Chapter 12 Communication in Organizations

- Features of Organizational Communication

• Structure: Organisation = structure
• Communication Networks: formal and informal links between members of organizations, telecommuting raises the productivity and morale of employees
• Links to external environments: When external conditions are bad, even good companies can be hurt or driven out of business.

- Organizational Cultures

• Vocabulary: 1.Hierarchical Language 2.Masculine Language (many organizations have developed and continue to use language more related to men's traditional interests and experiences.)
• Stories: 1. Corporate Stories(convey the values, style, and history of an organization to socialize new members into culture of an organization, and it can foster feelings of connection) 2. Personal Stories 3. Collegial Stories (forewarn us what to expect from whom)
• Rites and Rituals: Rites - 1. Blaming rites(firings, demotions, reprimands) 2. Renewal Rites (revitalise and update organisations) 3. Conflict Resolutions Rites (standard methods of dealing with differences and discord) / Rituals - 1.Personal Rituals (routine behaviours) 2. Social Rituals (standardized performance that affirm relationships between members of organizations , Eg: afternoon breaks, email chatting, forwarding jokes) 3. Task Rituals - repeated activities that help members perform their jobs)
• Structures: 1. Roles (responsibilities & behaviors expected of people because of their specific of positions, role is not tied to any particular person ) 2. Rules (patterned ways of interacting, regulative rules specify when, where, and with whom communication should occur) 3. Policies (formal statement of practices) 4. Communication networks (communication of informal channels : grapevine)

- Guidelines

• Adapt to Diverse Needs, Situations, and People - adapt effectively to meet the expectations and needs of different workers, flexible rules and policies, openness to change and willingness to experiment are challenges for effective participation in organizations.
• Expect to move in and out of teams
• Manage personal relationships on job - friendship often enhance job commitment and satisfaction. But friends and romantic partners need to adjust their expectations and styles of interacting so that personal and work roles do not conflict. Make sure it doesnt reflect favoritism and privileges that could cause resentmnet in co-workers.

Chapter 11 Communication in Groups and Teams

1. Three kinds of communication: climate communication, procedural communication, task communication

2. Group & team : involve interaction, interdependence, shared rules, common goals.

• Team has stronger sense of team identity.
• Shared goals characterize groups

3. Six kinds of task groups

• Project Teams : expertise in different facets of a project, combine their knowledge and skills to accomplish a common goals
• Focus Groups : express ideas, beliefs, feelings, and perceptions relevant to the topic
• Brainstorming Groups: come up with as many ideas as possible, encourage imaginative, even wild, thinking.
• Advisory Groups : provide expert briefing to an individual group
• Quality improvement teams : focus on complaining problems - identifying needs or problems, ways in which organizational functioning could be improved, and areas of stress or discontent for employees - generate impressive solution - make report regularly
• Decision Making Groups

4. Potential Limitations of Groups

• Time needed for the group process
• The potential of conformity pressures to interfere with high quality decision making - *Confirmity pressures - members should be on guard against the potential to conform uncritically

5. Potential Strengths of Groups

• exceeds any individual in the ideas, perspectives, experiences, expertise it
• enhance effectiveness
• Synergy : special kind of collaborative vitality that enhances the efforts , talents, strength
• more thorough
• more creative
• generate commitment to outcomes

6. Features of small groups

• Cohesion - emphasize the group or team and the goals the members share to promote cohesion, but extreme cohesion sometimes leads to groupthink
• Groupsize - as size increases, the contributions of each members will decrease
• Power structure - 1. Power Over(the ability to help or harm others) 2.Power To ( empower others to reach their goals, fosters win- win group climates) 3. distributed power structure (all members have equal power) 4. Hierarchical power structure '(one or more members have greater power) 5. Social climbing(attempt to increase personal status by winning the approval of high status members)
• Interaction Patterns : 1. centralised patterns 2. decentralized patterns
• Group Norms: guidelines that regulates how member acts

7. Guidelines

- Participate constructively

• Task communication : focus on problems
• Procedural Communication - helps a group organized and stay on track
• Climate Communication - encourage to contribute freely and evaluate ideas critically
• Egocentric Communication - used to block others or to call attention to oneself

- Provide leadership

• Organize discussion, ensure sound research, reasoning, promote norms for mindful listening, create productive climate, build group morale, discourage egocentric communication

- Manage conflict constructively

• Disruptive Conflict : competitive as members vie with each others to wield influence and get their ways (win-lose orientation)
• Constructive Conflict : members understand that disagreements are natural and can help them to achieve their shared goals (win-win orientation)

Chapter 10 Communication in personal relationship

~ Personal relationship - voluntary commitment

Features of Personal relationship

1. Uniqueness

2. Commitment:

• A decision to remain with a relationship (assume a shared future). It will grow out investment, we invest time, energy, thought , feelings in the interaction.

3. Relationship rules

• unspoken understandings between partners. (constitutive rules & regulative rules)

4. Affected by contexts

• establish norms, affect activities and expectations.

5. Relationship Dialectics

• Autonomy/connection : each of us needs an independent identity
• Novelty/predictability : too much routine is boring
• Openness/closedness : desire for privacy
• To deal with dialectics: (1) neutralization (negotiates a balance) (2) separation (3) Segmentation (4) Reframing

Six-stage model of Friendship

1. Role-limited interactions : meet a new person
2. Friendly relations : have sufficient common ground and interests
3. Moving toward friendship : to personalise a relationship
4. Nascent Friendship : increased involvement and caring
5. Stabilised friendship : assumption of continuity
6. Waning friendship : cease to be commited to their relationship

Six Stage Romantic Relationship

1. No interaction
2. Invitational communication : express interest in interacting ***Matching hypothesis(people will seek relationships with others whose values, attitudes, and lifestyles are similar)
3. Explorational communication : explore possibilities for a relationship - self disclosure
4. Intensifying communication : increasing amount and intimacy of interaction, Eg: private language
5. Revising Communication: talks about problem, strengths, potential for the future
6. Intimate bonding: to decide together permanently

Stages of relationship deterioration

1. Intrapsychic provesses : brood about problems
2. Dyadic processes : involve conflict, but majority choose to avoid the problems but communicate with the partner
3. Social support processes : signal an increase in the likelihood of breaking up ( tends to tell others about problems in the relationship)
4. Grave dressing processes : decide to part ways
5. Resurrection processes : ex-partner's moving ahead to a future without the other

Guidelines

1. Adapt Communication to manage distance
2. Ensure equity in family relationship - must balance the demands and pressures
3. Avoid intimate partner violence
4. Insist on Safer Sex

Chapter 9 Communication and Self-concept

Self- fulfilling prophecies : expectations or judgments of ourselves that we bring about through our own actions

• Particular Others : the 1st perspectives that affect us are those of particular other.
• The Generalized other : 2nd perspective ( made up of the views of society and social communities to which we belong)
• Reflected apraisal : the process of seeing ourselves through the eyes of others

Communication with Family members

1. Direct Definition : parents / family members define us by the symbols they use to describe us.
2. Identity Scripts : shape our self concepts by communicating (rules for living and identity)
3. Attachment Styles :Patterns of parenting tht teach us how to view ourselves and personal relationships

• Secure Attachment Style (in loving ways ) [view of self : positive, others: positive]
• Fearful attachment style (negative, rejecting, abusive) [view of self : -ive, others: -ive]
• Dismmisive Attachment Style [view of self : positive, others: negative]
• Anxious/ambivalent attachment Style [view of self : negative, others: positive]

Communication with Peers

1. Reflected Appraisals
2. Social Comparison (our rating of ourselves relative to the others)
3. Self - Disclosure (open area, blind area, hidden area, unknown area)

Communication with Society

1. Race
2. Gender
3. Sexual Orientation
4. Socioeconomic Level

Guidelines

1. Reflect Critically on Social Perspectives
2. Commit to Personal Growth

• Set Realistic Goals
• Assess yourself fairly
• Self disclosure appropriately

3. Create a supportive context for the change you seek

Chapter 8 Adapting Communication to Cultures and Social Communities

- Culture shapes our communication directly

- Individualistic Cultures (which uses low-context communication, do not assume others share their meanings and value) - regard a person as distinct from other person, groups, and organizations

- Collectivist Cultures ( high context communication) - regard people as deeply connected to one another and to their families, groups, and communities

- Multiple Social Communities May coexist in a single culture

Chapter 7 Creating Communication Climates

- LEVELS OF CONFIRMATION AND DISCOMFIRMATION

3 levels of confirmation that affects climates: recognition, acknowledgement, endorsement..

RECOGNITION - the most basic form of interpersonal confirmation by verbal/nonverbal behavior

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT - attentiveness to what a person feels, thinks or says

ENDORSEMENT - accepting a person's feelings or thoughts

- DEFENSIVE AND SUPPORTIVE CLIMATES

1. Evaluation --> Description
2. Certainty --> Provisionalism (willingness to consider alternative positions)
3. Strategy --> Spontaneity (honest, open)
4. Control --> Problem Orientation (Reduce Conflicts)
5. Neutrality --> Empathy
6. Superiority (feel on guard with people) --> Equality

- CONFLICT can be Overt (express differences in a straight-forward manner) / Covert (express indirectly)

- FOUR KEY COMPONENTS OF THE CONFLICT PROCESS

1. Conflict of interest - different goals, interest, views
2. Conflict of orientation - win-win, win-lose, lose-lose
3. Conflict of Response - Exit(I dont want to talk about it) , Neglect (denies a serious issue exists), Loyalty, Voice
4. Conflict Outcomes

- GUIDELINES

1. Communicate in ways that confirm others
2. Confirm Yourself
3. Respect diversity among people
4. Time Conflict effectively
5. Show grace when appropriate

Chapter 6 Listening and responding to others

- HOW DO LISTENING AND HEARING DIFFER?

• Hearing - physiological activity that occurs when sound waves hit functioning eardrums. It is not the only way that we receive messages. In addition to hearing, listening includes being mindful, selecting and organizing information, interpret communication, responding, receiving messages, remembering.

- WHAT DOES LISTENING PROCESS INCLUDE?

1. Being mindful - an ethical commitment to attend fully to others. We cannot be good listener without being mindful.
2. Physical receiving messages
3. Selecting and organizing communication - Don't perceive everything around us. Listeners actively define the listening situation and construct its meanings.
4. Interpreting communication - *Regard for the other person *Willing to pen ourselves to that person way of looking at the world * We always impose our meanings on others or crowd out their words with ours.
5. Responding - Expressing interest, asking questions, voicing the idea. The only way to let others know we are listening is "feedback".
6. Remembering - Selectively focusing attention.

- OBSTACLES TO EFFECTIVE LISTENING

1. Situational obstacles - * messages overload ( we needs to choose about which gets our attention) *message complexity *environment distractions
2. Internal obstacles - *preoccupation * prejudgment ( we assume we know what others feel) *Lack of effort (tired, sick) *Failure to recognize different style

- FORMS OF INEFFECTIVE LISTENING

1. Pseudolistening - pretend listening
2. Monopolizing - shift the topic to himself / herself & interrupting
3. Selective listening
4. Defensive listening - perceiving a personal attact
5. Ambushing - to attack the speaker
6. Literal listening - listen only the content level but ignore the relationship level

- GUIDELINES FOR EFFECTIVE LISTENING

*Develop skills for informational and Critical listening

• Be mindful
• Control obstacles
• Asking Questions
• Use aids to recall
• Organize the information

*Develop skills for relationship listening

• Be mindful
• Suspend judgement ( Don's add our evaluation on others experience)
• Strive to understand the other's perspective (minimal encouragers, paraphrasing, asking questions, express support)

*Develop skills for other listening goals

• listening for pleasure
• listening for discriminate

Chapter 5 Nonverbal Communication

Many of us know that actions speak louder than words. So the nonverbal communication is extremely important. Facial expression can express love, anxious, uncertainty, bored etc. Body postures can express the power, anger, relaxation etc. Physical objects can express the professional level, personal commitment, lifestyle etc.

Different country culture, races, sex have different non verbal interaction, it can be explained in different ways.

- WHAT IS NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION?

Non verbal communication is a major dimension in human life. It includes all aspects other than words. From the research, nonverbal communication accounts for 65% to 93% of the full meaning of the communication. So this means that nonverbal behaviors has more of our overall communication than the verbal one.

- 5 THEMES OF NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION

1. Ambiguous - Meanings change over time, we cannot make sure that others understand the meaning that we intend to express or we cannot sure that they read different meanings from the words that we convey.
2. Interacts with verbal communication - *repeat with verbal communication *highlight *complement *contradiction *substitute
3. Regulates interaction - usually we are unaware of how nonverbal behaviours regulates the interaction, but we rely on them to know when we are able to speak or when we are to be silent.
4. Established the relationship level meanings - *responsiveness *liking *power
5. Reflects cultural values

- TYPES OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

1. Kinesics ( facial and body postures) - eyes contact
2. Haptics (physical touch)
3. Physical appearance
4. Olfactics (smell)
5. Artifacts(personal items) - clothes
6. environmental factors - light, temperature, colour
7. chronemics (perception)
8. proxemics (personal space) - movable objects within a space, informal distance - territory
9. paralanguange - "urh hum"
10. silence

- GUIDELINES FOR IMPROVING NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

1. Monitor
2. interpret others' nonverbal communication tentatively - *personal qualifications(use more I-language) * contextual qualifications(dress etc)