During a typical day a manager is likely to encourage team members, tell them about a change in their future work or conditions, take part in a formal meeting, have an informal conversation at the water cooler or coffee machine, study a strategy planned by senior management, send e-mails to customers or suppliers, and search the Web
All of those actions come under the general heading of communication. It’s an essential element in every manager’s work
Because it’s so important, it is essential for managers to communicate effectively and efficiently. Think about it for a moment: when you send an e-mail does everyone understand it immediately, or do some people get back to you with queries? When you are attending a meeting, do you try hard to understand exactly what a speaker is saying or are you really focusing on the point you are trying to make
This module begins by looking at communication in general, at the process of transmitting information from a sender to a receiver. We will look at the idea of ‘noise’: the factors that may reduce the effectiveness and accuracy of the transmission. We will also look at how good and bad communication can affect the public image of your organisation, with some recent examples of disastrous communication such as that of BP during the oil spill in theGulf of Mexico
The second section of the module then focuses on the use of technology in communication. How does information and communications technology affect people’s work and the ways in which they carry out their work? How can modern organisations fully benefit from information and communications technology? What are the risks associated with using these technologies, and what must companies do when they use the technologies to collect, store, process and use data about people
The third section looks specifically at the work that managers do. It begins by looking at the various roles that a manager may fill, and how they might select the most appropriate communication method for each of the roles. We then look in some detail at two particular types of communication that managers may need to use: presentations, and writing bids and proposals. To carry out those tasks well, managers need to think carefully about the particular approaches to communication
We can define culture as ‘The way that we do things around here’. This suggests that culture affects how people in the organisation communicate both with each other and with people in the outside world. As just one example, think of a meeting where a team from a film company meets a team from a bank or insurance company. They would be very likely to work and communicate in very different ways
You’ll also see that communication between people of different nationalities and cultures is often complicated simply because people from each country have different expectations, attitudes and ways of behaving. Think of the greeting that you might give someone from another country. It might be a bow, a hug or a handshake: getting it wrong is likely to lead to confusion