developing Routine Messages

-primary goals is efficiency: You need to produce credible messages quickly. Excellent business communicators can develop routine written messages—even those that require several paragraphs—in a matter of minutes. The examples in this chapter should generally take 5 to 15 minutes to complete. -developing ROUTINE MESSAGES quickly does not mean abandoning the writing process of planning, drafting, and reviewing

Be Specific

-readers expect you to be precise and avoid vagueness in nearly all business situations. - The more specific you are, the more likely your readers are to have their questions answered. -If you are not specific, your readers may become impatient and begin scanning and skimming for the information they want. If they can't find that information, they are unlikely to respond to your message as you intend. -Being specific also affects the judgments your readers make about your credibility. Specific statements lead your readers to believe that you know what you're talking about (competence), that you are not hiding anything (character), and that you want your readers to be informed (caring). Being vague, on the other hand, detracts from your credibility.

Sending the Right Meta Messages

-related notion to tone is that of meta messages. Whereas tone relates to the overall attitudes or feelings that writers convey toward a message and its recipients, meta messages are the overall but often underlying messages people take away from a communication or group of communications. -Meta messages: are encoded and decoded as a combination of content, tone, and other signals.

Considering Reader Values and Priorities

-requires that you learn about other people—what they value, prioritize, and prefer. -Values refer to enduring beliefs and ideals that individuals hold. Because values are at the core of belief systems, appeals to an individual's values can have strong influence. Generally, people hold workplace values—beliefs and ideals about the appropriate way to approach business problems, resolve issues, and choose goals. - Priorities involve ranking or assigning importance to things, such as projects, goals, and tasks. Priorities tend to shift more often than values.

Make Sure Your Tone Is Positive, Supportive, and Appropriately Fun

-reserve most messaging for straightforward, positive messages. IM can be a particularly effective way to send quick notes of support, congratulations, and appreciation to close colleagues -Messaging is also a chance to use a light and fun tone when you're sure that's a style that message recipients will appreciate. -One risk of IM is that with a focus on conciseness, IM messages may come across as commanding, abrupt, or unfeeling.

Use Shared Files to Collaborate

-teams rely on shared files on a central platform to co-edit and coordinate their work. -past few decades, the most common approach to sharing files was sending files back and forth via email. This approach has several limitations, including the challenges of maintaining version control, co-editing at the same time, and relying on a single location for all important files. -Most enterprise social networking platforms have shared files platforms that operate much like Google Docs. As you share files with team members and other colleagues to collaborate, consider the following tips: 1.Discuss with your team members and colleagues what the protocol should be for sharing and co-editing files. 2.Organize your files by project. 3.Manage permissions 4.Add comments constructively and carefully read your colleagues' comments.

Avoid Sarcasm and Jokes in Most Cases

-trying to use sarcasm and jokes in the workplace is often misunderstood or misinterpreted. -Even colleagues who know one another well often misinterpret attempts at humor and sarcasm in instant messages.

Cyber incivility

-violation of respect and consideration in an online environment based on workplace norms - Research has shown that "fast-paced, high-tech interactions may add to incivility, as people believe that they do not have time to be 'nice' and that impersonal contacts [such as electronic communications] do not require courteous interaction." -recent research shows that 91 percent of employees reported experiencing either active or passive cyber incivility from supervisors in the workplace. ACTIVE INCIVILITY involves direct forms of disrespect (i.e., being condescending, demeaning, saying something hurtful). PASSIVE INCIVILITY involves indirect forms of disrespect (i.e., using emails for time-sensitive messages, not acknowledging receipt of emails, not replying to emails). CYBER INCIVILITY has been shown to lead to lower job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Active incivility was the most damaging.

Improving Ease of Reading with Navigational Design

1. Headings 2. Highlighting 3. Lists 4. White Space 5. Simplicity

Components of Congratulation and Celebration Messages

1.Display happiness, joy, and other positive sentiments. 2.Validate their accomplishment or milestone. 3.Express confidence in their future.

Components of Expectations

1.Explain overall expectation. 2.Describe responsibilities. 3.Provide deadlines. 4.Discuss coordination. 5.State goodwill.

Components of Sympathy Messages

1.Express sympathy. 2.Offer support. 3.State goodwill.

PARTICIPATING IN AND LEADING GROUP VOICE AND VIDEO CALLS

1.Practice Using the Technology before the Group Call 2.Use Your Webcam Effectively 3.Use Interactive Tools Wisely 4.Start the Call with Purpose and Take Charge 5.Follow the Guidelines of Effective Virtual Meetings

Components of Inquiry Responses

1.Provide responses. 2.State goodwill.

Components of Directions

1.State goal. 2.Give step-by-step directions. 3.State goodwill.

Components of Routine Messages

1.State the primary message (ten words or fewer). 2.Provide details in paragraphs of 20 to 80 words. 3.Restate the request or key message in more specific terms. 4.State goodwill.

use a variety of strategies to make forums effective ways for your teams to produce better work. Consider the following strategies:

1.State the purpose of the forum clearly. 2.Use flexible, open, and inviting language. 3.Build on the ideas of others and pose questions. 4.Show appreciation for your teammates and their ideas. 5.Participate often. 6.Meet in real time for touchy points 7.Summarize and, as appropriate, identify next steps. 8.Talk with your team about ways to make forums help your decision making and coordination. 9.

example of AIM process

Amelia is a consultant who spends roughly three days per week traveling to meet clients. Most of these meetings could be held online, allowing her to stay home while providing even better service to her clients. Amelia decides to encourage her clients to shift toward more online meetings. PLAN-Amelia takes several weeks to plan. She carefully evaluates her clients (her audience) and the reasons they prefer on-site visits. She gathers information to show how she could provide even better service by avoiding so much travel. Finally, she fine tunes an overarching message: meeting online in place of site visits will. WRITE-Once Amelia has planned her message, she is ready to draft it. This is an important message, so she takes her time ensuring that the tone, style, and design are excellent. Amelia wants to make sure she writes objectively, so she creates her message over the course of several sessions. She makes sure to write when she feels unstressed so that she doesn't unintentionally REVIEW-After Amelia is satisfied with her message, she gets feedback from several trusted colleagues. In this case, she wants two consultants that she trusts to offer their views on the message. She also approaches three former clients and asks for their opinions from a client's perspective. In addition to adjusting her message based on their feedback, she ensures her message is fair and proofreads it

Creating Announcements

Announcements are updates to policies and procedures, notices of events, and other correspondences that apply to a group of employees and/or customers. Announcements are one form of one-to-many communications. announcements are generally broadcast to a large number of receivers (often as emails or corporate intranet posts), many employees and customers gloss over them. To prevent employees and customers from ignoring announcements, the subject line must be specific and must create interest. Furthermore, announcements, especially for events, should be designed to let readers gather all relevant information in 10 to 15 seconds. Thus, formatting is especially important.

Clarifying Objectives

As you develop the ideas for your message, also clearly identify your goals. "Now that I understand the problem, what exactly do I want to accomplish?" Knowing how committed you are to various work outcomes will help you decide how hard to push certain positions. It will also help you balance your preferred work outcomes with your work relationships.

Principles for Professional Social Media Use

Be an active contributor. Read, listen, and learn. Focus on content. Make your content accessible. Make your messages authentic and friendly. Be responsive and help others. Respect boundaries. Participate in communities.

Open with a Warm Greeting and Use Your Caller's Name

Calling others by name personalizes and elevates your communications with them.

Making Claims

Claims are requests for other companies to compensate for or correct the wrongs of mistakes they have made. As with other requests, you should immediately state what the CLAIM is and what you expect the company to do for you. You also will provide a RATIONALE for your claim in the body of the message and close with a call to action—a specific request. As you write claims, keep in mind that your goal is to have your claim honored. Focus on facts first and emotions second, if at all. Lay out a logical, reasonable, and professional explanation for your claim. Emotional claims are far more likely to be rejected. Also, remember that you will often work with the same people again and again. So, be polite and focus on the long-term working relationship.

Clearly End the IM Exchange

IM exchanges become awkward as they drag on. Send signals that the exchange is complete ("Thanks for the update. Talk to you tomorrow.").

Use IM for Simple and Brief Conversations, Not for Important Decisions

IMs are best used for short, uncomplicated messages and conversations. If there's any level of complexity or ambiguity, you're better off speaking to others directly or sending an email where you have more space for detailed information. Generally, if the exchange requires more than three or four instant messages, you should probably use an email or make a call.

Showing Appreciation

Employees at all levels of an organization desire to feel appreciated. Sadly, polls show that employees express thanks to one another less now than ever since polling on this issue began. Just 10 percent of employees say supervisors thank them daily. More than half (55 percent) of employees say they are thanked never, seldom, or only occasionally. Appreciation messages vary significantly in terms of formality. Thank-you notes for customers and clients or for special occasions demand more formality. Thank-you messages for colleagues and others you see each day should be less formal and should not feel over the top. In any case, several components are standard for appreciation messages. They should begin with an expression of thanks, provide a quick rationale for the thanks, and end with a statement of goodwill. Appreciation messages should be genuine, simple, warm, and personal. To show your sincerity, focus exclusively on the recipient. Appreciation messages should not appear self-serving in any way; state any reference to yourself carefully to avoid drawing attention away from those you are thanking.

Apply the Rules of Active Listening and Avoid Multitasking

Enter a phone call eager to learn about the ideas of your conversation partner and ready to express your views as well. Amazingly, roughly six in ten professionals admit to multitasking during phone calls. Make sure the call is your entire focus. Also, make sure you don't sound rushed—this often sends a signal that you're more interested in other people or matters.

Practice Using the Technology before the Group Call

Even if you often participate in or even lead these calls, you may not be up to date with various platforms or new tools. If you're leading the call, send out information about the technology to participants so they can be prepared. When the first five to ten minutes of group calls are consumed by participants trying to figure out the technology, the meetings rarely turn out productive or engaging.

Conduct a FAIR Test

FAIR test as a way of ensuring ethical business communication. Of course, you will consider such issues during the planning and writing stages. During the review process you can also take the time to think about the degree to which your entire message conforms to standards for facts, access, impacts, and respect. For important messages—particularly those that involve complicated business issues—apply the FAIR test: Facts: Are you confident in your facts? Are your assumptions clear? Have you avoided slanting the facts or made other logical errors? Access: Have you granted enough access to message recipients about decision making and information? Have you granted enough access to the message recipients to provide input? Are you open about your motives, or do you have a hidden agenda? Impacts: Have you thought about how the message will impact various stakeholders? Have you evaluated impacts on others from ethical, corporate, and legal perspectives? Respect: Have you demonstrated respect for the inherent worth of others: their aspirations, thoughts, feelings, and well-being? Have you shown that you value others?

Components of Press-Release Style Blog Posts

Headline Dateline PR story Boilerplate Contact information Call to action

Use Headings

In information-rich and complex messages, headings can help your readers identify key ideas and navigate the document to areas of interest. As you create headings and subheadings, be consistent in font style and formatting throughout your document. One way to be consistent with your headings is to apply formatting features available in most word processing programs. For example, in Microsoft Word, you can assign heading levels for major heads and subheads

Control Paragraph Length

Long paragraphs can signal disorganization and even disrespect for the reader's time Typically, paragraphs should contain 40 to 80 words. For routine messages, paragraphs as short as 20 to 30 words are common and appropriate

Components of Requests

Make request. Provide rationale. Call to action.* State goodwill.

take several steps to constructively address uncivil emails: reinterpretation, relaxation, and defusing.

REINTERPRETATION involves adjusting your initial perceptions by making more objective, more fact-based, and less personal judgments and evaluations. When people are distressed, they often make extreme, subjective, and overly personal judgments. By reinterpreting the event, you allow yourself to take the communication less personally. This is easier said than done. Many people engage in relaxation techniques to help constructively reinterpret the event. RELAXATION involves releasing and overcoming anger and frustration so that you can make a more rational and less emotional response. People use a variety of methods to alleviate the physiological impact of anger, including counting to ten, taking time-outs, engaging in deep breathing, and looking for the humor in the situation. DEFUSING involves avoiding escalation and removing tension to focus on work objectives. You can take several steps to defuse the situation when you receive an uncivil email. First, focus on task-related facts and issues in your reply. Second, focus on shared objectives and agreements. Third, express interest in arranging a time to meet in person. If this is not possible, attempt a richer channel of communication such as a phone call or an online video meeting. Defusing the situation with an immediate email is only part of the process in restoring or perhaps even strengthening a working relationship. A follow-up meeting is nearly always essential to renew cooperation on shared work efforts.

Use White Space Generously

Readers will form an immediate impression about your document; too much text-> looks daunting and cluttered; too much white space -> looks insufficient

Making Requests

Requests are the essence of people coordinating work efforts, buying and selling products and services, and maintaining work relationships. Routine requests involve cases where you expect little or no resistance from message recipients. Like all routine messages, routine requests should contain clear and specific subject lines, often stating the entire REQUEST. As you reread the message before sending it, one question you'll ask yourself is whether the message recipient will understand exactly what to do. For most requests, you will use a portion of the message to provide the RATIONALE for the request. Since you expect a favorable response, you typically do not need to be particularly persuasive. However, justifying the request shows your professionalism and attention to detail. It also helps a company maintain transparency by keeping written records of why certain decisions were made. One primary goal for routine requests is to retain GOODWILL with the recipient. No one wants to feel bossed around, so make sure you achieve a positive, other-oriented tone. Also, when working with superiors, be careful about setting deadlines. Even in today's flatter organizations, being bossy to the boss can be counterproductive. Finally, when making requests, showing respect for the recipient's time goes a long way in maintaining goodwill.

distinctions between spoken and written business messages mirror the relative benefits and weaknesses of SYNCHRONOUS and ASYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATION

SYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATION occurs in real time; the individuals involved give immediate responses to one another and engage in turn-taking. ASYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATION does not occur in real time. -Individuals involved in such communication can pay attention to and respond to communications at a time of their choosing. -ambiguity and sensitivity in your communications increase, you will generally seek richer forms of communication, such as face-to-face conversations, meetings, phone calls, and online conferences. -less ambiguous, highly detailed, and highly analytical messages, you will likely turn to higher-control channels. Thus, communicating with letters, emails, blogs, podcasts, and other asynchronous communication channels may be particularly helpful. written communication is considered more formal.

Give Credit to Others

Show your genuine appreciation and sincere recognition for the efforts of others, and it will pay off in many ways, including through improved camaraderie and willingness of others to give you ample and deserved credit in other situations. In short, make sure not to take credit for the work of others.

setting expectations is often a routine matter, failure to do it can lead to lasting professional disappointments and breakdowns in working relationships.

Three components are central in setting expectations for those you manage: describing responsibilities, providing deadlines, and discussing coordination. Describing RESPONSIBILITIES means designating tasks and work outcomes to certain employees, providing DEADLINES means setting out the timeline by which the work should be accomplished satisfactorily, and discussing COORDINATION involves providing guidelines for how employees should communicate and cooperate with one another. From time to time, you should also describe your own role and responsibilities to supervisees. When you do so, they see they are accountable to you and you are also accountable to them. This means you may need to occasionally own up to your own mistakes and accept responsibility when everything has not gone as expected. same principles apply as you use this software: describing responsibilities, providing deadlines, and discussing coordination. Even in workplaces with this software, not all your colleagues will consistently use it. Be prepared to use other channels (e.g., in-person conversations, emails) to politely reinforce your expectations.

Identifying the Business Problem(s)

To remain competitive and profitable, businesses constantly need to identify and overcome problems. One of the best reputations you can gain as a business professional is that of a problem solver. The first step in problem solving is identifying business problems. This involves understanding an organization's business objectives and related challenges. It involves asking many questions from a lot of angles.

Major Components of Social Networking Platforms

User profiles Status updates/microblogs Blogs Co-authoring tools and wikis Group messaging/chat boxes Private messaging Discussion forums RSS feeds Social bookmarking Rating and tagging Video sharing Podcasts Mashups

Keeping secondary audiences in mind

You should anticipate that individuals other than your primary recipient will view your messages.

Guidelines for Using Social Media in the Workplace

communication tools fall under the social media platform - Be an active contributor and join communities - Read, listen, and learn - Focus on content - Make your content accessible - Make your messages authentic and friendly - Be responsive and help others - Respect boundaries and avoid oversharing

Managing Your Online Reputation

developing a PERSONAL BRABD in a professional sense—a unique set of professional skills and attributes that others associate with you. we introduce the idea of building your personal brand and using it as an asset in your career progression. Increasingly, you will express your personal brand through social media tools. One major goal, then, for your online activities is to build a reputation that showcases your credibility and personal brand. potential and current employers, colleagues, and clients will judge your credibility based on online information about you. working in networks is an increasingly important skill and integral to success in the emerging Social Age. As part of large professional networks, seek a reputation as a giver, not a taker. Similarly, always honor your commitments. In networked communication, word gets around quickly about which members are considered givers, which honor commitments, and which do not.

Consider Turning Off Sound Alerts for Incoming Messages/Emails

distracting when you work in shared workspaces. It's also a matter of productivity

Ensure Quality Audio

important calls, you should test your audio quality before the call. Although mobile phones provide reliable audio quality in most locations, they're still less predictable than landline connections. You might consider using landline calls whenever possible to enhance audio quality.

Avoid Buzzwords and Figures of Speech

keep your writing natural and engaging, make sure you don't distract your readers with overused or out-of-place words or phrases. Buzzwords, which are workplace terms that become trite because of overuse, can stir negative feelings among some readers. (Dozens of such lists exist because business professionals become so agitated by these overused words.) Figures of speech, such as idioms and metaphors, which contain nonliteral meanings, are generally out of place or inappropriate in business writing. Because they are nonliteral, they lack the precise meanings needed in business. Also, some idioms and metaphors have become so clichéd that they have lost almost all meaning

Follow the Guidelines of Effective Virtual Meetings

tried-and-true practices of using an agenda, getting each participant involved, and following up with minutes and action items are essential.

Use Interactive Tools Wisely

videoconference platforms have many options to make meetings interactive, including screen sharing, polling, online chat, and other features. These tools are excellent when used with purpose. Be careful, however, not to use the tools simply for the sake of being interactive.

Avoid Personal IM during Work Hours

workplaces have some policies about avoiding personal communications (including IM), although these policies are generally loosely enforced. You'll notice that exercising discipline and avoiding personal digital messages will help you gain the respect of your colleagues and establish your professionalism.

Use Parallel Language

you apply a consistent grammatical pattern across a sentence or paragraph. Parallelism is most important when you use series or lists. example, when you describe a product with three characteristics, use the same grammatical pattern for each—that is, for example, choose adjectives or nouns or verbs for all of them. When you use consistent grammatical patterns for items in lists and series, readers can process the information far more naturally and quickly

Take Notes on Important Points and Summarize Next Steps at the End of the Call

you're speaking, take some notes so you can recall the most important points of agreement. At the end of the call, take a few minutes to wrap up and summarize next steps.

Audience: Gaining Credibility

•Be trustworthy. •Be competent. •Be consistent. •Be genuine. •Be sincere. •Be respectful. •Be accountable. •Be loyal. •Be honest •Be principled/Be ethical.