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Management Communication
Management Communication: Introduction
No matter how strong one's financial model is,
But it is not just frequency that makes business communication skills so important.
The old model of business leaders and managers emphasized their power and authority: They told employees what, when, and how to do their jobs. This stereotype was probably never
entirely accurate; in any case, however, this style of management doesn't fit the needs of modern organizations.
Leaders still need to get things done, but they have to trust others to do the work. In a fast-paced, complex world, employees must know how to think and act on their own, not wait for the
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boss's orders. Now, according to Henry Mintzberg, a well-known business professor, “managing is about influencing action.”
Communication, written or oral, is the primary means for leaders and managers to influence action.
There are three keys to success in business. One of them is skill in communicating.
A 2004 study provided evidence that leaders in business organizations think they aren't prepared to communicate well. Eighty-six percent of the respondents rated communication skills as
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a critical leadership competency but only thirty-five percent rated their communication ability as a strength, a ten percent decline from a similar survey four years earlier.
By studying and practicing communication skills now, you will be better prepared to lead.
Tom Kahl describes how he used his MBA experience to improve how he communicated.
Given the critical functions of communication, it's not surprising that, for a number of years, employers responding to the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) survey
have named communication as their most sought-after skill in MBA hires.
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Similar surveys have had similar results for a long time. The graph called What Recruiters Want in MBAs shows results from a recent GMAC survey.
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Business leaders have a high regard for the ability to communicate. If you can't convey your thinking clearly and logically, it has little value.
Joe Thompson of Procter & Gamble explains why his company values clarity of communication.
A Culture of Clarity
And these days you have to know how to communicate in multiple media. Being a great presenter doesn't compensate for poor writing skills, nor does having great writing skills compensate
for being a poor presenter.
Having an MBA degree doesn't assure you a job if you can't communicate. Being able to speak and write
well can make the difference between getting a job you want and settling for a job that's offered.
Tom Kahl, CFO of a technical consulting company, speaks to the value of communication skills as a differentiator in the job market.
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This online management communication course teaches concepts and tools that can help you be a better business communicator. It covers three broad areas:
Planning Communication
The module called “Planning Communication" introduces you to concepts for understanding situations in which communication is needed. Knowing how to use these concepts will help
you create a successful message.
The end result of planning is an understanding of how to achieve your specific purpose through a particular audience. (Some textbooks refer to this result as a communication
Writing in Business
Some years ago, Robert Eccles, Nitin Nohria (now dean of Harvard Business School), and James Berkley said this:
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In a nutshell, managers live in . . . a universe where language is constantly used not only to communicate but also to persuade, and even to create.
The module called “Writing in Business” teaches concepts for creating written messages, with emphasis on persuasion. Topics range from the writing process to sentence style. The course has
many examples and exercises to aid you in grasping and applying the concepts. "Writing in Business" uses different forms of written messages, such as memos, emails, texts, and reports.
Presenting in Business
The module called “Presenting in Business” teaches basic skills for the spoken delivery of content prepared in advance. It covers organizing, preparing, and delivering a presentation. The
content emphasizes speaking persuasively and engaging the audience. "Presenting in Business" also has many examples and exercises.
Unless told otherwise, you can study the writing and presenting units in any order.
Practicing writing and presenting skills can pay off in a job offer you want.
Planning Communication
And as for purpose, don't settle for "I want my words to work." Visualize specifically what you want the words to do. Make the readers see something? Make them feel certain emotions?
Perform certain actions? Change their minds?
– Peter Elbow,
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Writing with Power
Introduction
Introduction
In the work world, everyone feels short of time. Managers fire off emails and texts, take calls one after another, see people in their offices, and rush off to meetings. Often daily communication does
not require a lot of thought. But sometimes it does, even though managers find it hard to resist plunging into a written or spoken communication. Taking the time to properly compose thoughts
before communicating helps send the message more effectively.
Business is about results. Planning your communication—by analyzing the situation and organizing your message—often delivers better results than operating on instinct.
In the short term, you memorize the models and learn how to apply them in the business situations they were designed for, such as industry analysis or marketing plan development. For this
type of learning, you can find the situations in cases, textbooks, simulations, and similar educational materials.
You may feel that the meticulous, step-by-step application of models isn't practical in the real world. However, learning how to apply models can embed them in your memory. It's no different
from learning a dance. You are shown the steps and practice until you don't have to think about them—you know what to do almost automatically.
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This course teaches concepts that, through practice, you can incorporate into your work as a real-world business communicator.
Tasha works for AppsGo, a medium-size company that develops software applications for mobile devices, including cellphones and tablets. It has a profitable niche in the industry and
distinguishes itself from many of its competitors with first-class customer service. Tasha is working on two issues requiring communication, one with call center representatives and one with her
boss, Dmitri.
Meet Tasha
Tasha works as an associate vice president at a medium-size company that specializes in mobile device software.
The company's information technology (IT) department will soon roll out a new version of the customer relationship management (CRM) software used in the call center. Many of the
changes are minor. On the other hand, a few new features will allow a smoother, easier workflow—something the representatives will welcome.
IT has given Tasha a ten-page report describing all the changes in minute detail. Normally the supervisor of the call center would handle the transition to a new version, but he has his hands
full and Tasha has volunteered to take care of it.
From past experience, Tasha knows the team does not like to read long documents, whatever the content. Requiring team members to read the report isn't likely to work because they'll
skim it and not take in much detail or not read it at all. In addition, before the last software upgrade, the IT communication contained some inaccuracies that led to confusion, wasted time,
and grumbling among the representatives. Tasha does not want her team members to be in a negative frame of mind before the rollout actually happens. They're already under a lot of
stress from overwork.
Tasha decides that, before the rollout, she'll give the representatives a short summary of the new features most relevant to their jobs. The brevity and attention to changes that are
meaningful to the representatives should make them more willing to read the document.
Persuading Dmitri
Persuading Dmitri
Like most managers, Tasha juggles multiple projects. One that concerns her is a proposal she's been working on with the call center supervisor. The proposal recommends hiring two new
customer representatives fluent in English and Spanish. The company launched Spanish-language versions of its apps nearly two years ago and ramped up the marketing of them a year ago.
The number of call center customers who prefer Spanish or speak only Spanish has been increasing. Ricardo, the only Spanish-speaking representative, has been swamped with callers
and has become resentful about his workload. Overall the center is receiving more customer contacts from multiple channels (phone, fax, email, live chat) than ever before. As the
pressure on employees has mounted, experienced representatives have been quitting or retiring in alarming numbers.
A hiring request will be a tough sell. Business is still recovering from a down economy and Tasha's boss, Dmitri, vice president of marketing, sales, and customer service, runs his
departments as leanly as possible. The CEO wants department budgets to be at or below industry benchmarks. However, Tasha worries that the call center will soon be unable to fulfill
the company's heavily marketed claims of great customer service.
This diagram tells you two basic facts about communication. First, senders need to know the precise purpose or intention of their message. Second, because senders need the audience to
accomplish the purpose, they must have information about their audience in order to fulfill the purpose of the message.
An effective communicator is a good learner. The knowledge gained from thinking about the purpose and audience can enhance the message, giving it a greater chance of succeeding. Effective
communicators know that they can always learn more about the audience, even if they work with audience members every day. The next section shows how you can learn what you need to know
when creating an important message.
A few simple questions will organize your thinking about a situation and result in a useful understanding of it:
These three questions will be explained further and will also be applied to examples.
Why do you need to communicate in a particular situation? You ask yourself the question “Why?” to identify your purpose—the outcome you want to achieve through communication.
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On February 11, 2009, John J. Mack, chair and CEO of Morgan Stanley, appeared before a committee of the U.S. Congress. He had a communication need: He needed to tell his bank's side
of the story after it accepted a large amount of taxpayer money from the Troubled Assets Recovery Program (TARP).
Mack's purpose was specific. His message was intended to show Congress and other audiences, such as the media and taxpayers, that the bank was using government money productively.
His purpose was to restore the reputation of the bank as a responsible and trustworthy organization after the financial crisis.
In business, managers frequently communicate for one of two reasons: to transfer information (to inform) or to motivate the audience members to change their opinion or to take an action (to
persuade).
Informative communication describes or explains some aspect of reality. Informative communication may include a description, for example, of an order entry process or an explanation of
how a chemical process creates an input for manufacturing a product. Informative communication can both describe and explain. For example, a manager might want to describe the
statistical methods the company uses for quality control by naming them and telling the audience what they can do. He might also explain how to use them, taking the audience step by
step through each method and showing what data are necessary, how to make calculations, and what the resulting values mean.
Persuasion is the use of language to motivate an audience to think, feel, or act in the way the communicator intends. See the table for examples.
Leadership by Influence
Management writer Jay Conger has called persuasion “the language of business leadership.” Persuasion is a catalyst for getting work done and for achieving outcomes that leaders can't
realize on their own.
Here's a video of an executive describing how she used persuasion with her worldwide sales team.
Leaders and managers use persuasion on a daily basis. Without persuasion, very little work would get done and organizations wouldn't exist because there would be no way to ensure
that people shared the same goals and worked cooperatively toward them. The alternatives to persuasion are authoritarianism or anarchy, both of which have severe drawbacks.
Persuasion usually doesn't succeed on the first try. Popular literature on persuasion promises to teach techniques to win “every time.” In business, issues are complicated and audiences
have diverse and often strongly held ideas. These conditions aren't usually conducive to quick or easy wins.
Business persuasion is usually a process—not an event—and requires multiple communications as well as other types of influence. In the process, the initial purpose can change as
audience members ask questions, raise objections, and put forward their own ideas.
Audience resistance is actually a good sign, although it can be hard on a communicator. When persuasion stimulates diverse viewpoints, the end result is often better than the one that was
proposed initially.
Informative Persuasive
What is the importance of the information? What is the importance of the topic?
What specific information gap do I want to fill? What do I want the audience to think, feel, and do?
By applying the questions to the two communication situations she faces, Tasha settles on two distinct purposes:
Informative
1. Importance: Some of the new software features make the representatives' work more efficient.
2. Gap to fill: I want them to know what the features are and how they work.
Persuasive
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Exercise: The Communication Campaign
Communication is not about the person communicating; it's about the audience.
Once you've clarified the purpose of your message, think about the audience. Understanding your audience will help you achieve the purpose you have defined.
You don't need or want to know everything about the people who will receive the message. You want only information that will be helpful in fulfilling your purpose.
Professors, textbooks, and popular books on communication all exhort communicators to understand their audience, but the advice often isn't followed. The writer or speaker may think
she knows the audience members well enough already or believe that knowing more about them wouldn't make a difference. However, even an email to someone the writer knows well
benefits from forethought when something important is at stake.
Early in his career Srini Krishnamurthy learned the connection between message and audience.
A consulting team presents an evaluation of a company's business units. The presentation culminates in an opinion about the overall performance of each unit. The team notes that one
division could have exceeded its goals by a healthy margin but was held back by its management, which the team criticizes as preoccupied with internal politics.
The team isn't aware that the head of that business unit is a close personal friend of the company CEO. The CEO defends his friend, which shifts attention away from performance
and injects tension into the meeting.
Had the team members asked questions about their audience, they might have learned of the relationship between the CEO and the head of the business unit and presented their judgment
of the business unit more diplomatically.
Thinking about the audience can only help your communication. Try this: Before you start creating the content of a written or spoken message, take ten minutes to think only about
your audience. Record the points that seem most worthwhile. As soon as you can, compare your perceptions of the audience with those of someone trustworthy who knows some or all
of the audience members. The odds are very high that what you learn will affect what and how you communicate.
When John Mack, chair and CEO of Morgan Stanley, went before a U.S. congressional committee, he knew the audience was hostile and suspicious of him, so he incorporated a measured
apology into his opening statement. Apologies tend to placate people and make them receptive. Not surprisingly, the committee members were more restrained in their reaction to him than
to other, less contrite Wall Street executives.
Who is my audience?
What do my audience members know about the topic?
What is their attitude toward the topic? Do they have any biases related to the topic?
What is their attitude toward me?
What is my attitude toward the audience?
In some situations, you may have more than one audience, which is an important factor when the communication needs to address different audiences.
Let's say that you're the chair of a cross-functional team charged with making a decision. You favor a moderately aggressive option and know that a majority of the team agrees. But an
adamant minority opposes that option and advocates a more conservative decision. You are writing a memo to the committee to recommend a decision that will be discussed at the
next meeting.
In this situation, the majority of the committee is the secondary audience. The majority already agrees with you. The opponents are the primary audience and need to be convinced.
“Preaching to the choir” feels good but won't achieve your purpose in this situation.
Let's return to the example of John Mack, chair and CEO of Morgan Stanley. Mack's primary audience was the committee members. He had multiple secondary audiences: other members
of Congress, shareholders, voters, the media, regulators, and Wall Street. In fact, it's debatable whether the committee was his primary audience at all, because his bank had much at stake
with some of the secondary audiences, such as regulators and shareholders.
Barriers to Communication
Barriers to Communication
As you think about the audience, be alert for obstacles to communication. These obstacles are factors that can make achieving a purpose more difficult or, in extreme cases, impossible.
The goal of identifying barriers is to remove them or lessen their impact.
A Procter & Gamble executive speaks of dealing with cultural differences in communication.
Imagine that you are an entrepreneur who will present to a group of potential investors.
Consider how they will perceive you. The investors have far more business experience than you do and have heard many pitches for funding.
You are convinced you have a good business plan that takes advantage of a large opportunity.
Making sure your audience sees you as credible will strengthen your pitch.
Cognitive Bias
Cognitive Bias
Over the past forty years, researchers in psychology have firmly established that humans are profoundly biased in their thinking. The biases they refer to are neither conscious
nor deliberate; they're inherent in people's thought processes. The implications of bias for communication are profound.
As a communicator, you face bias in two ways: your own biases that influence your message and the biases with which the audience receives your communication. In either sense, coping
with bias is difficult. People generally aren't aware of it and often deny that it has any influence. Bias has relevance for communication because it can lead to distorted views of a situation,
tension between the communicator and the audience, and misunderstandings.
The science of bias is extensive and growing. Here, you'll find explanations of the following four biases, which have significant potential impact on communication:
False Generalization
False Generalization
False generalization, also called the law of small numbers, means drawing a conclusion from a small set of data; the resulting conclusion is often wrong. The Nobel Prize–
winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman says that the tendency arises from our need to believe that the world is orderly and consistent—more so than it actually is.
A sales manager is having doubts about the ability or commitment of one of his salespeople, Mireille, because she's not making her numbers in the current year. However, from a
broader perspective over the past seven years, she has been a top performer.
As a communicator, you can avoid the bias of false generalization by taking into account a larger set of data. To address false generalization in audience members, you can show
them an expanded data set and what you regard as a more accurate conclusion.
Mireille has been demoralized about her sales performance. Her manager has become increasingly impatient, and several times she has told him that she will work harder.
A friend mentions that she's had a string of good years and was named salesperson of the year not long ago. Mireille gathers the sales numbers for the last seven years and
calculates her average year-over-year increase. She compares that number to the average for the entire sales staff; hers is larger by several percentage points. In a short memo, she
shares the information with her boss.
Anchoring Bias
Anchoring Bias
Anchoring bias (or simply anchoring) is excessive reliance on one or a few values, particularly when judging, deciding, or acting. In other words, one or a few values have unjustified
influence over judgment, decision making, or action. Anchoring occurs in financial markets when a stock price falls precipitously and investors buy at the new, lower price,
believing that the stock is now undervalued. However, the stock price may fall because the company is worth less due to poor decision-making or a failure of some kind.
The sales manager set an aggressive sales goal for Mireille for the current year, well before her region encountered economic stresses and her territory was reconfigured,
which eliminated several of her largest customers. Nevertheless, the sales goal is the reference point, or anchor, for discussions about Mireille's performance.
To fend off anchoring bias, you have to be alert to your own reference points. When you try to convince an audience with an argument, examine its content for reference points or
benchmarks that you assume are accurate. Are they truly accurate?
Likewise, assess the anchors that your audience may have. Presenting a conclusion that is rooted in an assumption that contradicts an audience anchor can be problematic if you
aren't aware of the anchor. You should first deal with a fallacious anchor by demonstrating how it's fallacious.
Mireille prepares a brief presentation for the sales manager and assistant manager about her selling efforts. She plans to show them how the loss of her largest customers accounts
for nearly seventy-five percent of the gap between her current sales and the goal. She will also estimate the sales losses due to local economic problems in her territory, which account
for another fifteen percent of the gap. She will propose a lower goal coupled with a promise to work harder to develop new accounts.
Availability Bias
Availability Bias
This bias is the tendency to base a judgment or decision on the ease with which a relevant fact or event can be recalled. Often recency plays a major role; it's easier to recall an event
that just happened than one that happened at an earlier time. A common example of availability bias is the fear people have of flying after a commercial airliner crashes versus the
comfort they have with driving to the airport. Driving is many times more dangerous than flying at all times.
The company has had several years of brisk growth. Mireille sees economic shifts that may reverse this growth trend if the company doesn't adjust its offerings and pricing.
However, the sales manager and other staff members have great confidence in the status quo because of the recent track record.
Researchers often contrast conclusions influenced by availability bias with those guided by base rates, a term that means the probability of something being determined by
rational means, such as statistics. An example is the fatality rates for flying in commercial airlines versus those for driving a car.
You can avoid availability bias by building your arguments on base rates. For audience members who have availability bias, you need to prove to them that their view isn't derived from
the base rate and then argue for a more accurate view.
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Example: Broadening the View
Mireille assembles the sales records for the past ten years. Although the overall trend is positive, she uncovers a fairly regular oscillation. She tracks the records against some internal
benchmarks and a few macroeconomic measurements. She finds a few correlations, which she explains in a memo to her colleagues. In this way, she moves the discussion from the
simple assumption that the good times will continue to a data-driven evaluation.
Representativeness Bias
Representativeness Bias
Representativeness bias allows people to judge whether something belongs in a specific category according to characteristics that they believe represent members of the category. A
familiar example of representativeness bias is stereotyping, such as thinking that a young man who is very tall must be a basketball player.
The sales manager counters Mireille's position that the company should be prepared to make serious changes. He cites several factors related to the company that have
been consistent throughout the upswing in sales and that remain so. Given their representativeness bias, the salespeople don't think Mireille's warning has merit.
To spur your awareness of representativeness bias, ask yourself whether a classification you have made reflects all the relevant factors. In persuasive forms of communication,
concentrate on classifications vital to your argument.
As far as audiences are concerned, addressing representativeness bias is similar to countering false generalization: Expand the number of factors the audience is using to
classify something.
Mireille tries to change how her manager and peers perceive the present. She realizes she has her own representativeness bias; she regards the negative factors as being more
salient than the positive ones.
Instead of arguing against the optimistic view of her audience, she prepares a set of criteria for evaluating the sustainability of sales growth. The criteria include the factors the
sales manager relied on and the additional factors she thinks are important. She then prepares a sustainability scorecard that's neither as optimistic as her colleagues’ view nor as
pessimistic as hers.
For her informative communication, Tasha uses the audience questions to identify the representatives’ characteristics that are relevant to the message.
Who is my audience?
My primary audience is the less experienced customer service representatives. My secondary audience is veteran representatives.
The representatives don't know about the new features—that's the information gap I'm filling. I'll need to describe the benefits of the changes in enough detail for
the inexperienced representatives. I might lose a little of the attention of the longer-serving representatives, but that's a risk worth taking.
What is their attitude toward the topic? Do they have any biases related to the topic?
They hate the amount of information they receive and tend to delete emails before they read them. This could be the most important barrier to communication that I face. On
the other hand, they welcome anything that makes their work easier.
The audience might have an availability bias about the IT department. Before the last update to the system, the department provided confusing and contradictory information.
The representatives might ignore the information because they don't trust it.
They know I'm on their side. I suspect they don't think I fully understand the demands of their job. It's true I haven't spent a lot of time in the center, but I know the workflow.
The call center is essential to the success of our company, and the current team members, especially the veterans, are competent. I respect and like them, but sometimes they
irritate me when they immediately resist or complain about a change.
Conclusions
Because the information is detailed, I will put it in memo form and send it as an email attachment. They won't read a long email.
The memo should be as short as possible.
My communication should focus on information of highest value to the representatives.
In the email and at the beginning of the memo, I'll emphasize how the information will help them do their job more easily.
Get the details right!
The item about accuracy emphasizes the importance of paying attention to the audience. An accurate report will help overcome the representatives' bias about the
IT department.
Another major barrier is information overload. The subject line and the first sentence need to emphasize the benefit of the communication to the representatives.
Tasha's other communication, the one she hopes will win her boss's support to hire more Spanish-speaking representatives, requires persuasion. To review, persuasion is the
use of language to motivate an audience to think, feel, or act in the way the communicator intends.
Tasha wants to change the way Dmitri thinks about hiring and get him to take action: hire two more representatives. He will need to clear it with his boss, director of the business
unit. If Dmitri thinks Tasha's memo contains solid evidence, he'll probably share the memo with the director.
Who is my audience?
Dmitri is my primary audience, but I have to consider a secondary audience: Dmitri's boss, the director. If I convince Dmitri, he will want to get the approval of the director.
Dmitri knows the call center operation and most of the representatives, especially the veterans. He doesn't know a lot about what's been going on in the center recently.
The director knows the call center from 30,000 feet—no details. Based on what Dmitri says, the director is a numbers guy.
What is their attitude toward the topic? Do they have any biases related to the topic?
I have to assume Dmitri's initial attitude is going to be negative. The director is similar, except that he doesn’t seem to value the call center as much as Dmitri—he sees it as
a cost center, not as an asset.
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Dmitri and the director may have an anchor bias: the industry standard benchmark for cost per call. Corporate has been told many times that the industry benchmark has
little meaning because it hides a large number of variables. And yet, in every discussion of the call center, corporate executives refer to the benchmark.
Dmitri thinks I'm an excellent manager. But he may feel that my objectivity is compromised by loyalty to the representatives. I don't know the director except what I've gleaned
from Dmitri. He probably doesn't have a well-defined attitude toward me.
This one is hard to answer. Dmitri has advocated for the call center before, but there's a rumor that he’ll be promoted soon, so he might want to leave the problem for the next
guy. I don't like that possibility. The director? I’ve got a bias against the corporate types. Too many of them think they know everything.
An analysis of a communication situation has a product: valuable learning about the content of the communication. Trying to remember all of the learning via memory introduces the
risk that you will lose some of it. Taking notes in some form reduces the risk.
Everyone has his or her own way of recording thoughts. Some people like to take detailed handwritten notes; others prefer visual representations using computer mind-mapping
applications or just drawings on a sheet of paper. Regardless of the means, the objective is the same: to preserve what you learn about a situation so that you can create
communication efficiently.
Never before have businesspeople had so many ways to communicate. The proliferation of options is an asset for linking everyone in an organization across long distances and for creating
opportunities for fast transmission of information and activities such as collaboration, innovation, and mentoring.
You probably rarely think about channel choice because it's given. Someone emails you, and you email a reply. Someone calls you, and you talk on the phone.
But even in these commonplace instances, channel choice can crop up. For instance, have you ever asked someone you were speaking with on the phone to send you an email with more
details? That means you prefer a different mode or channel for the content of a particular communication, such as the caller's full contact information or the details of a person's request.
For high-value communication where you have a choice, it pays to pause and think about the channel.
For a list of communication channels and factors that can influence choices of them, see the Channel Characteristics table.
Message:
Best Channel:
Feedback:
Channel Choices:
Previous
Next
Reset Exercise
Let's apply these questions to Tasha's communication with the boss about adding new representatives to the call center.
I want Dmitri to understand my argument, ask questions about it, and challenge it if he needs to. I also want him to be personally engaged. A combination of a
written document (so he can absorb the argument) and a face-to-face meeting (to increase his personal engagement) will work best.
Dmitri is a talker. He’s notorious for not answering emails, and he doesn’t like reading reports and other documents. He wants evidence-based proposals like mine to be put
in writing first. He wants to see everything laid out logically.
A written channel is definitely best, for two reasons: (1) Detailed evidence and conclusions are hard to remember unless they're in writing, and (2) Dmitri can review a
written memo several times until he fully understands the argument. This process helps persuade him and makes him a more effective missionary for the argument.
A written memo can raise worries for Dmitri and partly motivate him to adopt my conclusion. But talking to him face to face is a better way to show him the extent of
my concern.
Writing is the best channel for me. I think I'm a decent writer and I like to put the puzzle pieces together. I don’t like stand-up presentations. A one-on-one conversation on a
difficult topic can be tense, but I'll talk to him after he's read my report and absorbed my argument and evidence.
People in business have an incentive to rely on reasoning. Business acting on the basis of irrational thinking will suffer sooner or later. Many of the players in the financial crisis of
2008, for example, believed that real estate prices would continue to rise indefinitely, despite ample evidence to the contrary. In the long run, their thinking was irrational and an entire
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industry, many economies, and millions of people suffered for it.
On the flip side, businesspeople wield reason to great effect. Facing imminent collapse, the U.S. auto industry used reason to reconstruct itself and develop high-quality, innovative, and
fuel-efficient vehicles. Biotechnology and drug companies use reason to create and commercialize therapies for formerly intractable diseases.
Reason is the most fundamental tool for creating business communication. Workplace audiences expect the content of presentations, memos, emails, and other forms of communication
to be well reasoned and logical.
Informative Communication
Informative Communication
Reason pays a significant role in informative communication. First, it is used to select the information of greatest value to the audience. Usually the hardest part of selecting the
information is deciding what to omit.
We live in the information age. Collecting, storing, and transmitting data is so advanced that vast amounts of it are being warehoused because we don't have the capacity to assess
its value, much less use it.
As receivers, human brains haven't had time to adapt to the information age. It is easy for us to enter a state of cognitive overload. Too frequently communicators don't recognize
our cognitive limits. They believe that the more information they push at audiences, the better informed the audiences will be.
That belief is true up to a point, but beyond that audiences become confused, tired, and unreceptive. Especially in business, communicators owe it to their audiences to
select information on the principle of need to know, not nice to know.
In addition, reason is used in informative communication to build a logical organization that helps the audience understand the content. Unstructured information can be
communicated, and audience members may even be able to understand it, but they won’t remember it. Communicating information that the audience won't remember is pointless.
Let's consider a friendly neighbor who volunteers to teach you how to change a tire. She tells you what you need to do but not in the correct order.
Months later, you're on a road a long way from home and have to change a tire from memory. Very soon, you become frustrated because you can't remember the order of some of
the steps. Do you jack up the tire before you loosen the lug nuts, or do you loosen them first and then jack up the tire?
Using reason in an informative message primarily has to do with selecting and ordering information by answering two questions:
Let's return to Tasha's communication to the call center representatives. Tasha has to structure the information logically. It has an organic order, which is the process the
representatives follow when they use the call center software.
Tasha takes a moment to consider the content in relation to its value to the audience.
I could just follow the IT report, which goes through each computer step the representatives take when they're on a call and shows which ones have changed. I don't think that will
do it for the representatives. Most of them—even the inexperienced ones—can do the basic steps in their sleep, so they don't need to be reminded of the order. They want to learn
about the changes that matter to them.
Persuasive Communication
Persuasive Communication
Business audiences expect persuasion to be rational. They typically don't respond well to persuasion that's primarily emotional. Rational persuasion consists of arguments. The
ability to argue skillfully is valued in business (and in business school).
Using Arguments
Using Arguments
In practical terms, argument is reaching a conclusion by using evidence. Evidence comprises qualitative and quantitative facts, calculations, inferences, theoretical knowledge, personal
experience, and expert opinion.
A concise evidence statement, combined with the conclusion, can be an excellent opening for a presentation or a written communication. The example illustrates how to construct a
strong argument. Business arguments can be more complicated, but the process followed in the example applies to them, too.
Using Assumptions
Using Assumptions
You have probably heard of inductive and deductive reasoning. Induction is the process of concluding that something is probably true based on relevant observations. Deduction is the
process of concluding that something is probably true by reference to a principle that is generally accepted as true.
Notice the use of the word probably in the definitions. Real world reasoning usually doesn't give you a result that is true beyond any doubt. Even the strongest conclusions
are “probably true.”
Neither induction nor deduction is directly useful for creating practical, real-world arguments. More useful is the evidence–conclusion form of argument explained in the previous
section. Deductive logic, however, is based on a concept of great value for real-world reasoning. Deduction works because a generally accepted principle justifies related statements. In
deduction, the generally accepted principle is called a major premise or an assumption.
The assumption makes the conclusion possible by connecting the evidence and the conclusion. Of course, the argument in the Tad example is so obvious that the assumption
does not seem important.
But when the argument is not so obvious, knowing the assumption can help a writer or speaker decide whether the argument will be acceptable to the audience.
Reset
For the argument about Tad, what is the assumption? Drag the correct ideas listed below into the Logic Box to create the assumption. Incorrect choices will return to their
original position.
A human being
Tad
can think
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has a brain
Logic Box
Evidence Tad is a human being.
Assumption
Conclusion Therefore, Tad has a brain.
Click here to continue.
To understand the relationships in the Tad argument, let's put the statements into a "logic box." The box shows how the three main ideas in the argument are connected.
Logic Box
(A) Tad (B) is a human being.
(A) Tad (C) has a brain.
The two sentences express these relationships:
Idea A = Idea B
Idea A = Idea C
Given these relationships, it follows that Idea B = Idea C. The assumption is the statement that links ideas B and C.
We know that Tad is a human being. That's a statement of evidence—it is a fact. From that fact we conclude he has a brain. But the conclusion depends on an assumption.
You can define your assumptions precisely by stating your evidence and conclusions so that they have three unique ideas. We will use the Logic Box to define the assumption of
a business argument.
Filia Foods has spent millions of dollars on the Knox Point plant. Therefore, Filia Foods should finish the plant.
Logic Box
(A) Filia Foods (B) has spent millions of dollars on the Knox Point plant.
(B) A company that has spent millions of dollars on a plant (C) should finish it.
(A) Therefore, Filia Foods (C) should finish the plant.
Do you think that most business audiences would agree with the assumption, "A company that has spent millions of dollars on a plant should finish it"?
Return
Logic Box
(A) Filia Foods (B) has spent millions of dollars on the Knox Point plant.
(A) Therefore, Filia Foods (C) should finish the plant.
The assumption must link ideas (B) and (C). Can you state the assumption?
Judging the acceptability of assumptions depends on the audience and all the variables that affect it, such as culture, values, history, bias, and knowledge. Knowing
your audience well allows you to accurately evaluate an assumption's acceptability to that audience.
In the last section, we defined the assumption of an argument about finishing a plant:
A company that has spent millions of dollars on a plant should finish it.
The assumption is a version of the sunk cost fallacy in which people think that money already spent justifies more spending. Most audiences that are aware of the fallacy would
not find the argument convincing.
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Recall the argument about finishing the plant:
Filia Foods has spent millions of dollars on the Knox Point plant. A company that has spent millions of dollars on a plant should finish it. Therefore, Filia Foods should
finish the plant.
The assumption is not going to be acceptable to a smart business audience. Consider for a moment what would be a stronger argument for finishing the plant and then click
here to see new evidence.
Filia Foods cannot meet worldwide demand without a new plant. Therefore, Filia Foods should finish the plant.
A company that cannot meet worldwide demand without a new plant should finish the one it has been building.
The assumption seems acceptable to a business audience as long as the evidence about demand is convincing.
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Next
Reset Exercise
We know that Tasha wants to change Dmitri's thinking about staffing the call center and get him to take an action—to hire two more Spanish-speaking representatives. She has
built an understanding of her audience, although it is in some ways contradictory. Human beings are complicated!
She can use her understanding of the audience to create a persuasive argument.
My main argument is that the call center is understaffed. There aren't enough representatives to handle the call volume. The biggest need is for Spanish speakers because
most of the increased volume is coming from Spanish-speaking callers. Another argument is that turnover has skyrocketed, mostly due to the heavy workload, and is
inflating our costs. I'll also gather information about service quality.
I should think about the alternatives to not hiring new full-time representatives. I've heard that addressing arguments for other possibilities makes people more likely
to accept your option.
I already have numbers on call volume and turnover. I need to ask Human Resources to tell me how much the turnover costs. I could just say the cost is high, but a number
is more convincing to Dmitri and the director than a general statement about rising expenses.
The main arguments are understaffing and turnover. Both arguments have this form:
Evidence
The call center suffers from several related problems such as understaffing, turnover, and service quality.
Conclusion
The call center needs more representatives.
The Assumption
Whenever the call center suffers from these problems, it needs more representatives.
The assumption will be acceptable to Dmitri and other executives only if, in their view, the problems are significant.
Dmitri's current position is not to hire any call center employees except to fill open positions caused by people quitting or retiring. If Tasha can furnish a fact-based
argument, she might persuade him and give him confidence that hiring is the right choice.
On the other hand, Tasha fears he may want to duck the issue and leave it for his successor. She has heard rumors that corporate executives want to promote him.
She speculates Dmitri will make a judgment about how soon the problem will become unavoidable.
Tasha will need a factual argument with quantitative evidence. Numbers have a particular appeal to Dmitri and senior executives. Writing only about unhappy customers
and low employee morale will not persuade them.
We should hire two customer service representatives who are fluent in English and Spanish.
Before Tasha identifies evidence, she thinks about the criteria relevant to the decision she is recommending and settles on three:
Turnover
Costs
Quality of customer service
In a document, she gathers some of the evidence the criteria helped her find and questions that she has to answer. Finally, in light of the assumption of the arguments, she
thinks about how to prove the problems are harmful to the company.
Here are Tasha’s notes about evidence for a persuasive memo to Dmitri.
Turnover
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Turnover is 100 percent higher than last year. This number should convince Dmitri that the problem is serious.
We’ve lost some of our most experienced and productive representatives, and more may quit.
Experienced representatives are quitting or retiring due to overwork and stress.
The number of calls into the center exceeds capacity by an average of 15 percent.
Sixty percent of the increased call volume is from customers who request a Spanish-speaking representative.
Costs
Human Resources estimates the net cost of turnover this year at $200,000.
That's about a 17 percent increase in our total budget.
The increase is detrimental to the company.
Service quality
Standard indicators show a decline in quality. The numbers prove the problem is harmful.
The number of callers put on hold is up 15 percent.
The number of abandoned calls is up 13 percent.
The average call length is up 2 minutes.
Customer complaints about service are up 27 percent.
After Tasha answers her questions about the marketing campaign, she writes a draft of the argument. Read her draft memo. Notice how she states her conclusion at
the beginning and uses the evidence she gathered to compose an argument. Do you think it will convince Dmitri?
Scholars in psychology, neuroscience, economics, and other fields say that emotion influences everything we do, including our thoughts and actions.
Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist, tells of an experiment in which a daycare operator decided to impose a fine on parents who picked their children up late. The goal was
to increase the number of parents who came on time, but the change had an unintended consequence: Late pickups increased after the fine was imposed.
Rationally, the situation hadn't changed. The daycare center was not trying to make more money; it was trying to deter late pickups as it had when it asked parents to comply
voluntarily.
What changed were the parents' feelings. After the imposition of a late fee, they looked at late pickup as a transaction rather than as part of a relationship with their children’s
caregivers—people who wanted to be able to leave work on time.
Emotion is generally not an essential factor in informative communication, but it matters a great deal in persuasion. Emotion influences how an audience reacts to a
communication. It also influences how writers and speakers express themselves in their messages.
Tasha knows she has to deal with audience emotions. She's already aware that Dmitri's emotional response to her hiring request will likely be discomfort and even
slight hostility. The danger is that his feelings may cause him to reject her argument without seriously considering it.
Dmitri and the director will dislike a proposal for new hires.
Ideally, I’d like Dmitri and the director to have a positive feeling about my proposal. Failing that, I want Dmitri to be as worried about the situation as I am and to see
the urgency. I want the director to be troubled enough to accept my recommendation even if he doesn’t like it.
I should not use strong emotional language because that would make me seem biased. Dmitri and the director might have some stereotypes about women’s
communication styles, but I don’t know this for sure.
Tasha will present her argument with facts as Dmitri prefers. She could rely on the argument alone to motivate him, but she wants to maximize the odds of success.
She knows that emotions are in play anyway, regardless of whether she wants to deal with them.
She tries to establish the urgency of the hiring issue. The sooner Dmitri thinks the call center will have a major problem, the more likely he will be to act. Dmitri’s rumored
promotion could be helpful since he will not want his last act overseeing the call center to be a debacle.
Please read “Tasha’s Persuasive Memo, Version 2.” The sentences that directly evoke emotion are highlighted.
Business audiences can fool themselves into thinking that they’re immune to feelings affecting their judgment. Emotions are real and are part of how we make our
judgments and decisions even though we aren’t conscious of some of them. (For more on this topic, see Cognitive Bias.)
Practically, then, you are better off having the audience’s emotions work for you. Emotions energize persuasion and can have a multiplier effect on a message. Dmitri can
become more motivated if Tasha evokes feelings in her memo than if she avoids evoking emotion as much as possible.
Audience Emotions
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Dmitri has strong feelings about hiring to solve the call center problem. Tasha can't eliminate his feelings against that solution, but she can intensify his feelings
about doing nothing.
Character is the audience's attitude toward a speaker or writer. Audiences form attitudes of the person communicating not only from the content of the message but also from other sources such as
body language and facial expression (speakers), tone and vocabulary (writers), and the audience's previous impressions of the person (both writers and speakers).
Audiences are especially reactive to the knowledge and credibility of a speaker or writer:
Knowledge
An audience wants to be sure the communicator knows what he or she is talking about. To be receptive to a message, an audience must have some respect for the intellectual
authority of the communicator.
Credibility
An audience wants to be sure that communicators can be trusted, that they tell the truth as they see it, and that they are transparent with their evidence and about
their motives.
Read the following excerpt from a recent letter to shareholders. Imagine you have invested in Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway. How would you feel about the message
in this excerpt?
1
To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., 2009
And now a painful confession: Last year your chairman closed the book on a very expensive business fiasco entirely of his own making.
For many years I had struggled to think of side products that we could offer our millions of loyal GEICO customers. Unfortunately, I finally succeeded, coming up with a
brilliant insight that we should market our own credit card. I reasoned that GEICO policyholders were likely to be good credit risks and, assuming we offered an
attractive card, would likely favor us with their business. We got business all right—but of the wrong type.
Our pre-tax losses from credit-card operations came to about $6.3 million before I finally woke up. We then sold our $98 million portfolio of troubled receivables for 55¢
on the dollar, losing an additional $44 million.
Buffett's honesty elicits trust, an invaluable asset for an executive and leader. His self-deprecating humor and his humility offset the bad news. We are usually willing to
forgive people who take responsibility for failures. The character Buffett projects in his shareholders letter is stable from year to year. Consistency is another key to a
persuasive ethos.
On-Demand Character?
On-Demand Character?
In communication should you present yourself as you really are or should you present yourself in whatever way you think furthers your purpose, even if that means
disguising or misrepresenting your character?
In a way, the question does not matter much, because constructing a fallacious character is very difficult. Skilled actors can lose themselves in a role, but for the rest of us,
our characters tend to be stubbornly fixed. The risk of trying to express false character is that the audience will detect it, at which point the persuader's credibility evaporates.
However, we can stress different aspects of our character to suit our purpose. In his highly effective marketing presentations, Steve Jobs came across as the proud and excited
parent of his new devices. In internal meetings at Apple, he revealed other sides of his character: demanding, impatient, and sometimes denigrating.
When you are considering what ethos you want to convey, ask these questions:
Here are Tasha's thoughts about character and her attempt to persuade:
He respects me and I can build on that. But everyone knows I'm very loyal to the repsresentatives, and he might question my objectivity. The director might assume the
same thing.
First, I want Dmitri and the director to know that I'm a management team player. Next, I want them to know that I'm an expert. I speak their language (numbers)
and know what I'm talking about.
I can do this by being objective and logical. I've researched a lot of evidence, including numbers. Maybe some background on our department's cost cutting would help
my team player image.
Tasha's secondary audience, Arthur, the director of corporate marketing and sales, doesn’t know her well. She thinks that positioning herself and her department as
cost cutters will make a favorable impression on him.
In reality, Tasha’s feelings do motivate her. The plight of her overworked and stressed employees is upsetting and she is pained to lose veteran reps (needlessly, in her
opinion) that she likes and respects. Yet she’s pragmatic enough to understand that in the memo her character should come across as analytical and methodical to give her
a better chance of persuading Dmitri and his superior.
See Tasha's “Persuasive Memo, Version 3.” The statements that directly affect the audience's attitude toward her are highlighted.
To convince an audience, an individual can fudge data, manipulate feelings, and project a false character. Unfortunately, these misuses of persuasion are all too common,
including in business.
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Many people are suspicious of persuasion, regarding it as a way to win over an audience through deception or pure emotion. Nonetheless, businesspeople engage in
persuasion every day because it’s the art of the practical: the use of language to get things done. Humans have engaged in it since we acquired language.
Persuasion is sensitive to the ethics of both sides of a communication. Tasha could use false or misleading evidence to persuade. On the other hand, Dmitri could claim that
the reason for the backlog of calls is not understaffing but the poor performance of call center reps and use that as an excuse to fire a rep he has never liked. The point is that
both communicators and audiences have ethical responsibilities.
Whenever persuasion is used, ethics are in play. Speakers can change data to support their opinion. Writers can use inflammatory or exaggerated language. Both can
manipulate an audience by exploiting a bias. Yet, audiences aren't helpless. They can listen or read critically.
Everyone has opportunities to exploit communication for the sake of some kind of perceived advantage. When in doubt, ask yourself what outcome is best for you and the
common good in the long as well as the short run.
Organizing a Message
Organizing a Message
An analysis of a communication situation tells you a great deal about the message you are planning. That knowledge informs what you do next in creating and organizing content.
Informative Communication
Informative Communication
To create an informative message, gather the information necessary to accomplish your purpose. You also need to understand the information. If you do not understand some or
all of the information, take whatever action you need to master it.
The guiding principle for informative communication is to include everything the audience needs to know and no more. Limiting information to the essentials
sounds straightforward, but there is a strong tendency to think that more information is better than less.
For example, analyst reports on stocks often contain an astonishing amount of information, such as eighteen pages on a single bank stock, with fifteen exhibits, some of which
fill a page. But distilling a mass of information into a compact package is possible.
A leading financial firm requires that internal analyst reports written for portfolio managers be no longer than two pages. Analysts identify and include only the information of
greatest value to the audience of portfolio managers; such information could include expected earnings per share growth, the strength of a company's core products or services,
and long-term potential for growth.
The IT report Tasha has received covers software changes associated with the update. Her first step is to extract the content relevant to call center representatives. She finds
a couple of changes to the software that she does not understand completely, so she sends an email to request clarification from the person who wrote the report.
Tasha leaves out far more of the IT report than she uses in her memo. But even with the reduction in content, Tasha has more filtering to do. Some of the changes to the
software are minor and have little effect on the representatives' work. She decides not to include such changes. They could distract the audience or, worse, signal that
the content has minimal worth. The minor changes can be covered quickly in a meeting.
As Tasha assembles the core content for her memo, she faces the critical decision of informative communication: how to organize it to achieve her purpose.
Information Organizers
Information Organizers
An effective writer or speaker puts information in an order that best facilitates audience comprehension.
Many communications fail because of poor organization. By putting down their thoughts in an illogical order, writers leave the task of organizing to readers. No doubt you
have received writing that is disorganized. Do you remember your response? Most readers make an effort to understand, but eventually they reach a threshold of
frustration and stop reading.
Every body of information is unique, yet there are two broad categories of organizers that can help:
Organic organizers
Analytic organizers
Organic organizers are those that derive from the nature of the topic. As a communicator, you reproduce the organization for the audience. Here are some of the
most common types of organic logic:
Organic
Definition Example
Organizer
Physical Describe the organization of a production line
Arrangement of physical details.
arrangement and explain why it is organized that way.
Describe the history of a product line and
Chronology Time sequence
explain decisions that shaped its history.
Describe the steps for entering information into a
Series of steps that
Process computer database and explain the rationale for the
lead to a specific outcome.
order of the steps.
Structure of authority, power, Describe an organization chart and explain the
Hierarchy responsibility, or similar characteristics
reporting relationships.
of an organization.
Sometimes information you have to communicate does not have an obvious structure. In these situations, use analytic organizers, in which you organize information using
concepts appropriate to the content and audience.
A frequently used analytic organizer is order of importance. A to-do list arranged from the most important task to the least important is an example. So is a set of
recommendations for improving an employee's performance arranged in priority order. Another common type of analytic organizer is level of difficulty (basic to
advanced) and frequency (high frequency to low frequency).
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Business concepts often serve as analytic organizers. Let's say that you have new employees on your marketing team and want to describe the current marketing plan for
a product. There is a well-defined way of communicating a marketing plan that every MBA candidate learns: the 4Ps (product, price, promotion, and place). The 4Ps
framework is an instance of an organizer tailor-made for a particular type of information.
Analytic
Definition Example
Organizer
Arrange by value, worth, List of critical safety practices (most important to
Importance
and urgency. least important).
Arrange by level of
Difficulty Training manual for operation of machine (basic to advanced).
difficulty.
Arrange by the number
Number of mentions of company in various social media (high to
Frequency of occurrences over a period
low frequency).
of time.
Business Arrange by order of
A marketing plan organized around the 4Ps.
concepts concepts in a business model.
Tasha has already given some thought to organizing the message about the new software features. She could follow an organic order: the sequence of steps the reps
take when they use the software for a typical customer call.
She rejects that order. First, the reps know the process extremely well and don't have to be told which feature applies to which step. Second, they have a strict standard
for their highest level of attention: Does it make my life easier? If it does not, they tend to ignore the information.
Tasha thinks her best bet is an analytic organizer: the order of importance to the representatives.
Read Tasha's informative memo and analyze the organization. Then move the cursor over the text of the memo for explanations.
Persuasive Arguments
Persuasive Arguments
Like informative communication, persuasive communication rests on the foundation of a well-defined purpose and an understanding of the audience. But persuasion is
more complicated. The goal of informative communication is to obtain audience comprehension of the content. In contrast, persuasive communication seeks to motivate an
audience to think, feel, or do something specific.
To inform an audience, the communicator just provides the necessary facts. To persuade an audience, she not only has to provide the facts but also tell them why the
facts should prompt them to think, feel, or act in a certain way.
A simple example of the difference involves beauty products. Informing an audience what products a drugstore or department store sells and where to find them in the store
is not difficult. On the other hand, persuading members of an audience to buy specific products challenges the most skillful marketers. Consumer product companies spend
billions of dollars each year to convince shoppers to buy their products.
Persuasive business communication uses different combinations of rational arguments and emotional and character-based appeals. Reports by financial analysts use only
rational arguments to persuade clients, although both emotional and character-based appeals are implicit. For example, a report by a well-regarded analyst will likely carry
more weight with an audience of investors because of the analyst's perceived character as an expert. On the other hand, a television commercial for a perfume may have no
rational argument at all and depend entirely on emotional and character-based appeals.
Management communication depends heavily on rational arguments for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is audience expectations. Therefore, as
future managers and leaders, you need to know how to build arguments.
Every real-world situation that calls for persuasive arguments has unique circumstances. However, three types of arguments are extremely common in business.
Decision
Evaluation
Diagnosis
You will be learning templates for each type of argument. You do not need to view every argument as one of a kind with few or no similarities to any other argument.
The templates take advantage of elements common to each type of argument.
These templates are not intended to reduce the complexity of real-world business but rather to help you to manage it. The templates do not address every business situation
for which an argument is required, but they are useful in many situations.
Imagine that you work for a software development company based in Singapore. One of your teams programs software for a robotics company in Canada. That team has come up with
a programming approach for a robotic machine that makes the operator's job more straightforward, thus reducing both training time and operator errors.
There’s a catch, though. The client’s engineers in Canada will have to adapt their programming to the new approach your team has developed. Because they are employees of the client
company, they have more power than you do. The manager of the Canadian engineers says you must persuade his engineers to accept the new approach.
You have a clear picture in your mind of the benefits and the data that substantiates them. But how can you organize this material into a logical argument? The prospect
of writing down your ideas, trying to find the best organization for them, and positioning the data in the best way possible does not appeal to you. After all, you’re an
engineer, not a debater.
In this situation, a template or model for the argument would be helpful. It could guide your thinking about the content and structure of a persuasive argument.
Decision Arguments
Decision Arguments
In your career, how likely is it that you will advocate a decision? The answer is very likely. Managers find themselves in this position all the time. Because business is
about action, decisions are essential in any organization.
What did you consider when selecting your last job? You might have considered the company, salary, job duties, boss, and chances of promotion. If you accepted the
job, you made a convincing argument to yourself that it was the right decision.
In the film The Dark Knight, Batman must decide whether to kill the Joker. To make the decision, he could use these criteria:
Benefits to Gotham
Ethics
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The law
His career as a superhero
Criteria are pivotal when you argue a decision. If you aren’t sure of the criteria, the reasoning for your recommendation will be unfocused and confused. The other
crucial component of a decision argument is evidence. When you apply the criteria, you have to show the audience strong evidence that clearly supports your
recommended decision.
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Reset Exercise
Although there are many ways to structure an argument about a decision, a template can help you get started. This approach is similar to learning how to cook. Novices
start with a recipe. They learn the ingredients and follow the recipe step by step as it is written. As they become more skilled, cooks can vary the recipe or devise their
own. This template and the two others that follow are like recipes for arguments.
An analyst is preparing a report about a stock she follows, GrowthWare. The current rating is a Hold and she wants to convince investors to buy. Here is the
template she uses to plan her report.
Tasha uses the decision argument template to organize her persuasive memo.
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Evaluation Arguments
Evaluation Arguments
A second type of persuasive argument is assessment or evaluation. The example you may be most familiar with is the performance evaluation. Other examples include
the evaluation of a potential investment by a private equity firm and a bank report rating a loan application.
You make evaluations in your personal life. You have probably spent time evaluating different brands and models of cellphones. You may not have thought
of characteristics like price, appearance, screen size, and touch screen versus a physical keyboard as criteria, but that is precisely the role they served for you.
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The keys to an evaluation are using an appropriate set of criteria, fully applying them to the subject of the evaluation, and making a reasonable evaluation based on the
results.
In the real world, evaluations rarely are all positive or all negative. Applying criteria means recognizing both the good and the bad. For instance, when a banker evaluates
a potential loan, criteria reveal both strengths and weaknesses.
The overall evaluation requires judgment. For a loan application, is the balance sheet or credit history more important? Criteria can help, but judgment is still required.
A Hong Kong venture capital firm has evaluated putting money into a technology startup. See the results below.
State Subject of
Technology startup in robotics.
Evaluation
Market
Product
Competition
State Criteria
Management team
Financials
Intangibles
State Overall Investment is not recommended. Market, product, and competition are positive, but the
Evaluation management team is weak and the investment is too large for the risk.
Prove the Evaluation
Market + Will grow rapidly in the next few years
+ Good potential to meet need
Product
− Unanswered design questions
Competition
+ None now
− Will develop quickly
Management − No operating experience to speak of
team − Don’t appreciate what they don’t know
Financials − Unrealistic projections
− Large investment required
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Assume that Tasha’s task has changed. Dmitri has asked her to give him an update on the performance of the call center. So instead of advocating a decision, she
writes an evaluation argument.
The fact base for the evaluation is the same as the one for the decision argument. But it is used as evidence for evaluating the performance of the call center.
Diagnosis Arguments
Diagnosis Arguments
To understand diagnosis, think of a doctor. When you are sick, you go to a doctor, who asks for the symptoms you are experiencing, examines you, and possibly
orders tests. The doctor seeks a diagnosis that best accounts for his or her observations and prescribes a course of action to improve the condition.
There are many occasions in business when a problem needs to be diagnosed. In 2009, an abnormally high number of incidents of unintended acceleration involving
Toyota vehicles were reported. Toyota investigated and found that besides driver error, two other causes were responsible: sticky pedals and incorrectly installed
floor mats. The findings led them to recall affected cars and repair them.
Less dramatic diagnoses occur in businesses every day, from understanding why your office printer isn't working to why a project is stalled.
A diagnostic argument is explanatory. It is needed when a situation or outcome needs a causal explanation, like the examples just cited.
To make an accurate diagnosis, use concepts and knowledge relevant to the problem, along with experience and common sense. To explain the financial crisis of
2008, analysts used an array of concepts such as micro- and macroeconomics, the operation of specific markets, and psychology.
The operations manager of a multinational company in Europe has been vexed by customer complaints about late deliveries. To diagnose the problem, he and
his team broke it down into production, inventory, warehouse operations, and delivery to the customer. An investigation found three major causes, one of which
surprised everyone.
He plans to meet with top executives about the findings and organizes his talk using a diagnostic template:
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Template Section Description
Use of warehouse for Unusual turnover and retirements among forklift operators
Assume that Tasha's task has changed again. This time, Dmitri has asked her to diagnose why call center costs have increased. Instead of advocating a decision
or evaluating the call center's performance, she writes a diagnostic argument.
The fact base for the diagnosis is the same as the one for the decision and evaluation arguments. But Tasha will use it as evidence of causes for the increase in costs.
Read Tasha's "Diagnosis Memo” and notice how the argument has changed. Analyze how the memo is organized and then move the cursor over the text of the memo
for explanations.
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Writing in Business
Writing skills are fundamental in business. It’s increasingly important to be able to convey content in a tight, logical, direct manner, particularly in a fast-paced technological
environment.
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– Respondent, Writing: A Ticket to Work... or a Ticket Out: A Survey of Business Leaders
Introduction
Introduction
This module addresses effective business writing. Why should you be concerned about your writing skills? Aren't presentations and other face-to-face communication
more important than writing?
According to a survey of large U.S. companies, the jobs of two-thirds of management-level employees include significant writing such as emails, presentations,
technical reports, formal reports, and memos.
Eighty percent or more of companies in the financial sector (including insurance and real estate) and a slightly smaller percentage in the rest of the service industry
consider writing in their hiring decisions.
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Consider these quotes from corporate recruiters:
“Poorly written application materials would be extremely prejudicial. Such applicants would not be considered for any position.”
“In most cases, writing ability could be your ticket in . . . or it could be your ticket out.”
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Think about your own work experience. How much time did you spend reading and writing emails and attachments, texts, wiki entries, memos, and reports? Did you
use Internet communication like Twitter for business? Did you use texts and Instant Messaging for work?
Chances are that you spent more time writing than you realized.
Ironically, modern digital media tend to rely on a very old means of communicating—writing.
In 2011, 1.88 billion people were using email worldwide, sending 32 billion legitimate emails (not spam) per day. In that year, 25 billion Tweets were sent on Twitter, and
Facebook had 600 million users.
In 2011, business users handled an average of 110 email messages a day. They sent about 36 messages a day or 180 per week. Many messages are short, but email alone
accounts for significant writing time each day. When we add in memos, reports, texts, and tweets, the volume of writing becomes a major part of a manager's workload.
Globalization has added to the demand for business writing. Work teams are often scattered throughout the world. Members may rarely or never meet face to face. Due
to time differences and other obstacles, much of their communication is written. Writing skills now play a central role in how well people work together.
Although English has become the common language of international business, differences in the cultural norms of audiences complicate communication across borders. A
written report that seems laborious and overly formal to members of a global team in one country may strike team members from another country as well paced and
respectful.
Communication skills must incorporate some awareness of cultural differences. In this course, the examples and exercises address cross-cultural issues.
The transcript of a spontaneous conversation typically contains many verbal stumbles, pauses, false starts, gaps in logic, unfinished thoughts, and unexplained references.
People manage to understand each other, but oral speech isn't well suited for communicating large quantities of information or extended thinking on a complicated topic,
such as a report on future market opportunities. Also, once something is spoken, it's gone—unless we write it down. Our memory of oral content simply isn't reliable.
Writing enables people to preserve their thinking, which is an important function in business. Much of a company’s institutional memory resides in written documents
such as an employee handbook or field guides for troubleshooting equipment. New employees are often handed a stack of documents and referred to written resources
on the corporate intranet.
Some research on workplace writing indicates that experienced writers use a conscious process for writing while inexperienced writers don't. The difference is apparent in
the finished products. For example, the writing of experienced writers is often more logically organized than the writing of novices.
One study sought to learn whether a group of engineering graduates used the writing process that they had been taught in their workplace writing. They did. In fact,
they found it indispensable for written communication.
This evidence confirms that studying the writing process isn’t an academic exercise. The process can be a practical tool for managers.
Every writer has a personal writing process. Reflecting on how you write as opposed to what you write can make your process more reliable and efficient.
How do you write? Describe the process to yourself. Do you have trouble getting started? Are you aware of points in the process at which you struggle? The following
explanation of the writing process includes a discussion of process problems that make writing harder than it should be.
Many writers have messy processes that jump from one activity to another in unpredictable patterns. However, experienced writers use a method to control the messiness.
They think of the writing process as four interconnected activities: preparing, drafting, revising, and editing and correcting.
But even experienced writers don't necessarily move from one activity to another in a straight line. For example, they may discover while revising that the draft needs more
content and then go back to alter their writing plan and research the content. Or, while editing and correcting, they may realize that further revisions need to be made.
Preparing
Preparing
Preparing consists of doing research (if necessary), defining your purpose, understanding the audience, and organizing your thinking in a writing plan. You follow
the writing plan to create the first draft.
The product of preparing is a writing plan you can follow for the first draft.
Some writers dispense with the preparing stage. They compose their thoughts and arrange them as they go. The approach can work well for writers who know their subject
extremely well and have written about it before. They already have logical templates in their memories that they can apply.
The downside of this approach is that it asks your brain to do two difficult tasks at once: Put your thoughts into writing and arrange them in a logical order. You may
have experienced the stress caused by asking too much of your brain. To free more working memory when you write, first plan what you are going to say.
Preparing frequently begins with research and note taking. Physical documents, the company intranet, online databases, and the web can furnish vast quantities of
information. Paradoxically, the accessibility of so much information both facilitates communication and hampers it. The information can provide compelling evidence
for an argument, but it can also lead to information overload that paralyzes thought.
Everyone in business experiences some degree of information overload. To limit it when writing, use purpose and audience to set boundaries on the information
you need for a message. For example, if you are writing a report on why phone calls are declining in importance, you would restrict your research to information
that documents the decline and helps identify the causes.
Notes can be used for more than recording information. They can be a dialog with your material. You can write down questions you need to answer with research or
in the message you will write. You can capture points to include in the writing and begin to map out an organization.
Because most writing is done on computers, you can take advantage of software for web research such as Evernote, Ubernote, Zoho Notebook, and Memonic.
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Plagiarism
Plagiarism
According to the Council of Writing Program Administrators, plagiarism occurs when “a writer deliberately uses someone else's language, ideas, or other original
(not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source.”
Plagiarism violates trust with the audience. Unless informed by a source citation, readers assume everything in a document is the product of the author. As you know,
the perceived character of the writer or speaker is one of the cornerstones of persuasion. Character has two elements: knowledge and credibility. Any hint that a writer is
misrepresenting the source of his or her thinking can lead to the destruction of both. In a business setting, plagiarism can do real damage to an individual’s reputation—
and an organization’s reputation if the document is for external audiences.
Given the ease of accessing information online, writers can find and use content far more easily than they could when most sources were printed. Text from a web
page can be quickly copied and pasted into a long document and the source can be forgotten. But that same abundance of information makes plagiarism detection
easier through online searches and sites designed for that purpose.
It is never acceptable to use word-for-word content from another source without using quotation marks and a source note. Paraphrasing content or using specific
information or data from another source requires a source note.
Generating Ideas
Generating Ideas
Two of the best ways to think of ideas for the writing plan are asking questions and talking to people. Planning Communication introduced you to questions about
purpose, audience, and three resources for creating a message—reason, emotion, and character. The Checklist: Analyzing a Communication Situation provides all of
these questions to help you generate ideas.
To develop ideas for an argument, use the templates from Planning Communication. They define the parts of decision, evaluation, and diagnosis arguments. You
can use blank templates to plan arguments for a written message or a presentation.
Content can come from people who have knowledge you can use, who have communicated on the same topic, and who have received similar information in the past.
They can be inside the organization (e.g., co-workers and internal experts) or outside (e.g., clients, customers, and external experts).
Be opportunistic in your search for content relevant to your writing. A reference in an online article, a tweet, or a colleague's casual remark could lead to high-
value content.
Office distractions affect not only readers but also writers. More and more organizations are fielding complaints from their employees that they can't concentrate.
Open-office designs have become widespread because they foster face-to-face collaboration and are cheaper to build than offices with walls. But open offices also bathe
everyone in noise.
Writers in noisy environments should seek ways to insulate themselves. Many organizations have quiet spaces that writers can use when they need to
concentrate fully, such as when they are generating ideas and writing a first draft.
Earplugs work for some, as does listening to music through headphones. However, music with words re-creates the noisy office problem. Listening to recordings
of white or pink noise with headphones masks nearby sounds and provides a buffer between the writer and the environment.
Once you have sufficient information and ideas, you have to organize them in a logical structure for writing the first draft. You need to do two things to prepare a plan:
Grouping makes the leap from discrete ideas to organized thought. As material is sorted by similarity, relationships among the groups emerge. These relationships help
you define a logical order.
The format of the plan can be a simple outline or the many variations on an outline, from a list of phrases with bullet points underneath to a list of complete sentences.
The format doesn't matter; what does matter is that the format works for you.
A mind map is a writing plan that is more visual than an outline or a list. You can draw mind maps by hand or make them on a computer with special software
applications. The popular mind-mapping technique yields a graphical representation of your thoughts. It uses shapes and lines to represent ideas and their connections.
In the center of a mind map, write the idea you want to develop. Around that idea, write the most important related ideas. Connect them with lines to the main idea
and, as appropriate, to each other. You can add subordinate ideas and connect them to the existing points. Delete and rearrange ideas as their logic becomes clearer.
Close
Below are a series of points generated in a mind map. Now create an outline of the same points by dragging each item to its best position in the outline form.
Issues
Causes
Reset Exercise
Drafting
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Drafting
In the drafting stage, you compose your thoughts in words, sentences, and paragraphs. The goal of drafting is to write a message that expresses your thinking but isn't
necessarily audience-ready, meaning that the draft can have faults and mistakes such gaps in logic or evidence.
Unless you dictate everything, writing has a mechanical speed limit: You can only write or type as fast as your hands will let you, but the brain thinks far faster. As
a result, you are always at risk of losing some of your thoughts because you can't capture them quickly enough.
You can make the mismatch between writing and thinking worse by being too concerned about correctness. Are you a perfectionist who can't stand to write more
than two sentences without stopping and correcting mistakes or improving the style?
If you are, think about a distance runner who takes one stride back for every two strides forward. Eventually the runner will finish but far more slowly than if she had
been running forward all the time.
It helps to understand a little about the revising stage before you write a draft. During the revision stage, you take a step back and work with the draft to improve
its organization, content, and anything that compromises readability such as sentence fragments or ambiguous statements.
Don't be concerned that your first draft isn't perfect. It shouldn't be if you've freed yourself from the constraints that get in the way of capturing your thinking.
Here are practices that can make drafting more productive and efficient.
You don't have to write each section in the order in which it appears in your writing plan. Write what you know, wherever it belongs in the plan.
Correctness and sentence style come later. Turn off the grammar checker. It gets in the way of thinking. Also, most grammar checkers are wrong more often than
not. Turn off the spell checker. It's also a distraction that interrupts thought.
Capture your thoughts even if they don’t present themselves in complete sentences. When you need a piece of information but know what you want to say about it,
don’t interrupt yourself to look for it. You can insert it later.
If your writing plan isn't working, stop and rework the plan. Don't try to write yourself out of a poor plan.
Revising
Revising
In the revising stage, carefully review the draft, focusing on the content and organization. To keep that focus, you shouldn't be too concerned with writing style, tone,
and mistakes such as faulty grammar; you can deal with those issues later, in the last stage of the process.
The goal of revising is to make the substantive changes that are necessary to achieve your purpose. There are two keys to this stage:
Once you have a first draft, shift to the audience's point of view. Your writing is designed to achieve a purpose through the intended audience. It's also a demand on
audience members' time. Your writing should therefore be reader-friendly. It should have the qualities of good writing discussed in this module.
The following revision questions ask you to think about the draft from the audience's point of view.
Is the length and amount of detail appropriate for the purpose and the audience?
To make sure you have focused on your key points, ask yourself this question: What would I say if I had only 60 seconds to get my point across to the audience?
The answer to this question tells you what has to be included and what may not be necessary.
Every writer has experienced it: You finish a draft, start revising, and realize something is wrong. The plan doesn’t say what you think. It could be that you changed your
mind in the process of writing the draft.
Say, for instance, that you're evaluating the value of sports-themed restaurants in a hotel chain. Initially you didn't think the proposal made sense, but as you
were writing, you began to see the evidence in a new light and think the restaurants could generate enough revenue to be feasible.
You change the writing plan to reflect the new purpose. You will be able to use some of the evidence you already have, but you will probably have to add more. Then
you'll be ready to revise the draft or go back and write a new one.
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Feedback from Others
Feedback from Others
You can never be completely objective about your own writing. You need discipline—and courage—to commit the time for major revisions. To compensate for your
lack of objectivity, request feedback from others.
A reader can serve as a representative of your audience. He or she can confirm whether your writing works and isolate sections where revisions might be needed.
In the editing and correcting stage, review the draft for tone; sentence style; and correct grammar, spelling, and other mechanical issues such as consistent treatment of
numbers. Editing consists of making your sentences as easy to read as possible and adjusting the tone without losing any essential meaning. The goal of correcting is to
fix mistakes in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other writing mechanics.
Editing
Editing
The target of editing is the sentence. You'll learn more about well-written sentences in Writing Style later in the course.
Correcting
Correcting
The goal of correcting is to take the final step in making your writing ready for the reader.
Errors in a written message force readers to perform a fix-up , the process of mentally stopping to correct a mistake and thus understanding the meaning of words
or sentences. Each fix-up diverts the reader from the process of building meaning from the message. A large number of fix-ups destroys the coherence of a message.
Correctness also gives you credibility. How do you react as you read a document with many grammatical and spelling mistakes? The mistakes probably slow you down
and cause you to question the writer’s qualifications.
Use a grammar checker as a guide, and carefully read for grammar and punctuation mistakes.
Turn on the spell checker, but don’t rely on it completely. Proofread your writing to identify spelling errors and mistakes in word usage that the spell checker misses. For
example, the spell checker won’t notice if you mistakenly type "there" instead of "their.”
Use the Find and Replace function in a word-processing program. Type misspellings in the search box and see if they occur anywhere.
Do you make the same grammar mistakes frequently? Search for them, using the Find and Replace function.
For quick answers about grammar, punctuation, and mechanics such as capitalization, use online resources. One of the best is The Owl, a free site developed by
Purdue University.
Concentrate on proofreading.
You may start editing sentences instead of reading them for correctness, making the process longer and potentially missing errors. One trick for avoiding this is
to proofread from the end of the document and move backward paragraph by paragraph. Another approach is to underline sentences you want to edit and
continue proofreading. You can edit the underlined sentences later.
In the following scenario, which is based on a real situation, poor writing leads to multiple problems.
Someone at corporate headquarters emails a memo to a large list of employees. The memo is supposed to explain how certain types of information are going to be
communicated to field offices. The memo is so poorly written that most readers don't understand it.
What happens? The email triggers a cascade of wasted time. The true cost will never be known because no one will measure it. Budgets don’t have a category called
“Costs of Bad Communication.”
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Four Qualities of Business Writing
Audiences from different cultures have basic needs that aren’t all the same. The contrasts between low-context and high-context cultures have special significance for
written communication. Low-context cultures, like those in North America and Europe, tend to value individualism, logic, and action. High-context cultures, like those in
Asia, tend to value group membership, personal relationships, and the preservation of consensus.
These characteristics affect audience expectations for communication. In low-context cultures, readers want authors to state explicitly what they think, to prove it, and
to contribute to getting things done. Low-context writing tends to be direct, assertive, and concise.
In high-context cultures, readers expect authors to imply much of their meaning, to defer to the group, and to foster consensus. High-context writing tends to be
oblique, deferential, and circuitous. One style isn’t superior to the other because each serves the norms and needs of distinct audiences.
Direct Writing
Direct Writing
State what you think early in a written communication. The audience wants to know; that’s why they’re reading.
Direct writing tells the audience the answers to these two questions:
The elevator pitch is an exercise in directness. An individual has 60 seconds to convince someone, for example, the CEO. With little time to speak, she can’t afford to
delay the main point. If she does, the CEO will cut her off. A good question to ask when planning a written communication is:
Concise Writing
Concise Writing
Concise writing makes economical use of words. Think of words as the price the audience has to pay to understand what the writer has to say. In American
business English, readers want to pay the lowest price.
Conciseness flows from respect for readers and from the knowledge that the aim of writing is to provide them with something valuable. Writing shouldn't aim for
anything else such as proving that the writer is intelligent, can write complicated sentences, or is an expert on the topic.
Long and wordy sentences show the audience that the writer is well educated and knows what she's talking about.
You can find many examples of verbose writing in business and elsewhere; they seem to confirm the equation:
Good writers choose simple language when it expresses the meaning they want, using less common words and technical terms only when the meaning of those words is
essential to the message.
As the first decade of the new century neared its end, the miasma of widespread mortgage misfeasance, universally tainted credit ratings, and crippling
liquidity issues seemed to demonstrate some of the systemic weak points in the globalization of financial markets.
Despite the impressive language and dramatic tone, this sentence has to be read slowly. Some of the words may be unfamiliar, and the writer piles modifiers on
most of the nouns. Also, the term liquidity issues is vague.
A concise version of the sentence eliminates some of the meaning of the original but states the core idea more plainly:
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Clear Writing
Clear Writing
The difference between clear and unclear writing is like the difference between a clean window and a dirty one. A clean window allows you to see what is beyond it; clear
writing allows you to see the meaning of the words. A dirty window hides whatever is beyond it; unclear writing obscures the intended meaning.
You can achieve clear writing by expressing your ideas in carefully constructed sentences that show specific connections between ideas. Plain language not only supports
concise expression but also bolsters the clarity of writing.
Like other occupations and professions, business has a voluminous vocabulary of technical terms like net present value and SWOT analysis. Technical terms are useful
for understanding specific business situations. The terms just mentioned are indispensable when writing about company valuation.
Nonetheless, business buzzwords, clichés, and other misuses of language disrupt clear expression because they deliver little meaning and often make sentences
ambiguous.
Clear communication can make the difference between a happy client, boss, or colleague and an unhappy one.
The following paragraph illustrates how sentence structure and elaborate expression obscure meaning. Pass the cursor over the sentence for comments.
Without the full knowledge of the reason to centralize procurement of materials, I deem that the plant managers may feel that the trust allotted to them in their
independent procurement procedures is being stripped.
The meaning of the sentence can be expressed in a simpler sentence that uses plain language:
Not knowing why materials procurement must be centralized, the plant managers may feel that corporate no longer trusts them to buy independently.
22 words
Editing for clarity often strengthens another quality of writing: conciseness. In the example, editing cuts the number of words by 35 percent. Over the course of a
1,500-word report, concise expression could reduce the length by over 500 words.
Logical Writing
Logical Writing
Reading is linear, moving from one sentence to the next. Readers depend upon the logic of sentences to construct meaning in their brains. When sentences are not in
an order that makes sense to readers, they stop and try to repair the logic. But they may not have the patience to do it and instead stop reading.
For the reader, the coherence of a written message can dissolve quickly when sentences aren't arranged logically. Read the following paragraph.
First, customers who request a Spanish-speaking rep account for more than half of the increased volume. Second, two years ago the company decided to market
more aggressively to Spanish speakers, and the campaign has been successful. For the last five years, the proportion of our customers who speak Spanish has been
growing. Three factors explain why call volume has risen. Third, sales to other segments have increased as well, although at a slower rate.
The writer has incorrectly placed only two sentences. Yet, they make constructing meaning from the paragraph difficult.
First, customers who request a Spanish-speaking rep account for more than half of the increased volume. Second, two years ago the company decided to market
more aggressively to Spanish speakers, and the campaign has been successful. For the last five years, the proportion of our customers who speak Spanish has
been growing. Three factors explain why call volume has risen. Third, sales to other segments have increased as well, although at a slower rate.
Three factors explain why call volume has risen. First, customers who request a Spanish-speaking rep account for more than half of the increased volume. Second,
two years ago the company decided to market more aggressively to Spanish speakers, and the campaign has been successful. For the last five years, the proportion
of our customers who speak Spanish has been growing. Third, sales to other segments have increased as well, although at a slower rate.
3. Do you see the other sentence that isn't in the right order? Click here to see it highlighted.
Three factors explain why call volume has risen. First, customers who request a Spanish-speaking rep account for more than half of the increased volume. Second,
two years ago the company decided to market more aggressively to Spanish speakers, and the campaign has been successful. For the last five years, the proportion
of our customers who speak Spanish has been growing. Third, sales to other segments have increased as well, although at a slower rate.
Three factors explain why call volume has risen. First, customers who request a Spanish-speaking rep account for more than half of the increased volume. For
the last five years, the proportion of our customers who speak Spanish has been growing. Second, two years ago the company decided to market more
aggressively to Spanish speakers, and the campaign has been successful. Third, sales to other segments have increased as well, although at a slower rate.
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Paragraphs
Paragraphs
Paragraphs and sentences are the two fundamental units of content. A paragraph is a visual element of a message set apart through an indented first line or white
space above and below it.
When readers see a paragraph, they expect it to contain related sentences about a single topic. If it doesn’t, its visual distinctness deceives the reader.
Long paragraphs are difficult for readers to process. The meaning of a message becomes easier to discern when it is broken into smaller units of meaning. A
topic sentence, which summarizes the meaning common to the group of sentences making up the paragraph, also facilitates reading comprehension.
Close
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Reset Exercise
White Space
White Space
White space in a message has a function; it isn't merely the unused areas of a page. Imagine a message with no white space. It would be nearly impossible to read.
White space is the most common and effective method of grouping words into distinct units. White space is used between and around paragraphs, before and
after headings, and around exhibits and other visuals such as charts.
In your written messages, be generous with white space. A cramped, claustrophobic document design makes reading harder.
White space is critical to the readability of a document. Compare the two documents. One has no extra space; the other
has space between paragraphs and around headings. Which version of the memo would you prefer to read?
The absence of white space in the first document makes the text look impenetrable. The white space in the second
document opens up the text for readers.
Headings
Headings
Click to enlarge image.
Headings signal the logical divisions of a written message. They allow readers to skim a document before reading it and form an impression of its structure and
meaning. They also serve as navigational signals as the readers work through the message. In the end, headings enhance the readers’ retention.
Keep your heading structure simple. A message with many levels and styles of headings looks complex. Generally, as text becomes more visually complex, readers
become more reluctant and struggle more to comprehend it. Two or three levels of headings should be all you need.
Headings should specifically describe the content below them, but they should be very concise.
Typographically, the distinctions among levels of headings should be simple. Use fonts, boldface, italics, and capitalization to distinguish heading levels.
Headings should have extra white space above and below.
Three levels of headings should suffice for business documents. Here is an example of three levels of headings distinguished by different fonts and spacing above
and below.
Lists
Lists
Lists serve readers by displaying a series of related items vertically instead of horizontally in a normal line of text. The technique simplifies reading and
improves comprehension. Bulleted lists suit most content. Use numbered lists when the sequence of items is important, such as steps in a process.
A numbered list tells readers that the order of items is an integral part of their meaning. Here's a numbered list explaining how to tie a shoe:
Type
Type
Typeface is often overlooked as a visual resource. Many writers accept the default fonts of their word-processing programs or make a casual choice based on
their preferences.
Serif fonts are distinguished by fine details projecting from the ends of strokes that make up the characters, like the details at the bottom and top of these characters:
Sans serif fonts lack these end-of-stroke details as these characters do:
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There is some evidence that serif fonts are easier to read on printed pages, especially when the document is long. Sans serif type is used extensively on web
pages because it tends to be bigger and have more space between letters than serif type.
Fonts
Fonts
Contemporary typography has a huge range of font choices, from the traditional (Times New Roman) to the new (Verdana), and from formal (Constantia) too
informal (Comic Sans MS). Your freedom to choose fonts might depend on organizational culture, but there are some safe choices.
Fonts like Chalkboard that imitate handwriting may seem like a good change of pace from standard fonts, but when used for long messages, they are hard to read.
Here are some font recommendations for business writing.
Size
Size
In business documents, the size of the font used for text is often too small. A factor you may not think of, particularly if you're young with good eyesight, is that older
readers often have trouble reading small type. A good choice for business documents is an 11- or 12-point font size.
Imagine that you are choosing a font size for a 2,000-word report. Which of the sizes would be more readable for a long document?
In business documents, the size of the font used for text is often too small.
9 point
In business documents, the size of the font used for text is often too small.
10 point
Emphasis
Emphasis
With the help of computers, writers can create typographic emphasis. Emphasis includes the use of faces, fonts, color, special effects such as shadows, and a long
list of other techniques.
Emphasis in document elements such as headings and exhibits is useful as a meaningful signal to readers. But repeated use of emphasis (for example, bold or italic)
in the text of a business document is not a good idea for two reasons. It pulls the eye around the text, disrupting concentration, and it implies that readers won't
realize the significance of words or phrases without visual help.
Notice how the frequent use of bold and italic attract your eyes and cause small breaks in your reading.
Considering her work ethic, Erin is committed to results, but she can improve her performance in other ways. She relies too heavily on subordinates to
prep her for client meetings. Her relentless focus on the short term blinds her to the importance of long-term planning and development that CCG and its clients
need. For example, for six months she has delayed fulfilling Chase Morris's request for an update of the group's long-term strategy, despite rapid changes in
the industry that the group covers.
This version of the paragraph uses typographic emphasis once to highlight the topic.
Considering her work ethic, Erin is committed to results, but she can improve her performance in other ways. She relies too heavily on subordinates to prep
her for client meetings. Her relentless focus on the short term blinds her to the importance of long-term planning and development that CCG and its clients
need. For six months she has delayed fulfilling Chase Morris's request for an update of the group's long-term strategy, despite rapid changes in the industry that
the group covers.
Writing Style
Writing Style
Writing style refers to how a writer builds sentences. Every writer has developed a writing style of some kind.
Does your writing tend to include short sentences and action verbs, or are you more comfortable with longer sentences and frequent use of passive voice?
Do you like to use words that show you have a large vocabulary?
Do you write fairly simple sentences or complicated ones?
If you are writing English as a second language, does your writing style in your first language have any effect, negative or positive, on your writing style in
English?
The four qualities of good communication—directness, conciseness, clarity, and logic—define a writing style for business. Remember that you have a restless, easily
distracted, and often interrupted reader to satisfy. To achieve the qualities of good communication, use the Writing for Action Style.
Reminding yourself to use a specific style while writing a draft can interfere with self-expression. Checking the style of each sentence after you write puts thinking on
hold.
Use the editing stage to streamline sentences in the Writing for Action Style. Over time, your default writing style will improve, reducing the amount of editing
you need to do.
To edit sentences using the Writing for Action Style, use the following five-step process.
Passive Voice
Passive Voice
The conventional writing advice on using the passive voice is simple: don't. The advice is sound most of the time.
Passive voice has two characteristics that aren't conducive to good business writing:
Quite a few services, most critical, were provided to almost the entire community by the nonprofit.
17 words
The reader can’t understand the action of the sentence until the end, where the sentence reveals the subject. The action-subject order and the words between
the verb and the subject are reasons why passive voice sentences are harder to read than active voice sentences.
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9 words
Note that the active voice sentence is nearly 50 percent shorter than the passive voice version.
Sometimes, a writer has good reasons for using passive voice to remove the subject of the action from a sentence. One such situation is the desire to communicate
the consequences of an action without drawing attention to the agent of the action.
You are writing an email about a meeting you had with a group of middle managers to discuss proposed changes to their incentive package. The managers
didn’t like the changes and were vocal in their opposition to them.
You need to tell human resources how the meeting went, but you want to stress the opposition to the changes, not the managers who opposed them. The passive
voice gives you a way to do that:
While the acquisition could potentially have provided significant benefits, the company has concluded that it is more important at the present time to
focus on its immediate liquidity challenges and, accordingly, considerations of such a transaction as a near-term priority have been set aside.
The sentence clouds meaning. It can be revised using the five-step method.
While the acquisition could potentially have provided significant benefits, the company has concluded that it is more important at the present time to
focus on its immediate liquidity challenges and, accordingly, considerations of such a transaction as a near-term priority have been set aside.
Subject
Verb
While the acquisition could potentially have provided significant benefits, the company has concluded that it is more important at the present time to focus
on its immediate liquidity challenges and, accordingly, considerations of such a transaction as a near-term priority have been set aside.
Subject
Main verb
Start here to determine the rest of the main idea.
These words seem to complete the meaning of the subject and the verb. The company has a "liquidity challenge." In plain English, that means
the company is short of cash.
These words introduce the idea of a transaction.
Finally, these words finish the meaning of the transaction reference. In plain English, the company won't complete it.
The company has concluded that it is setting aside a transaction because of cash flow problems.
The company has concluded that it is setting aside a transaction because of cash flow problems.
The expression is wordy and “setting aside” is a euphemism for the more direct word, “cancelling.” The entire phrase can be shortened to "is cancelling."
While the acquisition could potentially have provided significant benefits, the company has concluded that it is more important at
the present time to focus on its immediate liquidity challenges and, accordingly, considerations of such a transaction as a near-
term priority have been set aside.
These words are the only ones left that say something substantive: the acquisition could have benefits. But when an acquisition is being cancelled, it
doesn’t matter whether it has benefits. However, "acquisition" is more specific than "transaction."
The final addition is to substitute “acquisition” for “transaction.” Note the revised sentence is shortened to 10 words.
Plain Language
Plain Language
Earlier in this module, plain language was discussed as an aspect of conciseness and clarity. It's also essential to a good writing style.
In the earlier discussion, a distinction was made between legitimate technical terms that bolster clarity and buzzwords that weaken it. Clichés, euphemisms, and
hedge words can also reduce clarity. Here are definitions:
business buzzword
A business term that might once have had meaning but is now overused or misused.
cliché
euphemism
hedge word
Business Buzzwords
Business Buzzwords
Business has a large and ever-changing vocabulary of buzzwords. Here are some examples:
Buzzwords often substitute vagueness for clarity. They can be the product of lazy writing—the writer finds it easier to use buzzwords instead of more
precise expressions.
Although concise, the sentence says nothing because it relies on the buzzwords outside the box. Specifics relevant to the situation are much more meaningful
to the audience.
Team, we know the Connor account theme has gotten stale. Before the client comes to the same conclusion, let’s come up with some new ideas. Do
you remember Jing’s idea about using customer stories? Let's start there.
Avoid Buzzwords
Clichés
Clichés
Writers are fond of clichés because they're shortcuts to meaning. Clichés are prepackaged expressions that can be plugged into a sentence. Besides being
tiresome to readers, clichés can substitute for words that have more meaning for the intended audience.
Let's look at this problem from 30,000 feet and see if we're putting the cart before the horse.
The sentence can be edited to rid it of the clichés, but editing should replace them with words that mean something to the reader. Here's an edited version:
Let's take a broader look at the problem and ask ourselves whether we have the right priorities.
When writers have to express a negative of some kind, they can be tempted to blunt or soften it with euphemisms. Hedge words serve writers by
avoiding commitment to a point of view.
The techniques can comfort a writer afraid of the audience’s reaction to candor. But they can also lead to the bad habits of blurring the truth and evading
responsibility. And your audience may not take you seriously.
The following sentence has euphemisms and a hedge word that obstruct meaning.
Of course, in the real world, writers may choose indirect expression for a reason.
You are writing a memo to top executives about employee attitudes. Many employees are upset and fearful after several rounds of forced retirements and layoffs.
The executives need to be informed of that, but you know they will probably bristle if you are blunt.
You could be justified in using a euphemism for workforce cuts. The justification is that the audience still receives the critical information but with less
likelihood that they will direct anger at you.
Hedge words, too, can be legitimate when the content of a sentence involves real uncertainty:
Although we have only partial data, they seem to indicate customers are more sensitive to price than they have been in the past. To be completely confident
in this conclusion, I need more data.
Tone
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Tone
Tone is the writer's attitude toward the audience and the subject as conveyed through the message. Any speech, whether written or spoken, conveys some kind of
tone. You should calibrate your tone according to the purpose, audience, and topic.
Attitude has a large emotional component. Descriptions of tone use words like friendly, hostile, courteous, detached, humble, confidence, and enthusiastic. We
don't choose our feelings; we have them. But we can control how we express feelings in writing.
You want to be able to modulate your tone to help the communication. Also, tone itself is an important communication. Tone can tell the audience that you like
them or are disappointed in them.
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Tone in Writing
Tone in Writing
Oral communication gives the audience rich information to gauge tone: words, voice, and appearance of the speaker such as facial expression and body posture.
In writing, the information is much more limited. Even so, tone can be affected by almost any aspect of writing, from word choice and sentence structure to
grammar and punctuation.
Variables in a communication situation such as your relationship with the audience, status and power differences, age, organizational culture, and national
culture can shape tone.
In the message, the subject, point of view, writing style, and word choice can affect tone.
The culture of an organization can influence the tone of communication. Employees of a biotech startup will probably communicate with a more personal
and informal tone than employees in a government agency or an insurance company.
I have a fantastic double opportunity: to be CEO of the best company in the world and lead you. Joining this company was the best decision I ever
made(with the exception of asking my wife to marry me). It's been an honor to work for this company and its founder.
I'm incredibly optimistic about our future and want to assure you that we're going to keep doing what we've been doing and we're going to do it in the same
way we've been doing it. I have no desire to put my stamp on the company. In fact, it's the other way around: The company has put its stamp on me and
I'm proud of that.
Here’s an email based on one from a CEO to all employees after he had been promoted to the top job. After you read the email, click here to see highlighted
words that have an impact on tone.
I have a fantastic double opportunity: to be CEO of the best company in the world and lead you. Joining this company was the best decision I ever
made (with the exception of asking my wife to marry me). It's been an honor to work for this company and its founder.
I'm incredibly optimistic about our future and want to assure you that we're going to keep doing what we've been doing and we're going to do it in the
same way we've been doing it. I have no desire to put my stamp on the company. In fact, it's the other way around: the company has put its stamp on me
and I'm proud of that.
In this organization, personal communication is welcome. The CEO uses the first person (I) and feels comfortable expressing feelings (like “fantastic”).
Furthermore, the company culture seems to value spirit and enthusiasm ("best company in the world").
In business, a calm, respectful tone safely fits most occasions. But given the variables, there are no rules. Consider tone in your writing with these questions:
You may have trouble gauging the tone of your messages. You may have the impression that your writing always has the same tone—which is unlikely. Reading
all or part of the message out loud can be very revealing. Or ask someone to read your writing and give you feedback.
It reviews informing and persuading and illustrates how to carry them out in writing with a real-world example: a short case called “This Whole System Seems
Wrong: Felipe Montez and Concerns About the Global Supply Chain.”
Meet Felipe
Felipe is the Purchasing Director and Product Designer at a Tech Musica, a Spanish electronics company that makes “fashion-forward personal
electronics” such as MP3 players.
In the case, Felipe is Purchasing Director and Product Designer at a Spanish electronics company (Tech Musica) that makes “fashion-forward personal
electronics” such as MP3 players. Felipe has encountered a serious problem and told his boss Humberto about it, but the boss has rebuffed him.
The case ends as Felipe is deciding whether to put the problem aside or continue to pursue it. Later, after another conversation with Felipe, Humberto, who is
vice president of manufacturing, has changed his mind.
Humberto describes why he has given Felipe permission to write a memo about the problems at the Chinese factory.
Informative Writing
Informative Writing
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The module called “Planning Communication” defined the purpose of informative writing as describing or explaining an object, location, process, and many other
similar subjects. Description communicates the details, characteristics, parts, and qualities of a person, object, or other subject. Explanation complements description
by stating how or why something happens, is created, is performed, is valued, and so forth. In the business world, informative writing often combines description and
explanation.
To begin his work on the informative memo, Felipe thinks about his purpose and audience.
Felipe's purpose is to describe the labor practices and working conditions at Tech Musica's principal vendor in China, a factory in Guangdong.
Felipe is writing for his boss Humberto and asks some audience-related questions about him.
Question My Audience
Who is my audience? Humberto, my boss
What do audience members
That the factory conditions are bad but not the details.
know about the topic?
What is their attitude
Wants to know about the conditions, but uncomfortable with the problem.
toward the topic? Do they have any
No bias to prevent him from accepting the facts in the memo.
biases related to the topic?
What is their attitude
Humberto respects me. But does he trust me?
toward me?
What is my attitude
Hopeful that Humberto has an open mind.
toward the audience?
Felipe needs to think about possible barriers to communication. He knows he has a secondary audience, Estela, senior vice president of manufacturing. She
is Humberto's boss.
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Felipe then makes notes about the implications of the audience analysis for the memo.
Use your purpose to direct and guide your collection of information. To start, put down anything you think might be relevant and useful.
If you have source documents (often the case when writing an informative message), dig into them and extract whatever seems connected and important to your
purpose. Err on the side of including rather than excluding. You may need to look for source documents inside and outside the organization. The web provides
unparalleled access to traditional sources of information (newspapers, magazines, journals, reference works, government records) and web-only sources such as
blogs and websites.
Talk to people who may have pertinent information wherever they are—in your workgroup or department, elsewhere in the organization, or outside it.
Felipe took notes during his trip to China. He also emailed representatives of other companies who have visited the Guangdong factory. Their impressions
generally confirmed his.
He is ready to create a writing plan based on his notes. If he finds he needs more content, he will do research. He groups similar facts together into a rough plan.
Factory Manager
Factory manager didn't answer my question about the age of the workers.
He said girls were slower than machines, but easier to “run” and “maintain.” He was not joking.
Girls are valued for small hands, vision.
Circuit Assembly
Dormitories
Employees live in dormitories next to the factory that have no windows or running water.
Villagers say that the people who work in dangerous areas of the plant—molding and painting—are paid more because the exposure has caused
serious illness, and possibly deaths.
Some employees work around melted lead or apply lead paint.
They have only paper masks.
Felipe now considers whether he should add or subtract anything. He finds that several items could benefit from more detail. He writes questions under
the items to guide his research.
Circuit Assembly
Are there any Chinese laws against young children working in a factory? Do they matter?
Because the girls are so young, Felipe thinks the company should know if the factory is breaking labor laws.
Rooms they work in are not air-conditioned; temperatures in the factory often exceed 100 degrees.
Girls are not allowed to look up for eight hours. No breaks.
No magnifying glasses to ease the strain on their eyes.
Only rooms with air-conditioning are for machines that need a constant temperature.
Are there any laws in China against poor factory conditions for workers? Are they enforced?
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Along with employing underage workers, the factory might be breaking laws about working conditions.
I know other companies faced situations like this one. What are some examples?
Having worked in Asia, Felipe has heard stories about some U.S. companies that get into trouble for using sweatshops, but he doesn't know the details.
If the consequences were severe, then the companies must have reacted.
Villagers say that the people who work in dangerous areas of the plant—molding and painting—are paid more because the exposure has caused
serious illness and, possibly deaths.
Some employees work around melted lead or apply lead paint.
They have only paper masks.
Felipe worries that his company has ties to a vendor that may not care about potentially fatal conditions. This is the ethical point that troubles him
the most: that they might complicit in workers' deaths.
Felipe researches answers to his questions. He uses a variety of sources, including Chenfei Guo, the company’s sales representative in East Asia. He will add
what he has learned to his writing plan.
Are there any Chinese laws against young children working in a factory? Do they matter?
By law, children younger than 16 years old are not allowed to work in factories.
The law is not enforced very often. However, there is always the possibility that it will be, or that a company will have bad publicity for
tolerating vendors who treat their workers poorly.
Are there any laws in China against poor factory conditions for workers? Are they enforced?
China has laws that prohibit sweatshops. The government does not enforce the regulations consistently for many reasons, including bribery and
corruption. The laws are sometimes enforced, however, and bad publicity usually follows.
I know other companies faced situations like this one. What are some examples?
Nike, Mattel, and many other companies have received bad publicity for doing business with sweatshops.
Nike faced consumer boycotts in the 1990s and experienced large sales losses in the year after its use of sweatshops was publicized.
People still remember Nike's association with sweatshops many years after it first came to light.
Quote from a Nike executive: "[Our] initial attitude was, ‘Hey, we don't own the factories. We don't control what goes on there.' Quite frankly, that was
2
a sort of irresponsible way to approach this."
What did they do?
Most of the companies accused of using sweatshops stopped using the vendors or instituted vendor codes of conduct and factory audits.
These new efforts often cost millions of dollars.
Melted lead produces vapor. If it is inhaled, it enters the body. Short-term exposure can cause slight changes in nervous system function and muscle
and joint pain. Long-term exposure can cause memory and concentration problems, extreme fatigue, reproductive problems, kidney failure, and even
death.
Lead paint also produces vapor and has the same dangers as exposure to melted lead.
Business writers face a tradeoff: How much content is enough? How much is too much?
One benchmark is the average length of memos in your organization that have content comparable to yours. Writing a memo that is much longer or shorter than the
norm can violate the audience's expectations and trigger negative reactions. Get to know your organization's norms about the length of documents—they may be
unstated. You can please audiences by writing messages more concisely than others, but you shouldn't sacrifice critical points or nuances. At the same time, some
topics need more words to do them justice than others. In those cases, let the audience know why extra length is necessary.
Felipe's writing plan has about 600 words, and he will need more to convert the plan into paragraphs. He estimates the memo will exceed 1,000 words—longer than
comparable memos. But the topic is so vital to Tech Musica's interests that he believes the extra length will be acceptable to Humberto.
In the module called "Planning Communication," you learned two methods of ordering informative content: organic and analytical.
To review the two types of organizers, their definitions, and examples, click here:
Informative writing in business often describes a process. A key step in creating a writing plan for a process is arranging the steps in the correct order.
Look at Felipe's outline and refer to the Organic Organizers of Information. Which one do you think is best for Felipe's memo?
Felipe is telling a kind of story, a narrative of his visit, to put the reader in his shoes. Narrative order seems best. He thought about using order of importance,
but several facts have nearly equal importance. And in this situation, it isn't the individual points that matter, but the cumulative effect.
Close
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Felipe has made changes to his writing plan. He has included the points from his research and eliminated the “Factory Manager” section, moving the two
items in it to other sections. He moved the "Dormitories" section to the end because it seemed less important than the other sections.
Felipe has put the plan into outline form to make the plan's logical relationships clear.
1. Circuit Assembly
3. Dormitories
Drafting
Drafting
Felipe has taken considerable trouble to define and refine a writing plan. A reasonably settled outline or writing plan expedites writing a draft. You don't have to
keep all your points in your head or worry about what point will follow the one you're writing.
Felipe usually starts a draft at the beginning. The drawback is that it’s sometimes hard to write the introduction before writing the body of the memo. Instead,
he will start with the body. Because he has a detailed writing plan, the writing doesn’t take long.
With a draft in hand, you know what your message is and can write the opening and the conclusion.
Openings are the most important part of business writing in this sense: You want to seize readers’ attention so they are motivated to continue.
In informative writing, conclusions usher the reader out of the document. Conclusions let readers go with a final thought or worthwhile piece of information.
You don't have to grab readers with verbal pyrotechnics—colorful language and daring or provocative claims. In business, you give the audience a reason for
reading.
Informative writing describes and explains. So an opening should tell the reader what information will be delivered. The opening should address a
fundamental audience need: why audience members need the information.
Openings should also connect the new information with information the reader already knows. This isn’t always possible because you may not know what
the audience already knows about the topic. But whenever the new information can be linked to audience members’ prior knowledge, you should do it
because it improves reader comprehension and retention.
Remember that good business writing speaks to the reader directly, concisely, clearly, and logically. Your openings should have those qualities or you risk
losing readers.
Felipe's opening will define the topic of the memo: information about the employment practices and working conditions of their main Chinese vendor.
Telling Humberto why the topic should interest him requires a little more thought.
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Does Humberto want to read the memo only because he promised Felipe he would? Does he want to learn the facts and decide for himself how bad
they are?
Certainly, Humberto feels obligated to read the memo because of his promise.
But he may be experiencing some genuine doubt about his initial response of dismissing Felipe's concerns. If the situation at the plant is bad, it
could become a problem that blindsides the company—and he would be the one manager who knew about it. To be fair, Humberto may also have
concerns about the plight of the workers.
Sometimes you don't need a conclusion. In a description-explanation of a process, the process has a last step that should be obvious to the reader. A conclusion
should always have a value for the audience. It should not be a contrived summation in flowery language.
The memo could end with a dramatic summation of the more egregious facts. If Humberto were ready to march at Felipe's side, that type of ending might be a
good motivator. But Felipe has to assume his boss feels skittish and is looking for as many supporting facts as possible to take to his own boss—if Humberto
takes the problem to her.
Felipe writes a conclusion that is modest and brief. It serves a purpose—more information from respected sources—but doesn't belabor the point.
The goal of revising a draft is to improve the expression of your ideas for maximum effect on readers. In the draft stage, you engage your ideas and give them a voice
with as little filtering as possible. In the revising stage, you read from the audience's point of view. The revising stage is the pivotal moment in shifting from a private
message (one that means something to you) to a public message (one that means something to others).
Revision concentrates on the content, organization, and tone of the draft. Seeing your thinking on a computer screen or piece of paper greatly improves your ability to
work with it.
Set aside the first draft for a day or more if possible. Our brains need sleep to consolidate memories, and the break helps us look at the draft with more energy and
objectivity.
After putting it aside for a day, Felipe reviews the first draft. He notes his thoughts as he goes, including sentences that need to be deleted or rewritten.
With time pressing, a writer can feel she must finish a message as quickly as possible, and editing sentences and hunting mistakes can seem like an unnecessary delay.
Nevertheless, something is at stake: Poorly written sentences and mistakes in grammar, punctuation, and mechanics cause readers to question the writer’s
competence and credibility.
So don't skip this step or cut it short. Have a friend or colleague with good editorial skills assist you, or take another break. With just an hour or two doing something
else, you can come back to your writing and see style problems and mistakes that you were oblivious to before you stopped work.
Editing
Editing
The goal of editing is to make the writing as readable as possible. The Writing Style section of this module explains the qualities of well-written sentences. The
section includes a process for editing sentences. It can be the main tool for your editing work.
Correcting
Correcting
Some readers tolerate a few grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors and are generous to writers working in a language other than their first. Writing well in
a non-native language is very difficult, and most audiences recognize that.
However, don't assume your audience will overlook a small number of mistakes—if you don't know, ask people you work with how strict your readers are about
grammar, spelling, punctuation, and mechanics.
In any case, numerous mistakes slow readers down and can reduce their comprehension of the overall message. When a reader encounters a mistake, she performs
what reading experts call a fix-up. She determines what the word or sentence is supposed to mean. Of course, each fix-up interrupts the process of building
meaning from the message. Many fix-ups fragment the message for the reader and raise questions about the author's competence.
While working on his memo, Felipe noticed awkward-sounding sentences and mistakes—you may have spotted some of them when reading drafts. Although
Felipe stopped to work on some, he left most of them to concentrate on content and organization. Now he edits sentences and corrects mistakes.
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Persuasive Writing
Persuasive Writing
The “Planning Communication” module states that persuasive writing motivates an audience to think, feel, or act in the way the communicator intends. Persuasion
has power: It can change people’s thinking and cause them to have strong emotions and do things they might not otherwise do.
But it is up to the audience to decide whether to ally themselves with the communicator’s purpose. Persuasion often fails, but one unsuccessful attempt doesn’t
mean the communicator won’t have more opportunities to try—or eventually realize her purpose.
Businesspeople employ written persuasion for many different purposes. The examples in the diagram illustrate the primary effects of a particular use of persuasion
in business.
Using writing to persuade an audience is a more difficult and complex task than using it to inform. People will usually accept information once they understand its
significance to them. On the other hand, persuasion addresses subjects about which people disagree. As you know, when adults think or feel a certain way about a
subject, it can be hard to change their minds.
Change entails risk and risk often makes people uncomfortable or afraid. One persuasive communication often won’t overcome audience resistance, particularly
when the stakes are high. So persuasion becomes a process consisting of multiple communications.
Frequently, persuasion requires persistence. The same message—or variations of it—may have to be sent time after time. (In fact, research indicates that
persistence is an essential means for minorities to influence majorities.)
Felipe's boss, Humberto, read his informative memo and it has led to a new assignment.
Humberto describes his reaction to Felipe's informative memo on the Chinese factory.
Felipe’s informative memo created a basis for persuasion because it alerted Humberto to a potentially serious problem. Felipe’s persuasive memo is a move toward
solving it. By itself, the memo isn’t likely to reach the objective.
Ultimately, the CEO will have to be convinced, and it’s reasonable to assume that more communication, thought, and discussion will have to occur to reach that
goal—if it can be reached.
Felipe starts the new project by defining his purpose and revisiting his audience. Felipe has a bold goal in mind. He wants the company to improve conditions in
the Guangdong factory. He has a longer-term goal too: to put an internal process in place so that the situation doesn’t recur.
He can't make either purpose happen directly or immediately. He has to work through others in the company chain of command: from Humberto to Estela, and
from Estela to the CEO.
When planning the informative memo, Felipe gave a lot of thought to his audience, but he revisits the questions he used because his purpose has changed
and Estela is now part of his primary audience. This time, he has to segment the audience because Humberto and Estela have different positions in the
company and different relationships with Felipe.
Humberto thinks that the facts justify considering some kind of action, which means he is leaning toward Felipe’s desired outcome. Estela needs to know
the facts, too; therefore, he will include some of the factual content of the informative memo in his persuasive memo. Because she, as a senior executive, has
a broad perspective about the company, Felipe should consider an argument that takes her perspective into account.
Felipe’s audience is heterogeneous in terms of their knowledge and feelings. Heterogeneous audiences can be advantageous when you want to persuade them.
Among audience members with different points of view, you are more likely to find someone who agrees with you than you would among audience members
who are homogeneous in their thinking. Allies in the audience can amplify your message and persuade other audience members.
Question Audience
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Who is my audience? Humberto, and his boss, Estela
What do audience
members know about the Humberto knows the facts of the factory problem, but Estela doesn't.
topic?
Humberto's awareness of the real risks for the company has made him uneasy.
Humberto is supporting my opinion now and that may cause Estela to be more open
than Humberto was initially. She has two girls and may feel strongly about
What is their attitude
underage labor.
toward the topic? Do they
have any biases related to
Possible barrier to communication: Representative bias
the topic?
Both Humberto and Estela might believe that suggestions for improvements at
the factory must be expensive because upgrades in a factory often are.
Humberto believes I am credible—I have concrete facts to support my concern.
What is their attitude
Possible barrier to communication: Estela's attitude toward me
toward me?
She may feel I'm trying to save the world at company expense.
What is I respected Humberto before and more so now. I don’t have strong feelings
my attitude toward the
about Estela, but she has a good reputation as a manager who listens.
audience?
As he did before, Felipe considers whether there are any barriers to communication or secondary audiences?
Question Audience
Who is my audience? No secondary audience
Possible barrier to communication
What is their attitude toward the
topic? Do they have any biases Both Humberto and Estela could have an anchoring bias. They may think that our
related to the topic? cost numbers after we cut out the middleman define success, forgetting that we
were making a good profit with somewhat higher costs.
Possible barrier to communication
What is their attitude toward
me? Estela knows me largely by reputation and is very pleased by the money I have saved
the company recently.
Example: Felipe's Next Assignment (Continued)
Here's Felipe's thinking that takes into account his analysis of the audience.
Creating persuasion involves appeals to reason, emotion, and character. The goal is to take the best possible advantage of these three resources in a message.
Reason is the primary tool of persuasion in business because businesspeople prefer rational choices grounded in factual evidence. Emotions play a strong role, too—a
role that business audiences very often underestimate. Much work in different disciples, from psychology and neuroscience to economics, has come to the same
conclusion: Our rationality isn't as rational as it is commonly assumed to be. Nevertheless, to be skilled at persuasion in business, you have to be particularly skilled in
reasoning.
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Using Argument to Persuade
Arguments use reason to prove that a conclusion is likely to be true. Why "likely to be true" instead of "true"? Even in science, proof of unequivocal truth is hard
to come by. In business, data are never perfect or complete, and many contingencies are in play.
A decision, for example, is a kind of prediction about the future. Because the future is always uncertain, we can’t say that the decision will without doubt have the
desired result. The history of business is littered with choices that seemed to be well reasoned and turned out to be completely, and often expensively, wrong.
But we don’t have a better tool than rational argument, and, if used carefully and critically, it can have results that are better than rolling the dice or going only
with gut feelings.
Diagnosis
Evaluation
Decision
Each type of argument has a characteristic organization that can be used for writing. The templates define the parts of decision, evaluation, and diagnosis
arguments. You can use blank templates to plan arguments for a written message or a presentation.
Felipe developed a significant amount of factual content for his informative memo that is potential evidence. First, however, he has to have an argument
that can use the evidence.
Felipe shares his thinking about the main criteria for his decision argument.
Felipe uses the questions introduced in "Planning Communication" to start developing an argument. His notes are underneath the questions.
I want the audience, Humberto and Estela, to advocate a decision to improve conditions in the Guangdong factory. So I’ll be writing a decision
argument.
The heart of a decision argument is criteria—that’s what you build the argument around.
Ethics: This criterion means the most to me but may not to members of the audience. It’s a powerful argument but not enough to persuade an
executive audience.
Legal liability: I learned about this writing the first memo.
Marketing: I know that other companies have suffered from disclosures about their supply chain. I will ask our marketing department what they
think the impact would be on us.
Costs: Production costs may not be at the top of my list as a criterion, but they are for senior managers. They have to take it very seriously to
protect employees and shareholders—I respect that. Of special concern is our reliance on Chinese companies for a high-quality, low-cost
supply chain. Without it we can’t compete in the hypercompetitive consumer electronics industry.
I have evidence for most of the criteria but need more on marketing and costs.
Ethics: Underage workers and toxic exposure—I have enough evidence for this criterion.
Legal liability: I can use the facts in my informative memo about underage labor and working conditions.
Marketing: If it can happen to Nike, it can happen to us. I have evidence to make that analogy work. But I need evidence from the marketing
department because I’m not an expert.
Costs: What I need here is an estimate of costs for making relatively small changes to conditions in the short term and larger changes down the
road. I need to talk to our manufacturing group or possibly someone outside who has the right expertise. In addition, I need to show that I’m
not suggesting anything that will undermine our competitiveness.
One advantage of knowing the type of argument is that you can use the template early in the writing process as the basis for a writing plan. Felipe uses "Template:
Decision Argument" to think about the factory issue as a subject of persuasion.
Business arguments need to be backed by evidence. An argument is no better than the evidence that grounds it in reality. By providing facts and connecting them
to the argument, you invite the audience to verify it for themselves.
First, though, you need to find the evidence. Never before has the individual had such easy access to information, thanks to technology. But remember that evidence is
more than information: It is information or data that can be clearly linked to an argument that backs a conclusion.
Felipe did research to strengthen the weak spots he found when making notes on his decision criteria.
He talked to two marketing managers and then the senior vice president for marketing. The VP was alarmed by Felipe’s account of the factory. He noted that
demographics and psychographics don’t predict socially conscious buying very well, but their customers were heavy users of the Internet and social media. It
was hard to say whether news organizations or advocacy groups would show any interest in a single Chinese factory. But if the news made it to the Internet, it
would spread quickly on the web.
The vice president also noted that bad news about a company’s values and behavior was more influential on buying decisions than good news. Complicity in bad
labor practices, especially ignoring the use of child labor and disregarding worker safety, could be devastating to the reputation of the company.
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Example: Felipe's Persuasive Memo (Continued)
Felipe also had conversations with a member of the manufacturing group. She was very helpful. She found some Chinese suppliers on the web and got
estimates for items that could improve the working conditions at the factory: magnifying glasses, masks and clothing for working around lead, and air
conditioning. The cost of these items was modest.
With the additional evidence gained from research, Felipe creates an initial writing plan.
We need to respond to the discovery of underage workers and poor working conditions at the Guangdong factory of our principal Chinese vendor.
3. State My Recommendation
Our company needs to improve labor practices and working conditions at the factory of our main Chinese vendor.
Ethics
Legal liability
Marketing
Costs
Ethics
Description of factory labor practices and poor and dangerous working conditions
Vendor violating our ethical values
Legal liability
Laws against child labor, sweatshop conditions
Risk of enforcement and bad publicity
Lawsuits
Marketing
Loss of sales
Bad publicity spreads on Internet
Customers sensitive to abuses
If customers abandon us, brand is damaged
Analogy: Nike
Mention that marketing department supports argument
In the long run, use ethics to enhance our brand?
Costs
Have saved up to 30 percent on outsourced manufacturing
Use some of savings from eliminating middleman
Can keep cost of improving conditions low
Better working conditions should result in better efficiency
Do nothing.
7. Conclusion
After reviewing the writing plan, Felipe doesn't think he needs more factual information because he compiled so much for the first memo. This may not be
the case for many persuasive memos you write. You'll ask questions similar to those Felipe asked for the writing plan of the informative memo.
Felipe did make some changes to the plan during his review, including an idea for the conclusion, and he made a few notes about writing the draft. Here are
the changes he made to the plan.
Legal liability
Marketing
Costs
Ethics
Marketing
Loss of sales
Bad publicity -> spreads on Internet
Customers knowledgeable, sensitive to abuses
Buy from competitors
Ethics
Underage workers
Poor and dangerous working conditions
To make the ethics part of the argument convincing, I have to tell Estela about the factory conditions, as I did in my first memo to Humberto.
Where in the memo do I put a description of the factory?
Change vendors.
Do nothing.
7. Conclusion
Close
Previous
Next
Reset Exercise
Building Arguments
Building Arguments
An argument's essential elements are a conclusion and the evidence that backs it up.
The work of building an argument largely consists of developing the evidence that will convince your audience to accept your conclusion. The templates for decision,
evaluation, and diagnosis arguments guide the search for evidence. For instance, a decision criterion for a proposed project—its Net Present Value—tells you the
kind of evidence you need. You have to collect information relevant to the NPV formula and make the calculation.
Facts
Inferences
Opinions
Assumptions
Using Facts
Using Facts
Business arguments rest on facts, the gold standard of business persuasion. For an argument to be persuasive, however, the audience must believe the facts
can be trusted.
On Felipe’s outline, ethics is the first criterion. Felipe could use a generalization, saying that his company could be ethically compromised because its vendor
uses underage workers and maintains bad working conditions. However, the facts, such as ages of workers in the plant and the details of the conditions they
work under, are more convincing than a summary statement.
Using Inferences
Using Inferences
One of Felipe's criteria is marketing, and his major argument is that labor abuses in the supply chain can lead to a loss of sales for the company.
Logically, though, it's a long way from labor problems to loss of sales. To convince his audience, he needs to show how they connect.
Criterion: Marketing
Labor abuses around the world are frequently exposed; information is distributed via the Internet and social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.
Our customers are heavy users of the Internet, and social media.
They learn of abuses in our vendor's factory. They may be sensitive enough to labor practice issues to change their buying behavior.
They buy from another company.
We lose sales.
Using Opinions
Using Opinions
A common form of evidence in business is opinions, usually of experts. Another term for this is argument from authority. Depending on the stature of
the experts, their opinion can be compelling. (Of course, experts can be wrong.)
In his persuasive memo, Felipe will state that the senior vice president for marketing agrees that a disclosure about poor treatment of workers could hurt
sales. The senior vice president’s statement strengthens the argument. So, too, will the Nike executive's quotation. The executive has authority because of his
experience dealing with a comparable crisis.
Using Assumptions
Using Assumptions
Every argument ultimately rests on assumptions, as the "Planning Communication" module shows. When used in persuasion, arguments must have
assumptions acceptable to the audience. Otherwise, the argument will very likely fail to convince. It's wise, then, for writers to evaluate the assumptions of their
major arguments.
Because people have different values, Felipe realizes that he should understand the assumptions of his ethical arguments. His ethics arguments are:
Ethics Argument 1
Our vendor uses child labor.
Our vendor is violating our ethical values.
Assumption
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Ethics Argument 2
Our vendor exposes unprotected workers to toxic materials.
Our vendor is violating our ethical values.
Assumption
Any vendor exposing unprotected workers to toxic materials violates our ethical values.
But he also knows that people may agree that the vendor is violating their ethical values but disagree over whether to do anything about it. For some
people, the ethical argument could be persuasive on its own. For others, however, additional arguments will be needed. Fortunately, Felipe has them: legal
liability, marketing, and cost.
Skilled writers stimulate feelings that assist in persuading the audience and, sometimes, inhibit feelings that work against persuasion.
Because persuasion in business relies on rational argument, the writer attempts to align audience emotion with the argument.
How does a writer evoke emotion in a business audience? Facts can create feelings such as when someone yells "Fire!" (see the graphic). The same type of
reaction can happen in a business meeting.
Everyone in a meeting is likely to have an emotional reaction to the fact statement about losing customers (see the graphic). The words aren’t a direct emotional
appeal like, "We should all be terrified that our customers are leaving." The individual stated a fact—a fact that registers both rationally and emotionally.
Proof, according to this manager, speaks to the emotions of an audience as well as their minds.
Emotional Proof
Emotional Proof
Sometimes written language does have a primarily emotional function. Say that a manager sends a memo to an underperforming team. At the end, she writes,
“You can do it!” The primary function is to make team members feel more confident.
People have scientifically proven emotional levers, and communicators can employ them for persuasion.
In his article, "Harnessing the Science of Persuasion," Robert B. Cialdini has identified six levers:
Social proof may be the engine that powered social media to the heights of popularity they now enjoy—and, in the case of Facebook, with some assistance from
liking. An entire generation of young people flocked to social sites in part because their friends did.
Businesses liberally use social proof. Amazon's "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" section of product pages and customer reviews both seek to
take advantage of peer influence.
People’s deference to authority is used in countless ways. In television commercials, doctors recommend health-related products and athletes endorse sports
products, for example.
Sometimes lowering the temperature of feelings constitutes an emotional proof. Say that a CEO has invested many millions in a project that has produced
nothing the company can sell. He can invest several more millions in this project or in a new project that has a far better chance of being profitable.
If you were recommending a decision to invest in the new project, you might say that the old project taught the company worthwhile lessons that it can apply to
the new one. By finding value in the old project and avoiding any criticism of it, you steer feelings in a positive direction that is favorable to your
recommendation.
Felipe has several sources of emotional proof that he can use in his persuasive message:
1. The description of child labor and the workers exposed to dangerous materials and the analogy to Nike have great potential to evoke distress, anger, and
anxiety—feelings favorable to Felipe's purpose. Felipe has other arguments with emotional potential. Arguing the possibility of legal liability and the erosion
of customers, sales, and brand integrity should have emotional repercussions, possibly quite strong ones, for audience members. Again, the likely emotions
should cause Felipe's audience to be more responsive to his recommendation.
2. Felipe has authority no one else in Tech Musica possesses: He spent time in the Guangdong factory.
3. Citing Nike and Apple invokes social proof. Tech Musica is a far smaller company, but it competes with Apple and, like both Nike and Apple, is a western
company taking advantage of low manufacturing costs in China. Their actions to protect worker welfare are "proof" that other companies should do the same.
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Exercise: Using Cialdini's Emotional Levers
Persuasion can depend on character to “prove” a conclusion. A television public service announcement used a series of celebrities—movie actresses,
musicians, famous chefs, and athletes—to persuade viewers to join an environmental campaign. The announcement said very little about the purpose or
benefits of the campaign, banking instead on the audience's favorable attitudes toward the celebrities to win recruits.
When putting forward a business-related opinion, communicators have been known to depend primarily on character to persuade an audience. In February 2008,
Ben S. Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve System, provided a somewhat grim picture of the U.S. economy, but came to the following conclusion: “the baseline
2
outlook envisions an improving picture . . .” The audience was reassured by the conclusion not because of the argument laid out in the written statement, but
because of their confidence in the communicator and his authority.
The module called “Planning Communication” identifies two components of character in business communication: knowledge and credibility.
Knowledge
Knowledge
The audience's conviction that the writer is knowledgeable about the topic is mandatory for persuasion. It helps to have a halo—a preexisting audience belief that
the writer has the required knowledge. But the halo can be perishable. Each message must confirm that the communicator can address the topic with authority.
High-quality argument
A sound argument and transparent evidence give an audience confidence in the writer.
Relevant knowledge
As a sign of competence, audiences pay attention to the writer's command of relevant knowledge. If you want to be taken seriously, you must have the
knowledge that the audience considers necessary to draw conclusions about the subject.
High-quality writing
Well-written persuasion has multiple effects, and one effect is the favorable response it elicits from audiences. Audiences may not be conscious of it, but as
they read, they evaluate the writer behind the message. A writer doesn't need brilliant insight to impress readers. A message that is direct, concise, clear,
and logical reflects well on the writer.
There is an interplay between the clarity of your writing and the audience's perception of your character.
Credibility
Credibility
A writer substantiates credibility in numerous ways. Here are just a few of them:
Transparent evidence
Transparency of evidence means that readers know where your evidence comes from and can confirm or, in the case of calculations, duplicate it.
Your evidence comes from or is based on sources the audience trusts, such as company documents or external sources such as well-known business
databases.
Someone the audience respects supports your point of view or the usefulness of communicating it.
Objectivity
You don't betray a bias toward a particular point of view. You earn it with a convincing argument.
Felipe has a crucial character asset: He has saved Tech Musica a great deal of money. Everyone knows that and has esteem for him.
He can build on that strong base with a strong argument, knowledge relevant to the situation the company finds itself in, and skilled writing.
Felipe isn't an expert on marketing or dealing with troubles in the supply chain. To compensate, he can "borrow" the expertise of the senior vice president
of marketing and the Nike executive.
The templates for organizing persuasive arguments help plan the content and organization of a message.
As a planning tool, the templates tell the writer the types of content needed for an argument. As an organizing tool, templates guide the writer in arranging
the argument in a logical order.
Readers like predictability in the organization of a written message and dislike unpredictability. Structure helps readers make predictions about what will
come next in the text, to locate key ideas, and to remember what they have read as they progress through a message.
Felipe takes a final look at the writing plan and makes choices about the criteria and the conclusion.
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My Persuasive Memo: Criteria
Now I have to make a final decision on the order of the criteria. I'm wondering whether to put costs first because it's going to be the first thing on Estela's mind—
and the CEO's if this issue gets that far. But I can't make a strong argument about cost without first showing the marketing consequences of the problem—we
will pay a high financial cost for lost customers and brand integrity.
The marketing argument has to come before the costs argument. The argument about legal liability can come after marketing because it's less likely to occur
and would probably have less financial impact on the company than the marketing problem.
I have ethics as the first criterion and I'm going to keep it there. First, it provides the platform for describing the factory labor practices and working
conditions, which have to be established to make the other arguments work. Second, it may be the easiest argument to make. I'm nearly certain that Humberto
and Estela will both agree with the assumptions about ethics I teased out earlier.
Here's his complete writing plan. At this point, it has a lot of detail, which should allow Felipe to write the draft quickly.
We need to respond to the discovery of underage workers and poor working conditions at the Guangdong factory of our principal Chinese vendor.
3. State My Recommendation
Our company needs to improve labor practices and working conditions at the factory of our main Chinese vendor.
Ethics
Marketing
Legal liability
Costs
Ethics
Description of factory labor practices and poor and dangerous working conditions
Vendor violating our ethical values
Marketing
Loss of sales
Labor abuses around the world are frequently exposed; information is distributed on the Internet and social media like Twitter,
Facebook, and Tumblr.
Our customers are heavy users of the Internet, and social media.
They learn of abuses in our vendor's factory. They may be sensitive enough to labor practice issues to change their buying behavior.
If they buy from competitors, our brand is damaged.
We lose sales.
Analogy: Nike
Marketing department supports argument
In long run, use ethics to enhance our brand?
Legal liability
Laws against child labor, sweatshop conditions
Risk of enforcement and bad publicity
Lawsuits
Costs
Have saved up to 30 percent on outsourced manufacturing
Change vendors.
Do nothing.
7. Conclusion
Quote of the Nike executive: Not responding to poor working conditions in supply chain is irresponsible.
Drafting
Drafting
When you write a draft of a persuasive message, attending to logical argument, audience feelings, and the representation of your character is too much to do at
the same time. The solution is to separate these tasks.
First, write the argument. Let it be the focus in the first draft. Second, as you revise, look for opportunities to embed in the message emotion and
positive impressions of you.
Like an informative message, a persuasive message should open with a brief description of the issue and why it's important. In addition, at or near the
beginning, the writer's conclusion about the issue should be stated. The type of conclusion depends on the argument template used:
Nevertheless, cultural factors can trump stating the conclusion first. A given culture might not follow the norms of U.S. business English.
The culture might favor gradually leading the reader to the conclusion or not want the writer to state it explicitly anywhere in the message, leaving the reader to
infer it. You must work with the norms of the audience, not try to impose norms on them.
Felipe thinks that the opening paragraph he wrote for the draft introduces the issue clearly and concisely. He mulls over adding a second paragraph to the
opening about the Nike situation.
A principle of reading is that explicit connections to readers' prior knowledge aid their comprehension and retention. Relating your message to what
readers already know enhances the ease with which they understand it and helps them to remember it for longer periods of time.
A principle of reading is that explicit connections to readers’ prior knowledge aid their comprehension and retention. Relating your message to what
readers already know enhances the ease with which they understand it and helps them to remember it for longer periods of time. Estela and Humberto
should both remember the Nike situation and similar recent experiences such as Apple’s.
What is the final thought you want to leave with the reader?
The reader isn’t going to remember many of the details of your message, which is why a written message can be so useful. Writing was the first portable memory
device, a permanent record that the audience can consult whenever necessary. Even so, the end of a message is a chance to “bookmark” it in the audience's
memory.
A vivid restatement of the conclusion can come in the form of a quotation, a positive comment about the future, an analogy or metaphor—these are a few
ideas for ending a persuasive message on a memorable note.
A conclusion can be used to summarize the message. The traditional advice about business communication is:
Tell them what you're going to do, do it, and tell them what you just did.
This formula can yield boring messages, but the final part of it is useful when a persuasive message is long or complicated. Concisely summarizing an
argument helps the reader retain a memory of it.
For the conclusion, Felipe has saved a quotation from a Nike executive that he used in the informative memo. The quotation says what Felipe can't: that
disavowing any connection to the problem is irresponsible. Saying it would make Felipe look arrogant and presumptuous. The words of a manager who dealt
with a similar situation have immediate authority and credibility.
As Felipe was preparing to finish the second draft, he receives two more communications.
An assistant to the factory owner who speaks English sends Felipe an email on behalf of the owner. The owner has heard that Felipe had concerns about his
factory. He insists that Felipe does not understand China or Chinese workers. The workers don't mind the factory conditions or need to be coddled like western
workers. The owner is contacting the CEO of Tech Musica to demand that someone more experienced than Felipe manage the relationship with the factory.
Felipe hasn't talked about his concerns with anyone at the vendor and had no idea how the owner had learned about them. If the owner contacts the CEO,
Felipe is afraid the CEO will think that he is pursuing the issue on his own, without authorization from Tech Musica management. To avoid a hit to his
credibility, he will have to say something in the memo to make clear that he hasn't taken matters into his own hands.
An agent for another Chinese factory owner schedules a Skype conference. Felipe has visited this factory, which makes parts for some of their MP3 players.
The agent says the owner is building a new plant and wants all of Tech Musica’s manufacturing business. He can guarantee a lower price than any of their
other Chinese vendors—and “a nice factory with many worker comforts.” Felipe remembers that the conditions at this plant were somewhat better than those
at Guangdong.
The owner’s email message discourages Felipe. The owner’s complaints might make the CEO harder to convince. The Skype presentation suggests to Felipe
that others also know his worries about the vendor in China. That could lead to more attempts to contact Tech Musica’s senior executives before Felipe finishes
the memo.
And soon he hears from another individual, a friend of his in Tech Musica’s manufacturing group. He texts the following message to Felipe:
Better to start with new vendor. Easier, maybe cheaper than trying to change Guangdong factory.
Felipe wonders about his friend’s motivation. Is he worried that wrangling with the current vendor will disrupt production schedules and cause delays?
Felipe realizes he no longer controls the issue and needs to finish his memo soon to avoid being drowned out or preempted.
Felipe's revision notes call for many changes in the draft—far more than he anticipated. The process of sifting through potential revisions and using some of
them to guide the rewriting entailed a lot of work; nevertheless, he believes the memo is better for it.
Read the second draft of Felipe's persuasive memo. When you finish, explore the changes that have been made. The most noteworthy revisions are highlighted.
Here are key points about revising presented previously in the course:
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Felipe's memo is very important to him and to the future of Tech Musica. Feedback from others can be very instructive input for revising. It can be frustrating
if the feedback is cursory, unconstructive, or requires a major reworking of the draft.
Felipe sends his draft to a friend in the company, Chenfei Guo, the Tech Musica sales representative who covers East Asia. Even though she isn't part of
the intended audience, Felipe thinks she can provide knowledgeable feedback. She replies in an email.
To: Felipe
From: Chenfei
Subject: Feedback on your memo
A tough issue—I think you make a pretty good case. I do not like to see 12-year-old girls working in a factory or workers' health endangered.
We should do something—agreed. But take a look at the issue from the other side. We tell the factory owners that we want low costs—we say cut, cut, cut.
What do the owners do? Cut corners. I do not like the corners they cut, but I understand why they do it.
Suppliers in China compete hard to keep customers. Companies outsourcing to China walk away from vendors when they get slightly lower costs somewhere
else. No such thing as loyalty! So again, owners believe they have to lower costs any way they can.
Chenfei
Felipe has written what he thinks is a good draft but now has input from Chenfei that he thinks can’t be ignored.
When Felipe sent the draft to Chenfei, he didn’t expect her to change his view of the issue. Now, in addition to her feedback, he has an angry factory owner, an
agent possibly trying to take advantage of the situation, and a friend with a different opinion about what to do.
Editing sentences and correcting mistakes are the final steps in making a written message ready for the audience. This work can be tedious and writers often hurry
through it because of a looming deadline.
But editing and correcting are worth doing right. Confused sentences slow the reader down, and grammar mistakes and other errors such as misspellings
rapidly erode your credibility.
Felipe paid some attention to sentence editing when he was revising, but he is going to take a last look at sentences to make sure they are clear, concise, and
grammatical. One mistake he will be alert for is his tendency to put a comma between two sentences instead of a period or semicolon.
He'll run the spell check tool and then carefully read the final draft for mistakes spell check doesn't flag, punctuation, and mechanics such as
correct capitalization.
Felipe talks about Humberto's and Estela's reaction to his persuasive memo and the next step he needs to take.
Looking back, Felipe is amazed at the amount of work he's put into the memo. He anticipated making a quick outline and largely recycling the content of the
informative memo. The facts accumulated for the first memo were crucial to the second memo, too, but outlining the argument, filling it in, and making the
many adjustments to it took far more time than he expected.
His changing sense of the topic and audience drove most of the unanticipated work. His colleague Chenfei opened the door to another dimension of the
problem —the long-term effects of relentless cost cutting—that he was unaware of. The factory owner, agent, and his colleague from manufacturing had less
impact than Chenfei, but they made Felipe realize that the situation he was writing about was changing even as he wrote about it. That spurred him to finish the
memo quickly.
A simple action plan involving only a few steps might not be written down, but for a longer plan, writing is necessary so that the audience can vet it and people
can follow it accurately.
Action Plans
In the late 1990s, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a new safety standard for all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) to cut the number of children injured or killed
while operating them. Manufacturers like Honda had to write action plans laying out the steps they would take to comply with the new regulation.
Without manufacturer action plans, the new safety standard would have no effect on the problem it was designed to solve.
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Informative Communication as Action Plans
Informative Communication as Action Plans
Two types of informative communication can be action plans: information organized as a chronology or as a process. Here are examples of chronological
and process communication that deliver action plans.
Let’s say that you are a project manager and you are writing an action plan for complying with the ATV standards mentioned earlier. The goal of the plan is to
meet the new safety standards. It will consist of a series of actions in chronological order.
February 12
July 1
An example of a process is an internal audit. A company manual outlines the process, beginning with these steps:
Business arguments have consequences for action. The three types of argument—diagnosis, decision, and evaluation—provide the basis for different types
of actions.
Traffic engineers monitor the accident rates of roads and intersections, and perform safety analyses of intersections where an unusual number of accidents occur.
If they find that the increase in accidents isn’t random, they write a diagnosis of the causes.
When the engineers understand the causes, they can correct them. Their action will improve safety. The priority work is aimed at the causes most responsible for
the elevated accident rate, for example, removing obstructions that block the view of a traffic sign. A longer-term action is a redesign of the intersection
requiring significant construction work.
Felipe’s persuasive memo convinced Humberto and Estela. Neither Felipe nor Humberto knew that Estela had started to worry two years earlier about the
factory. She had asked the company’s former middleman questions about factory conditions and received only vague assurances that there were no problems.
Before she turns the memo over to the CEO, Miguel, and meets with him, Estela asks Felipe to write an action plan that implements the decision.
In the absence of a formal plan, the company would be less likely to improve the situation because actions wouldn't be targeted at specific goals or
might duplicate or interfere with each other. In a worst-case scenario, the company might not act at all without a blueprint to follow.
Goals
Relevant content
Specific actions
Chronological order
Goals
Goals
An action plan is like any other communication: It needs a purpose. Action plan goals summarize its purpose. A way to think about the goals is to imagine
the major features of the outcome or end state you want to achieve.
Action plan goals should address all of the important issues in the argument. A few broader goals are better than a large number of narrower ones. Many
small goals make an action plan harder to write and cause the plan to become unfocused.
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Stop child labor as soon as possible.
Look for other vendors.
Stop exposure to toxic chemicals.
Improve other working conditions.
Protect our company from bad publicity.
Keep costs to our company low.
Create a vendor code of conduct.
The list includes actions as well as goals, and Felipe crosses off the actions, leaving these goals:
Stopping exposure to toxic materials and stopping the use of child labor are the most urgent goals. Improving other working conditions can take place
gradually, and creating a vendor code of conduct requires time to write, receive approval from senior management, and implement.
Relevant Content
Relevant Content
Each step of an action plan consists of relevant content. Relevance is determined by the content of the argument.
Let’s return to the example of the traffic safety engineers. As mentioned previously, one of their jobs is monitoring accident rates at intersections and
diagnosing causes when they find an abnormally high number of accidents.
An action plan provides the path to fixing the causes of a dangerous intersection. The plan should correct the causes, such as the hedge that blocks the view of
northbound drivers turning left. On the other hand, it should not include actions that have nothing to do with the causes, such as replacing cement curbs
with granite.
Felipe’s decision argument has four criteria: ethics, marketing, legal liability, and cost. The content of his argument provides a foundation for action:
Ethics
Allowing a vendor to use child labor and expose workers to potentially fatal materials is ethically repellent to Felipe and his audience. Therefore, the
action plan should have steps to eliminate both practices as soon as possible.
Marketing
Association with child labor and dangerous working conditions adds up to a potential marketing disaster in the Internet age. This reinforces the need
to eliminate or improve the conditions.
Legal Liability
Using child labor is against the law in China. Even if the local authorities choose not to enforce the law, the company can be seen as complicit in legal
violations. Tech Musica needs to tell the factory owner that he must replace underage employees.
Cost
Despite the power of the arguments developed with the other criteria, the company can't spend huge sums. Felipe's action plan has to be realistic about the
costs the company can bear and propose low-cost, high-impact changes.
Specific Actions
Specific Actions
The action plan steps describe actions. Each step answers these three questions:
An action plan isn't helpful if the steps are vaguely written. A step should tell an audience what they need to know in order to carry it out.
But this statement doesn't say how the hazard will be eliminated. To make the statement more meaningful, he should provide details like these:
We need to tell the factory owner that certain practices have to be changed as soon as possible to keep our business. Estela and I should meet with
him to deliver that message and explain that our ethical values are being violated and we are risking a marketing disaster that could do great
damage to our business.
We also need to tell him that our most urgent priority is providing the proper protection to everyone who works around molten lead and lead paint.
We can provide financial assistance to buy the necessary equipment.
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Writing a draft of an action plan involves two distinct dimensions:
To ease the drafting of a plan, don't try to do both at the same time. Break the work into a series of steps:
Here are some steps that Felipe writes down related to the first goal: Stop exposure to toxic chemicals and the use of child labor.
Note: when Felipe writes his final draft, he will use the third person ("Felipe") instead of the first person ("I") because the plan is written for all of
the participants included in the plan. For example, the members of the team writing a vendor code of conduct might be confused about who "I" is.
Estela notifies the plant owner that we urgently need to meet with him about factory working conditions.
I will make a list of factory problems that can be corrected quickly without major expense. I will ask manufacturing to help estimate costs to be sure they
are reasonable.
I will travel to Guangdong and meet with the owner at his office. Estela can't take the time to travel to China, so she can participate through Skype.
Tell the owner that certain practices must be changed as soon as possible to keep our business. Our ethical values are being violated, and we risk
a marketing disaster. Also, we can't be complicit in breaking Chinese laws.
Our most urgent priority is providing the proper protection to everyone who works around molten lead and lead paint. We are willing to
subsidize protective gear for endangered workers. (I need cost estimates from manufacturing or a vendor of protective equipment.)
Chronological Order
Chronological Order
Action plans are called plans instead of lists for a reason: They provide step-by-step directions that people can follow. That means argument-based action
plans must be in chronological order.
Splitting the plan into short-term and long-term steps assists in coordinating the steps in time, prompting the writer to decide which steps should
be completed soon and which should be completed later.
urgent;
easy; and
necessary for long-term steps.
Felipe sees that his goals should indicate when they can be achieved. Here are his thoughts on timing.
Now Felipe arranges the steps in his action plan draft in chronological order. He starts with the most urgent actions and ends with those that will take
the most time to accomplish.
Felipe's memo and action plan went to the CEO, who agreed that the problem was real and consequential. But Felipe fears that he is dragging his feet;
conversations among the senior executives continue, but nothing has been announced. The marketing group has been telling the CEO that media reports about
the factory could appear at any time.
Nevertheless, Felipe's communication has put the issue on the table and shaped the discussion about it. The traditional view of persuasion measures it as either
succeeding or failing to gain the intended audience effect. By that measure, Felipe's memo has not succeeded because it hasn't yet won over the ultimate
decision maker in the situation, the CEO. But in the real world of business, Felipe understands that persuasion often works slowly and incrementally.
He has high hopes but can't be sure the company will accept his conclusion about the Guangdong factory. Nevertheless, he's done something important for Tech
Musica simply by bringing the issue into the open and, through his memo, giving his colleagues a basis for talking about it.
Email Texting
Instant Facebook
Wikis
Messaging Tumblr
Blogs
Twitter
4
The use of these media has exploded. According to recent estimates , each day the digital communication of an average user includes
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115 business emails (not including spam messages) received each day;
53 instant messages (IMs) sent or received each day;
10 texts received or sent each day;
3 Facebook updates each day; and
Less than 1 Tweet each day.
These numbers don't completely represent the volume of digital communication. In 2012, 400 million people used Facebook each day. Social networking sites
such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and similar web services continue to attract users, so usage should grow. Business use of social media is a factor in their
growth.
Email
Email
Email has become the basic medium of business communication worldwide. By 2013, an estimated 1.9 billion people will use email. In a globalized
business world, email is indispensible for communicating across time zones.
Entrepreneur and executive Elisabeth Bentel Carpenter shares her thoughts on email communication and far-flung teams.
Strengths
Strengths
Email has five essential strengths for businesses—it is fast, simple, asynchronous, portable, and efficient.
Fast
Messages can be sent and received quickly, essentially instantaneously. Because messages are often short, recipients can read them quickly.
Simple
Asynchronous
A message can be sent anywhere in the world, no matter how large the time difference is.
Portable
Cellphones, tablets, and other portable devices can run email applications, making email communication possible anywhere, anytime.
Efficient
Many email messages are short and do away with “telephone tag,” allowing people to communicate when they aren't in the same room at the same time.
With email, it is as though people are always in the same room!
Weaknesses
Weaknesses
Email has weaknesses that companies are now starting to recognize. For senders, the weaknesses have implications for writing.
Some topics need longer messages. The short form medium can encourage a writer to condense the message, leaving out crucial content.
Hasty Writing
Email stimulates a feeling of urgency in users, encouraging them to write hastily. That may be why so many emails are badly written and full of errors.
Digital Disinhibition
Psychologists have confirmed that people are vulnerable to what they call digital disinhibition when using email. The term means saying things in an
email that the writer would never say if the recipient were physically present.
People are wired to monitor one another's reactions and to adjust facial expression, body, gestures, and speech. People receive none of that information
when composing an email message. As a result it's easy for writers to say things they later regret.
The writer of the following message was in a hurry. He needed the help of his colleague Lora in a vital meeting later that day. Imagine that you received the
email. How would you read it?
To: Lora
From: Jon
Subject: Team meeting today
Lora could read the terse email as implying Jon didn’t trust her to be on time. With a little forethought, Jon could have written a message with no potential
for misunderstanding.
To: Lora
From: Jon
Subject: Team meeting today
I really need you at today’s meeting. You’ll be the most knowledgeable person in the room. Thank you very much for taking the time to be present.
The following email message is based on a real message that a CEO sent to all managers in a company. The message was leaked to the media and
the company became embroiled in a public controversy that included a decline in share price and unhappy shareholders.
We are getting less than 40 hours of work from a large number of our EMPLOYEES. The parking lot is sparsely used at 8 a.m.; likewise at 5 p.m. As
managers, you either do not know what your EMPLOYEES are doing or you do not CARE. In either case, you have a problem and you will fix it or I
will replace you.
The first sentence of the message makes an accusation. It is also the conclusion of an argument. The second sentence states the evidence for
the conclusion.
Capital letters in an email are the written equivalent of shouting.
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This sentence is the evidence for the argument. The CEO assumes that if few cars are in the parking lot at the times he cites, employees are
not working full days. Do you agree with his logic?
The message ends with an accusation and threat. The CEO would probably find it harder to accuse and threaten if he were meeting with the managers.
Emails should have the qualities of any business writing: directness, conciseness, clarity, and logic. A short form medium heightens the importance of
the qualities.
This course has emphasized the strong competition in business for people's time and attention. Your recipient may receive a hundred or more business-
related messages a day, but you want yours to be read.
1. Write a short subject line stating the main point of the message. Think of the subject line as a headline.
2. State your purpose or conclusion immediately.
3. Write concisely.
4. Use short sentences and paragraphs.
5. Create emphasis through content, not visual devices.
6. Check the tone of the message.
If your message is going to be long, you are better off putting it in a document and sending it as an attachment, using the email to describe the attachment
and encourage the recipient to open it.
Avni Patel Thompson asks herself a series of questions before she clicks "Send."
Resist the urge to write an important message and send it immediately. Email applications are poor tools for composing because the interface is full of
distractions and the long list of messages creates pressure to work as fast as possible. Instead, write the message in a word-processing application. You're
likely to take more time with it, including revising, editing sentences, and making corrections.
The Guidelines for Writing Successful Emails apply to the business use of social media, with the exception of writing a subject line. A difference is that an
email message is sent to specific individuals, but social media posts can be seen by anyone with access privileges.
When using social media for business, readers assume you represent the company. Poor writing not only reflects poorly on you but also on the company. And
messages can be circulated on other social media, spreading the effects of poor writing.
A harried and stressed manager wrote the email below about a critical meeting.
To: Distribution
From: Rey Utley
Subject: READ THIS EMAIL AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!
Since some of you did not read the preliminary memo circulated for comment last week. I want to remind you that the decision about whether to go with
the new program is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. You may not realize that we are making a decision for THE CURRENT YEAR, NOT NEXT YEAR! I don't
know how the wrong information got spread around like the fertilizer I use on my lawn—but I guess it's just another example of how our grapevine is more
efficient than our official channels of communication. I want to nip things in the bud. If we don't handle this right, we may have big problems with the
product managers. This time I would like EVERYONE to PLEASE read the attachment. We will be having the meeting tomorrow, and we don't have time to
go over all the information in the memo.
Written in haste, the email is disorganized, has a disparaging tone (made worse by the use of capital letters), and doesn’t communicate the key message well.
Here is a revision that follows the guidelines for a successful email.
To: Distribution
From: Rey Utley
Soon we'll be making the decision about the Zorn project for the current year. I want to help you prepare for it without consuming a lot of your time.
The decision will have a large impact on the product managers and us. We've been butting heads with the product managers. As you know, they
understandably have strong feelings about the decision. So do we. We need to do our part to make sure emotions don't rule the room. I’d like to keep the
discussion firmly tied to the facts.
The attached document briefs you on the key issues of the decision. I've kept it short out of respect for your time. Please let me know if you have
any questions.
Innovations in technology have made available an increasing number of digital communication media that drastically restrict the length of messages. Chat,
texting, instant messaging, and Twitter are just a few examples.
Some of these forms give businesspeople the ability to exchange messages quickly with nothing more than a hand-held device. The capability makes these forms
useful when immediate responses are needed.
Real estate Inform client that a house has been listed for sale
Chemical supply Check inventory of a chemical in the warehouse
Dry cleaning Notify customer that clothes are ready
Consumer products Inform customers of special offers
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Courier companies Notify recipient of delivery time
Other forms like Twitter can quickly put a brief message in front of many people. Some business executives in prominent companies have hundreds of thousands
of Twitter followers, which may include both company employees and people outside. Less well-known businesspeople can communicate with colleagues, clients,
suppliers, and many other business audiences.
Companies monitor mentions of them and their products and services on social media and respond to praise, criticism, or questions.
Ultra short forms force conciseness, which can make communication efficient. The disadvantage of the more public media such as Twitter and Facebook is that
mistakes in messaging can be read by a large audience.
Texting language reduces message length by omitting words, abbreviating words (“b4hand” for “beforehand”), substituting letters for phrases (”IDK” for “I
don't know”), and substituting numbers and symbols for words (“2” for “to” or “too”). With few shared conventions, the language of ultra short forms can
vary from individual to individual. That carries the potential for miscommunication.
Often message-condensing practices actually save few characters. Using them may have less to do with conciseness than confirming the user's group identity
as someone who knows the code. Businesspeople use texting and other ultra short forms for social purposes at work, sharing news, jokes, thoughts, and
feelings, but when used for business content, the messages should follow the standards of good communication.
Can you understand the following text message? Type what you think the message means and then click the button to compare with the answer.
In my opinion we should hold the stock until we know more about the long term. What do you think?
The condensed text message is about half as long as the full text message. If the recipient understands the condensed words and abbreviations, they
save time for the sender and the recipient. If the recipient doesn’t understand, texting abbreviations waste the reader’s time.
There are millions of blogs on the web, ranging from personal diaries to expert commentary. Business blogs address internal or external audiences. They are
usually written by a single author and tend to be personal and informal, with the writer using the first person (I). However, they are often used for serious topics
and can communicate a high volume of content.
Blogs tend to be one-way communication—the writer and audience have separate roles. Wikis are online platforms for collaborative exchanges. Business wikis
can be resources for disseminating information, asking questions and receiving answers, exploring ideas, and persuading participants. Some corporate wikis
allow customers to participate with employees in tasks such as creating software user manuals.
To be useful, a business blog should have a well-defined purpose and target audience. A blog post should be as well organized, concise, and correct as a business
memo or report. Well-written blogs motivate readers to return.
Email guidelines apply to wiki writing. The purpose of a wiki requires efficient and accurate messages and responses that directly address the questions asked.
Like most social media, wikis usually don't have editors and depend on users to maintain the quality of communication. Their value can be diminished if users
write disorganized and sloppy entries.
As a primary means of business communication, email is used for the same purposes other written communication is: informing and persuading audiences.
Short messages sent and received through mobile devices can deliver small amounts of critical information where and when needed. They can be used to
express ideas and solicit brief reactions. These forms of communication can prevent ideas from being lost and get them in front of an audience for feedback.
Short messages can be used for persuasion too—compact arguments, emotional appeals, and character plays. For example, some recent research in public
health indicates that text messaging raised participation rates in a health-related activity. Applied in a business organization, texting might be used to persuade
more employees to join a company-sponsored 401k program.
Short messages can make persuasive appeals using reason, emotion, and character.
Close
Previous
Next
Reset Exercise
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Here are examples of long form business documents.
Informative Persuasive
Long business documents can be informative or persuasive. Their authors face two special challenges:
The best practices of writing short forms apply to long forms. Good writing is good writing no matter how many words are involved. The methods for creating
and organizing informative and persuasive messages are likewise the same.
Long form communication presents a tradeoff. It gives writers the opportunity to cover a topic comprehensively, but the longer the document, the harder it is to
keep the attention of business audiences.
This can be a significant problem for long form persuasion. Each part of well-written persuasion contributes to the strength of the argument, so the persuasive
effect on the reader can be weakened if the reader skips or skims parts of the message.
On occasion, you will have highly motivated readers, but your longer messages compete for attention like any other communication. Much of that
competition likely comes from short form messages.
The competition between long and short messages is tilted toward the latter. Recipients often can deal with many short messages fairly rapidly, giving them a
sense of accomplishment (even when that sense is mistaken). This can introduce an audience bias against longer messages, which obviously require more time
to read and think about and therefore seem to reduce readers' productivity.
As a result, the writer must pull the audience into and through a long message. A strong pull at the beginning generally means less need for it later on.
Nevertheless, throughout the message, writers need do what they can to prolong audience engagement.
Begin a long document by describing the topic, purpose, and organization of the report. Making the reader guess the topic and purpose or making them wade
through preliminary remarks to get to them creates a bad first impression. Readers don't owe you their time. Give them a reason for reading.
Experiment with openings that intrigue and draw in readers. For example, you can express the topic as a puzzle that needs a solution and introduce the
major pieces. Or you can use a contrary opening: State a conclusion opposed to yours and then say that you are going to show why it is wrong.
Another approach for the opening of a long message is an executive summary. An executive summary provides more information than the topic, purpose,
and organization; it summarizes the major points of the whole document.
It’s like an elevator pitch for a long written message. Readers appreciate executive summaries when they aren’t sure of their interest in the topic, want a
detailed preview, or don’t have time to read the document in full. Be careful when you write a summary. Anything longer than one substantial
paragraph defeats the purpose.
This is the executive summary of an eight-page report that evaluates possible foreign investment in France. A team of individuals from several
countries wrote the document. The summary includes the major points of the argument and its order mirrors the organization of the report.
France has many strengths and will remain competitive in the global market. Indeed, the country benefits from a large market size, access to other
European markets, a strong education system, significant spending in research and development, fast and efficient transportation, and a business-friendly
taxation policy. Despite the European debt crisis, many of the country's industries are excelling. They include energy production, agriculture, luxury goods,
automobiles, and tourism. This report focuses on energy production, specifically renewable and nuclear energy, and agriculture. Both industries are a good
fit with France's current business climate because of their resilience in the face of economic uncertainty, use of natural and human resources, and benefits
from France's government and business policies.
This sentence specifies the criteria the team used to evaluate the overall economy.
This statement lets readers know that the report concentrates on two industries.
The part of the sentence starting with 'because' makes clear the criteria used to evaluate the two favored industries.
Make the case why the audience should commit to reading the document. In effect you're persuading the reader to read. Make an argument with
whatever appeals you think will motivate readers.
Write Concisely
Write Concisely
It may seem paradoxical to say that a long document should be written concisely, but inefficient writing and high word counts make poor partners. The
combination wears out readers; the more tired they become, the more likely their attention will wander.
Concise and content-rich writing allows readers to build momentum, pulling them through the text.
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Once you complete a draft, set it aside for at least a day and preferably longer. Then cut as much as you can from it without removing essential content.
When revising, prune content to just above the minimum necessary to achieve your purpose with the audience. When editing, take out inessential words and
sentences and use action verbs whenever possible.
You may be reluctant to cut a message on which you’ve worked so hard. You may be concerned that the audience won’t see what you have taken out and
therefore won’t appreciate the full extent of your effort. But the audience will appreciate the work you put into making a long report as short as possible and
easy to read.
Use Variety
Use Variety
Long messages such as reports don’t have to be formal, stodgy reading. Use your creativity to keep readers interested. Look for relevant stories you can tell. Use
visuals. Find striking facts (be sure they are relevant to the topic and purpose). Use a wide variety of sources, including quotations.
You may want to try involving the audience more actively. Here are some ways:
Put hyperlinks in the document to web content—but make certain the content is relevant.
Insert audio files in the document. You can record a greeting to the reader or use audio to give more detail on certain points for those interested in it.
Ask if readers have questions and invite them to respond to you with an email (which can be embedded in the text) or by texting.
Create a "secret" Facebook group (one that is open to invited members only and does not show up in searches) and have readers post questions and
responses there.
Business has many conventions for the display of quantitative information. The balance sheet, cash flow statement, and income statement, for example,
all have specific formats for communicating financial data. Readers who understand the conventions know exactly what information is included and
where to find it.
When no convention exists, however, present quantitative relationships graphically when possible. For most audiences, the visualization of these
relationships is easier to comprehend than tables of numbers. The same principal applies to nonquantitative graphics such as flowcharts and pictures.
Visuals attract the eye of the reader and are another source for holding reader attention.
Make your graphics as visually uncluttered as possible. Simple graphics such as tables, charts, and graphs convey less information than complex ones, but
they can communicate the essential meaning of the numbers so that readers understand it quickly. Simple graphics force you to decide what meaning is
most important for your readers to know.
Exhibits, including quantitative graphics and other types of visuals, are best displayed close to the text that discusses them. It’s easier for the writer to
put all exhibits at the end of the document, but that placement is less convenient for readers. Each exhibit should have a concise, informative title. In a
document with many exhibits, they should also be numbered. You should refer to each exhibit in the text. Be sure to tell readers the significance of every
exhibit to the topic you're discussing. Don't assume they will make the connection themselves.
The following table shows values for the annual percentage change in the book value of Berkshire Hathaway and in the S&P 500 over an eleven-year
5
period . After a little study, you can see that Berkshire has consistently outperformed the S&P, particularly in down years for the S&P.
The graph makes the point much faster than the table—and it does so without overloading the reader’s working memory with numbers.
Provide Signposts
Provide Signposts
Headings pull readers through a long text by allowing them to track the text's organization and their progress through it. For longer documents, headings
are crucial. The headings should correspond to the roadmap you provided the reader at the beginning.
Even with long documents, you should use no more than three levels of headings. A lengthy report may seem to call for a deep hierarchy of headings,
section numbering schemes (for example, numbering paragraphs 1, 1.1, 1.2, and so on), or both.
However, the more frequently you divide and subdivide the text, the harder it is for the reader to use the divisions to understand the content. The brain
has limited working memory. Large amounts of content and complicated organizational schemes put too much stress on it.
Don’t forget two simple signposts: page numbers and running heads. Any business document more than a page should have page numbers. Running heads
are used in nonfiction books, but they work well in longer business documents. They are small headings in the upper corner of each page that can state the
name of the section.
The audience of a long report can navigate better when you provide additional information about the document. The information includes:
Title page
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The first page of a long document providing the document title, the authors, and the date
Table of contents
Gives all major sections of the document and the pages on which they begin
List of exhibits
Provides the numbers and titles of all exhibits and the pages on which they appear
References
A section at the end of the document that lists, in order, all of the information sources you have used. There are many different styles for citations, and
organizations often designate one of them as their standard.
Here you can explore the initial pages of a report on the effects of globalization on the state of Hawaii. Place your cursor over highlighted parts of
the report for comments.
Writing in Teams
Writing in Teams
Because teams do so much of the work of modern organizations, more and more writing is team based. Multiple authors enrich a document with
their different knowledge, experience, and skills, but they also complicate the writing process.
When a team takes responsibility for writing, they must agree on and understand the purpose. As with any work done in teams, the writing of a
document can diverge swiftly when the authors don't agree on the purpose or have varying understandings of it.
Most teams need a leader and when they have a written deliverable, the need is more pronounced. A leader can facilitate agreement on a writing plan, set
up roles, coordinate and monitor work, and make sure deadlines are met. The leader also needs to keep an eye out for free riders: individuals who let others
do the work.
With writing tasks, this danger is acute. The person perceived to be the "good writer" can be stuck with a heavier workload than other team members.
Technology can facilitate the writing process. Numerous web services allow you to post a document in the cloud, edit it, add comments, and monitor
versions. A team needs to be careful about setting up rules for access to and editing of the document. Many people editing the same document can lead
to confusion.
Most of the online services have editing tools that keep track of changes. Nevertheless, a team member should coordinate online work, setting deadlines for
document changes, controlling versions, and protecting the final version from further editing.
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Writing in Business: Exam Introduction
This test will allow you to assess your knowledge of Writing in Business.
Navigation:
To advance from one question to the next, select one of the answer choices or, if applicable, complete with your own choice and click the "Submit" button.
After submitting your answer, you will not be able to change it, so make sure you are satisfied with your selection before you submit each answer. You may also
skip a question by pressing the forward advance arrow. Please note that you can return to "skipped" questions using the "Jump to unanswered question"
selection menu or the navigational arrows at any time. Although you can skip a question, you must navigate back to it and answer it—all questions must be
answered for the exam to be scored.
After completion, you can review your answers at any time by returning to the exam.
Good luck!
Presenting in Business
The idea of making a presentation in public
Introduction
Introduction
Managers spend most of their time talking.
Much of it is spontaneous and informal, such as having a conversation with a colleague or talking on the phone. Some of the talk is different: It is the primary
medium of presentations. A presentation consists of a set of ideas spoken to an audience. The ideas are prepared in advance along with supporting material
such as slides.
It is hard to overestimate the usefulness of presentation skills in business. Each day around the world, managers give many millions of presentations. By
some estimates, 30,000,000 PowerPoint slides are displayed per day.
Employers and recruiters want MBA graduates with superior communication skills. For many years, employers have been putting communication skills at
the top of their list of essential skills for hiring managers; they make hiring decisions based on them.
Leading People
Leading People
This part of the course focuses on persuasive presentations. Persuasion has become more valuable as work has shifted away from the command-and-control
model to one of cooperation and collaboration. Leaders and managers must shape, guide, facilitate, and support the work of employees.
They must persuade to motivate people, to align them with organizational goals, and to have them accept new ideas and practices.
Nordstrom, an upscale department store, values extraordinary customer service. But many of the people they hire have worked for other companies
that don’t take customer service as seriously.
Nordstrom has to persuade new hires to deliver service in line with the company’s strategy. One persuasive tactic is telling stories about how far
Nordstrom employees go to satisfy customers. For example:
A wardrobe consultant fit a man for a suit who had forgotten an important business meeting. He had the suit tailored and pressed in a couple of hours.
1
The customer came back to the store and dressed there for the meeting.
A customer came into Nordstrom with two watches. His puppy had chewed the wristbands off both. He had bought only one of the watches at Nordstrom.
When he purchased a new band for the Nordstrom watch, the associate and manager noticed the second watch. They told him to pick a new one—free of
2
charge.
Inevitably, people will disagree about business issues. Leaders and managers need to be able to probe, question, and negotiate, but they also need to
know how to use persuasion to resolve differences of opinion.
An executive tells how persuasion resolved a difference between a cautious leadership group and his product team.
The manager of an online unit of an electronics reseller wanted to extend the unit's hours of operation and hold onto a talented supervisor who
was commuting long distances.
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Human resources executives recommended that the manager try a results-only work environment (ROWE)—employees work anytime and anywhere as
long as they meet performance goals. But the manager’s boss flatly refused to authorize the experiment.
The manager didn’t let the disagreement discourage him. He persuaded the boss to let him try ROWE by promising to monitor productivity each day
and halt the experiment immediately if it fell. Productivity swiftly climbed and measures of employee engagement went up, too. In this instance,
persuasion resolved a conflict and benefited the company and everyone involved.
3
The manager found a creative solution to accomplish several goals; his boss' resistance motivated him to find a way to evaluate the solution's results.
Most people can carry on intelligent conversations. Nevertheless, when they stand in front of an audience, many times that ability seems to vanish. Their
speech doesn’t flow, they stop smiling, and they do not make eye contact. A little later, they are smiling again and carrying on productive conversations without
difficulty.
Why does this striking transformation happen to so many people? Some of the reasons include:
Fear of speaking
Overreliance on slides
A failure to engage
A misconception about persuasion
Fear of Speaking
Fear of Speaking
“The idea of making a presentation in public is the No. 1 fear reported by people in the U.S.”
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—Paul L. Witt, PhD, assistant professor of communication studies at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth
The majority of people fear speaking. Communication apprehension is normal, but it can be a problem when it is intense and chronic. There is even a
medical term for extreme cases: glossophobia.
Being the focus of attention in a room and having sole responsibility for making something happen can stimulate fear. The fear creates a vicious circle. You
fear speaking and avoid it, but the more you avoid it, the more you fear it—and the less likely you are to acquire the skills you need that will help reduce the
fear.
Fortunately, you can learn to manage fear of speaking. Scholars have found many techniques for limiting its negative effects. Note the use of the
word negative. Nervousness has value, too. As long as it is not extreme, it is a natural stimulant that enhances performance.
An executive and mentor has advice for female managers uncomfortable with speaking.
Overreliance on Slides
Overreliance on Slides
The problem is not the software. Quite a few speakers have come to regard slides as the presentation, not as a complement to the presentation. And
when the attitude that “more is better” encounters feature-rich presentation software, speakers can saturate audiences with information: slide after slide
of bullet points, charts, tables, and graphs filled with so much content and formatting clutter that they are unreadable.
Slides that convey too much create a dilemma for audience members. Do they try to read the slide text or listen to the presenter? Most audiences try to
do both, splitting their attention and lessening the amount of information they can take in.
Speakers can use slide presentations to pass information to an audience but avoid drawing conclusions.
The slide below was used in a military briefing. The slide was intended to give an overview of the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan.
Do you think the audience, a high-ranking officer and his staff, found the slide helpful in understanding the strategy?
General Stanley A. McChrystal, then commander of American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Afghanistan, said, “When
6
we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.”
Presenters can unwittingly use PowerPoint as a means of coping with stage fright. Slides can shift attention away from them. No longer are they speakers
connecting with an audience; they are narrators of a slideshow. Even their posture can protect them from contact with the audience. To read the slides,
they turn their backs to the listeners.
Most business audiences have sat through scores of presentations in school and on the job, and the odds are that many of them were boring and delivered
too much information. Presentation fatigue is therefore a characteristic of business audiences. Very quickly, audience members can enter a state of minimal
attention—a habit formed from many disappointing experiences.
At Apple, Steve Jobs banned PowerPoint from meetings he attended. Amazon does not allow PowerPoint to be used in any meetings. Getting rid of slides
is one solution to “death by PowerPoint.”
Making better use of presentation tools is another. This course takes the latter approach.
How long do you think the average adult can concentrate completely?
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The correct answer is less than 1 minute. That may be surprising, but it becomes less so when you consider all the things going on inside and around you
at any given moment. The external environment teems with distractions, and a constant stream of thoughts, emotions, memories, data from the senses,
and other physical sensations flows through your mind.
The brevity of concentration seems to doom any hope of holding audience members’ attention. Fortunately, you can regain their attention.
Presenting isn’t about seizing and holding people’s attention continuously for long periods. Presenters must constantly reengage the audience.
Managing Distraction
Managing Distraction
Alerting
Alerting means awareness of our surroundings, particularly changes in them such as the sudden appearance of a grizzly bear.
Orienting
Orienting or focus allows us to concentrate on something such as the intentions of a nearby grizzly.
Executive
Executive attention helps us plan and make judgments such as never hiking alone again in national parks where grizzly bears live.
The three exist as separate networks, but they work together. They can also work at cross-purposes. When you present to a business audience, you
contend with a running conflict between alerting and focus.
Noises and movements attract audience members’ attention because we are hardwired to pay attention to our environment. When someone in the
room coughs or leaves, everyone notices, if only for a moment. During that moment, they lose focus on what you are saying.
Then there are digital disruptions. A buzzing or vibrating cellphone triggers alerting, as do sounds and changes on a computer screen when an email
arrives.
As a presenter you have to accept the reality of distractions and realize you compete with many other stimuli in the environment. The challenge is to stand
out from the background noise. The most robust source of engagement and reengagement is not PowerPoint or other media. It is you and your
engagement with people in the audience.
Think about presentations you have attended and whether you have been distracted by any of these circumstances:
Physical Environment
Audience
Speaker
The good news about distractions is that you can control many of them. You can get to the room in which you are presenting early, for instance, and
check conditions such as temperature and lighting and adjust them. You can ask people to power down their cellphones. You can work on any annoying
verbal habits you may have.
“Amazing Secrets Discovered Using Cutting Edge Research! Guaranteed to Put Money in Your Pockets, Melt Away Sales Resistance . . . And Slash Buyers'
Remorse Almost Overnight!”
8
—Promotional blurb
Much writing about persuasion emphasizes winning. The subtitle of one recent book proclaims, How to Get Anyone to Say “Yes” in 8 Minutes or Less!
Another book title promises Winning When It Really Counts.
Persuasion always involves a degree of competition. When you make a sales pitch, you compete against the client’s other choices. You try to convince an
angel investor to finance your business because she has other startups she can back. You argue for a diagnosis of an operations problem because others in the
organization see the problem differently.
There is another way of looking at persuasion. The sales pitch proposes a solution to a client need that the client cannot satisfy himself. You give the
angel investor an opportunity to put her money where it will be productive and profitable. You give the people who disagree with your diagnosis another
way of looking at the problem.
Persuasion as Collaboration
Persuasion as Collaboration
You can be a better communicator by thinking of persuasion as collaborating with the audience to accomplish goals that neither party can secure
entirely on their own. Defining persuasion in terms of winning or losing can limit your thinking and thwart positive outcomes.
The manager at the electronics reseller “lost” the first time he tried to convince his boss. But the boss’s resistance turned out to be invaluable because it
forced the unit manager to devise a method for measuring the new way against the old. The manager did not achieve his end by getting around barriers
that his boss threw in his way. They achieved it together.
The interaction between the speaker and the audience often makes a good idea better.
Alan Mulally became chief executive of the Ford Motor Company in 2006. The company was about to lose nearly $13 billion. No one knew it at the
time, but the next year, the U.S. and world economy were going to sink into recession, pushing the U.S. auto industry to the brink of extinction.
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Ford’s products were not selling and its culture featured insularity, ruthless politics, and top-down management. Mulally was not going to put together
a few persuasive wins that would fix the company. Nor was he going to tell 280,000 employees how to do each of their jobs better.
He had to formulate core messages and sell them relentlessly—“Communicate, communicate, communicate,” as he said in an interview. And he
depended upon executives and managers all over the globe to create a cascade of persuasion: to adopt the messages as their own and sell them to
employees. One of his persuasive appeals was grounded in the company’s history: Everyone at Ford was responsible for saving an American icon.
9
A few years later, Ford was being called one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of U.S. business.
The idea that persuasion is about winning or losing has a potential dark side. To win, people can believe that the end justifies the means and take
shortcuts such as manipulation, deception, and outright lies.
Nevertheless, the unethical use of persuasion seems to have a natural limit. As Abraham Lincoln famously said, “You can fool all of the people some of the
time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”
Analyzing a communication situation includes understanding the purpose of a presentation and audience characteristics relevant to it, and then using the
resources of reason, emotion, and character to create the message. What you learn from the analysis informs both the message—the content of the
presentation —and the delivery—the manner in which you communicate it to the audience.
Persuasive Presentations
Persuasive Presentations
Persuasive presenting is not about the presenter. It is about the audience. When communicators persuade, they want something from their audiences—to
adopt a desired belief or an attitude, to gain their consent or support. Presenters preoccupied with themselves—their own thoughts and feelings—lose
sight of the fact that to satisfy their needs they must satisfy the audience’s needs.
The first question to ask when you are thinking about a presentation is, "What is in it for the audience?" Keep this question in mind from the initial planning
to the last moment of the presentation itself.
The more senior your audience, the more important it is to present only the most critical content.
The core of persuasive business presentations is argument. An argument is the process of reaching a conclusion by using evidence. In the module called
“Planning Communication,” you learned three types of argument common in business:
Decision
Evaluation
Diagnosis
You’ll find detailed explanations of the arguments and their major parts in that module. You can do a quick review of argument templates with the
Organizing Arguments Checklist.
Arguments in a presentation need to be efficient. In business, presenters have a tendency to flood the audience with data and other information. But the
more-is-better approach completely ignores the needs of the audience. Speakers, guided by the less-is-more principle, must make hard choices about
the content of their arguments.
“A good presentation will be clean. It will be stripped down to the essence of what's required.”
Persuasion consists of more than reason. Contemporary research into our responses to persuasive appeals reveals the strong influence of emotion.
In a persuasive presentation, the communicator wants to align audience members’ feelings with her purpose so that both the arguments she uses and the
emotions she evokes pull the audience toward the same destination: accepting the presenter’s conclusion.
Emotions—the audience’s and yours—can be hard to understand and even harder to influence, but they have a key role in persuasion.
Say that you work for Replex, a company that is growing rapidly—so rapidly that you think the company has given up careful hiring, adequate staffing, and
talent development. You give a meticulously argued presentation to a group of influential managers on why the company should pay attention to the
problem.
Your reward: The audience barely listens. One individual mutters that you are an alarmist.
Your argument may have fallen victim to the availability or recency bias, which occurs when people rely on their most recent experiences to look at
a situation rather than consider a broad range of experiences. In your company, the audience has seen only unqualified success lately, making them
unreceptive to your cautionary argument.
Awareness of the interplay between audience members’ thoughts and feelings can help you calibrate persuasion. The audience members for the Replex
presentation think they are being rational because they see no evidence of declining business results. That triggers a feeling of displeasure at being told
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that they do not recognize a problem.
You can be upset at your colleagues for not appreciating what you are trying to do. Or you can accept that they do not like bad news.
Assure colleagues that you only want the company to stay healthy in the long run.
Track the performance of new hires.
Survey managers on the qualifications and performance of new hires.
To improve your persuasion abilities, you need to learn how to shape audience members’ attitude toward you. An audience always has an attitude toward
a speaker. You want to foster a favorable attitude toward you.
For persuasion in business, character has two essential components: knowledge and credibility.
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Audiences perceive you based on what they already know and feel about you. Steve Jobs did not have trouble gaining the audience’s respect and
trust when he appeared on stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco to unveil new Apple products.
Before he said a word, the audience was ready to believe, trust, and applaud him. This is an example of the halo effect: The audience had made a global
evaluation—Steve Jobs was a tech genius—and assumed that whatever he said or did was consistent with that evaluation.
A reverse halo effect can be detrimental to a speaker. A union official addressing a conference of the United States Chamber of Commerce might
well encounter a negative attitude based on the audience’s assumption that she is hostile to management.
When the audience does not know you, their first impressions can function like a halo effect. According to researchers, people make a global evaluation
of a stranger in a tenth of a second. They obviously make that judgment based on very limited information: your facial expression, posture, clothes, and
movement.
Studies have shown that first impressions are remarkably durable and hard to change. A positive first impression can be a long-lasting asset for a
speaker, while a negative one can be a serious liability.
Provocative audience members can lead you to responses that sour the attitudes of all audience members toward you. For instance, someone
interrupts you a couple of times with uninformed comments and you sarcastically point out that the person does not know what he is talking about.
While other audience members might not appreciate the comments the person made, your response might offend them.
Try to keep in mind that negative feelings toward someone in the audience will distract you from what you are there for: to address everyone in the
room, not spar with one member. You may not be able to persuade everyone. Do your best, but you should not halt your presentation to try to convince
one person.
Here are some practical suggestions for responding to hostile audience behavior:
Disagreement
Someone interrupts you to dispute what you are saying. If the person has a legitimate point, acknowledge it (for example, “You have a point
and thanks for sharing it”) and resume your presentation. When you think the objection is not valid, acknowledge it by saying something
innocuous (for example, “That is an interesting point”) and move on.
Interruptions
An individual either starts talking and will not stop or frequently interrupts. Ask the person to talk to you after the presentation. If that does
not solve the problem, say something like: “I want everyone to hear my ideas and decide for themselves whether they make sense. I’d like you
to listen to the rest of my presentation and then we can talk afterward.”
Arguments
An audience member becomes argumentative. Grant her the right to an opinion, recognize the difference between the two of you, and move on.
If the individual persists in arguing, try the approach described in the previous suggestion.
Side Conversation
Two people in the audience talk to each other during your presentation. Ignore brief conversations, but when individuals persist in talking, walk
toward them and make and hold eye contact.
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Please read the case now and then listen to the audio.
Felipe has been asked to make a presentation to the CEO of his company based on a persuasive memo he wrote about a problem at an offshore
vendor.
This organizer is compatible with the argument templates for diagnosis, in the “Planning Communication” module. Remember that spoken arguments have to
be very efficient, with the most convincing conclusions and the most compelling evidence you have at your disposal.
1. Issue
2. Conclusion
3. Argument
4. Action
Let’s say that you have a persuasive presentation to make about whether to expand your company’s business to Mexico. The issue is a decision, so you will
use a decision argument. The organizer works as well with the other two types of argument, evaluation and diagnosis.
Issue
Definition
The issue needs resolution and you should be able to express it in one or two sentences. Stating it as a question can often be helpful to the audience.
Example
Conclusion
Definition
The conclusion is your answer regarding the issue. You should be able to state it in one or a few sentences.
Example
We should expand into Mexico, starting with a few stores to test the business climate.
Argument
Definition
The argument consists of the reasoning and evidence that back up the conclusion.
Example
Here is some of the evidence that could be used with the two criteria:
Action
Definition
The action portion of the presentation specifies how to implement the conclusion. It corresponds to a written action plan, except that it is not
as detailed. You can offer the audience a written plan as a handout.
Example
Recruit store managers in Mexico who know their local markets well and can scout store locations.
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Note that the development of a presentation begins with creating and organizing ideas, not with PowerPoint or other presentation software.
When used well, slides visually reinforce the essential ideas of a presentation. A presentation begun in PowerPoint starts with the reinforcement rather than
the ideas and fosters the view that the slides are the presentation. That view may encourage a presenter to build a large slide deck crammed with
information. And it may undercut a presenter’s motivation to engage with the people in the room.
A large body of research demonstrates that people learn more through a combination of sight and hearing than through one or the other alone.
Slides therefore have an essential function as a learning channel parallel to speech—but not superior to it.
In some cultures, speakers are expected to reveal their thinking gradually and defer a conclusion until the end or imply a conclusion but never state it in so
many words.
Presenters can also employ the conclusion-last organization as an inductive approach to proof:
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Issue: First, they state the issue.
Argument: Second, they argue against the major opposing opinions.
Argument: Third, they argue for their conclusion.
Conclusion: Fourth, they state the conclusion.
Action: Finally, they discuss actions based on the conclusion.
This order of presentation can seem more objective than a conclusion-first argument. As you can see the order of the ICAA changes to Issue-
Argument-Conclusion-Action.
If you decide to put your conclusion at the end of a presentation, the essential content of the argument remains the same as the conclusion-first presentation.
However, The ICAA organizer has a slightly different order.
Business presenters often immerse audiences in large bodies of data. However, an oral presentation, even one that uses visuals, is not an effective
medium for large amounts of data.
At the same time, an orally delivered argument still requires proof, just as one in writing does. So how much evidence do you include in a presentation?
The answer to that question depends on the audience. A team of consultants might include a great deal of data and other information because the client
expects it. On the other hand, busy CEOs typically want to hear the most critical points of an argument only.
The burden is on you, the presenter, to develop a concise persuasive argument. But presenters often try to shift the burden to the audience, giving them a
barrage of evidence—the more-is-better approach to persuasion. Making matters worse, they do not explain clearly how the evidence supports the
conclusion.
Felipe wrote a report for his boss, giving a detailed argument for a decision to improve conditions in the Chinese plant.
Felipe knows he can’t possibly deliver the entire report in 20 minutes—and doesn’t want to because the audience will get lost in the detail. He has
to select the points of utmost importance for the presentation.
The ICAA organizer assists him in creating an initial presentation plan. He includes the big ideas only; he’ll deal with the details later.
Issue
Decision options:
Do nothing.
Improve conditions.
Change vendors.
Conclusion
Improve conditions, acknowledge being part of the problem, and do something positive for both the company and the vendor’s workforce.
Argument
Criteria:
Ethics
Marketing
Legal liability
Costs
Rebut other options
Do nothing: ethically wrong, too risky
Change vendors: premature, too disruptive
Action
Short term
Long term
Openings
Openings
A real-world audience is not captive. They may not get up and leave, but they can refuse whatever you are asking of them. In a customer’s conference room,
you have to engage the audience.
For the content of the opening, ask what you think the audience most wants to talk about, the most common question they have in mind, or the
most serious reservation they have about your topic.
Earlier you read about the manager who wanted to try a results-only work environment. His boss said no. His boss’s most serious problem with the
results-only approach was, ironically, results—how could he make sure people were actually doing their job when they were not in the office? The first
thing the manager talked about in his second attempt at persuasion was his boss’s reservation—how the manager would measure productivity and respond
to slippage.
At some point in the opening of the presentation, you should also state the issue and your conclusion and furnish a simple roadmap of the presentation—
the major points of interest on the trip to the destination.
Mercedes, vice president of Emporium Consulting, begins a presentation with something she knows is on the audience's minds: Emporium's last
project with them did not go well.
Closings
Closings
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At the end of the presentation, leave the audience with a concise memory of the points you most want them to remember.
A visual can be used for this purpose. A striking image, a brief story, and an emotional appeal connected to the key points are just a few ways to fix
your core message in the listeners’ memories.
Speaking past the scheduled end of the presentation violates an implicit contract with audience members. The speaker agreed to a presentation of a certain
length and the audience members planned accordingly; then the speaker changes the contract without their consent. Audiences do not appreciate a
speaker unwilling to let go of them.
Mercedes ends her presentation with three points she wants the audience to remember.
Felipe has mulled over the opening of his presentation to the CEO and has had trouble deciding what to do. He does not want to come across as confrontational,
but he does not want to state the issue and conclusion dryly, as if he were going to discuss the monthly production of wristwatches.
Felipe asks Estela what the audience members know about the situation. She tells him that they are aware of a problem with their Asian production
and have a sense that it could be a tough one. She also says that the CEO gets nervous whenever he thinks their production costs are under any kind
of pressure.
Felipe thus plans an opening that puts audience members’ worst fears front and center. Here are notes he will use for practice:
Felipe will then reassure audience members that the situation can be salvaged without harm to the company:
Solution
Marketing strengthened
Liability removed
Ethical problem solved
Costs stay low
With this opening, he states the issue. He will follow with a roadmap slide of the presentation:
1. Trouble in China
2. What Should We Do About It?
3. Why We Should Act
4. Steps We Can Take
Felipe wants to end on a note of urgency—a call to action. He will encourage quick action and, instead of dwelling on the negatives, point out
the benefits that will result.
Why should you be so sensitive to length? For one thing, auditory memory is more limited than visual memory. Although a good presentation has visuals,
you communicate most of it through speech.
Presenters also have to contend with the time an audience can concentrate. As you have learned, every speaker is engaged in a continuous competition for
audience members' attention, attracting it, losing it, and bringing it back. No matter how good a presenter you are, you can only expect to draw listeners back
so many times. The longer you talk, the more likely you are to lose the struggle for attention.
Once you have an idea of the time you will have, you are ready to start planning.
2. Group content.
In whatever medium you are comfortable—paper, word processing, or mind-mapping software—list ideas for the content of the presentation. Don’t worry
about the order of the notes—capture ideas whenever they come to mind. Be as detailed as you want. For instance, you can include specific quantitative
evidence or note where you can find it.
If you are starting from a document, take notes on the key points you think should be part of the presentation. Or you can mark up the document
itself, circling key ideas and writing notes on it. However, you should create a written presentation plan separate from the document.
Keep in mind this question: What’s in it for the audience? Using the Issue-Conclusion-Argument-Action framework (ICAA) and a template for
the appropriate type of argument will speed your progress through the later steps.
Now, set aside your notes and take a break. When you return to them, you’ll bring a fresh perspective. Wait until the next day if possible. The phrase
"sleep on it" is good advice, according to neuroscience. When we sleep, we seem to consolidate and stabilize memories.
Felipe already started his planning by reviewing his persuasive memo and identifying points for the Issue-Conclusion-Argument-Action framework.
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Group Content
Group Content
As you review your notes, think about your purpose for presenting. Write it down—you should be able to express your purpose in one or two sentences.
Look for chunks of content related to each other and put them together. Draw arrows and lines and other helpful visual devices on your notes to connect
ideas. If you wrote notes using a computer, rearrange them or paste into a new document. You are building a storyline. An argument is a vehicle for the
story you want to tell.
If you are working from a document that you already marked up in step 1, you can skip this step.
Take a step back and ask how you can best use slides to communicate the presentation's storyline.
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Create a simple outline from the notes. The groups of related content you identified in the last step will be the major parts of the presentation. Put them in
the order they will be presented. The plan should be sufficiently detailed to remind you of the key points. You should not write a word-for-word script
because a presentation is not a speech.
If the content comes from a document, review the organization carefully. You may find that it needs to be in a different order for oral communication. For
example, a document may have a long introductory section before it gets down to the business of stating an issue and taking a position. For the
presentation, you need to get to the point—so you cut the introductory section from the plan.
Again, take a break or set aside the plan until the next day. Check it and rearrange as necessary. You may need to fill in gaps that the plan has exposed.
Now think about how you will open and close, including any media elements. Add the ideas to the plan.
Felipe initially mapped out his presentation with the ICAA framework. Next, he reviewed his memo about the Chinese factory for content to fill out
the ICAA. Finally, he arranged the content in a presentation plan.
Review the notes you have made about media and add or subtract visuals or other reinforcement that you think will help. Do not limit your thinking about
media to slides. Consider video, web content, pictures, props, and flip charts.
Use a storyboard to capture your ideas for slides and other visuals. Sticky notes are a handy way to create one. Write ideas for slides or visuals on notes
and stick them on a piece of paper in the order you will use them. You can replace notes, remove them, and rearrange them.
You can also create a storyboard form in PowerPoint or similar programs. Create a new slideshow with blank slides and print it using the “Handouts” option.
An experienced presenter describes how she uses a storyboard approach to planning slides.
Felipe has gone through his presentation plan and noted places where he thinks a slide, some other visual, or an activity should go. He thinks he has too
many slides but will go ahead with storyboarding. Later he can edit the slide deck. He also plans to use a prop and an activity for audience participation.
Felipe then began a storyboard for his slides based on the plan.
When you’re satisfied with the storyboard, use PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, or a similar application to copy the key point of each sticky note into a new
slide file. On each slide, type the main idea, such as an image, text, or a chart, and then build it.
Most presentation software uses the single-slide format. The online application Prezi takes a different approach, giving you a visual space with which
to work. You fill in different areas of the space with groups of content. For the presentation, you move from one grouping to another.
Go back to the storyboard and start work on any other media you will use. For instance, say that you will be presenting a series of innovative ideas generated
internally to interest department heads in funding them. You could describe each one with bullet point slides. But you think the people behind the ideas are
as important as the ideas. Having them each present in the room would be unwieldy. Instead, you can make short videos of each person explaining her or his
idea. You have to decide when in the presentation to show the videos and plan their production.
To start the editing process, estimate the time of each part of the presentation. “Talk the presentation” from beginning to end. That means speaking out loud.
In your estimate of the time, include the time needed for the discussion of each slide, audience participation, use of props, and any in-session logistics such
as telling the audience how to operate a handheld device they will use for a poll.
Your time estimates will help you determine whether you have too much or too little material. Edit your written presentation plan first, then the slides and
other media, making them as lean as possible. Presenters typically overestimate the amount of content they can deliver comfortably in a given period of
time —sometimes by a large margin.
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Walk trusted colleagues or friends through the presentation and the slides and ask if they think anything is missing or can be dropped. Listen to them
carefully. A slide filled with data you think is absolutely crucial may be, in their eyes, impossible to understand.
Felipe talked through his initial plan and discovered that it would be longer than 20 minutes when he took into account the slides and audience
participation. He was reluctant to drop many details because he must make the strongest possible case for his conclusion. He does not expect a
second chance.
Felipe remembers that the senior executives he will be speaking to will have his
memo. They may not have read it before he speaks, but they can use it as a reference after he presents.
The presentation plan has more than twenty-five slides and the limit Felipe set for himself was twenty. The exact number is not so important. Felipe
set the number to discipline himself, to concentrate on his speaking.
He marks details in his plan that are redundant or not completely necessary. He deletes slides associated with that material and those he thinks add
little value.
In his plan, for instance, he has a photo of a Tech Musica customer. His intention was to highlight their youth and associate that fact with heavy use of the
Internet and social media. But senior management knows their customers. The photo can be dropped.
Rehearse the presentation out loud with slides and other media as often as you can. Practice how you are going to express your ideas, make sure the
presentation doesn’t run too short or long, and orchestrate other presentation elements such as slides and props. Practicing can increase confidence and
reduce nervousness.
You can enliven the speaking part of a presentation with storytelling, audience participation, handouts, and vivid language.
Storytelling
Storytelling
Near the beginning of a business school course, students delivered a two-minute autobiography. Most of them gave a spoken version of their resume.
One young woman from China told a story. She came from a family of modest means, studied hard, and received high marks in school. Her ambition was
to study for an MBA in the United States, but she never expected that to happen. Yet she did. She expressed her amazement and joy that she was
standing there.
Toward the end of the course, the instructor asked the students if they remembered any of the autobiographical presentations they had listened to. Most
of them remembered only one: the story the Chinese student told.
Humans seem to have an inherent interest in stories. When someone starts to tell a story, we generally want to hear how it ends. We watch, read, or listen
to thousands upon thousands of stories during our lifetimes and never seem to tire of them. As a presenter, you can use stories to galvanize the attention of
people in the room.
Stories help both speakers and listeners remember details. Stories seem to promote longer-term memories in several ways, one of which is the stimulation of emotions.
It is no accident that for thousands of years, preliterate societies told or sang stories to communicate information across generations.
The initial part of the presentation will describe factory conditions. Instead of using bullet points to list facts, Felipe will tell a story about what he
saw on his tour of the factory.
Listen to Felipe begin the story of his visit to the Chinese factory.
Felipe begins his story of the factory with the first discovery he made.
Audience Participation
Audience Participation
Audience participation makes presentations two way and stimulates active engagement.
Here are some ways of directly involving the members of your audience:
Ask a question.
Present a problem and ask for solutions.
Take a poll. (You can use handheld digital devices for this.)
Ask them to generate ideas with you.
To avoid making the presentation too long, audience participation should not require too much time. It should also be voluntary for the audience—
you don’t want to put anyone on the spot.
Whatever form the participation takes, it should be connected—and stay connected—to the content. Audience members can slide off onto tangents or
irrelevant topics. Be ready to steer the discussion back to the subject or take back the floor. You are responsible to the entire audience and have to
protect the time needed to deliver your message.
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Felipe thought that when he discusses underage workers in his presentation, he could ask the CEO and the other executives in the room if they have
children. He decides that is too personal.
At the end of the presentation, however, he intends to share some ideas for low-cost improvements to the plant. After giving a few of his own, he
will ask the audience for suggestions.
Handouts
Handouts
Handouts can reduce the content load of the spoken portion of a presentation, and thus allow time for activities that enliven it.
Handouts can be a takeaway reminder of your key points. They can also furnish additional information or evidence that you do not want to include in the
presentation.
Presentation software can print slides, but using them as handouts forces you to make many copies and audience members end up with a stack of paper.
Preparing an outline of the presentation in a word-processing program means less paper and more convenience for audiences.
The best time to distribute handouts is at the end of the presentation, not the beginning. An audience with handouts will be reading them much of the
time rather than looking at you. (In some organizations, however, speakers are expected to provide handouts at the beginning.)
As a takeaway, he will distribute an outline of his presentation and refer the audience to his memo for a full action plan. Review his handout.
Quotations from experts or famous individuals lend credibility to your point of view. Because of the speaker’s authority, a quote can have a greater impact
on an audience than your own words.
Let’s say that you’re trying to shake a company audience out of what you see as a dangerous lethargy about the competition. You could say:
“We think our success will go on forever. We’re wrong, though. That attitude is the first step toward failure.”
The audience might well be offended because you seem to be accusing them. Instead, you show a slide with a quotation from an acclaimed executive.
The quotation doesn’t accuse the audience, but Andrew Grove’s stature gives his opinion about how to stay competitive a high degree of credibility.
Analogies compare two things, usually to identify similarities. Analogies can be useful because people learn new ideas better when they can connect
them to something they already know.
A presenter says:
The situation we’re in now is similar to the one we were in eight years ago. We were having record sales. Then a competitor blindsided us with a product
that was technically superior to ours and cheaper. We suffered a collective failure of confidence, believing there was no way we could compete. We
found a way then, and we will find a way now.
The speaker is comparing the present with the past. She wants listeners to understand the present situation by seeing it through the lens of the earlier
one.
Metaphors describe something using language unrelated to what is being described. Metaphors can make language more memorable for an audience.
Often, they have an emotional impact, too.
For instance, a speaker might say: “We use the turtle and hare approach to equity investment. We look for the turtles—stocks that have steady
positive returns—and avoid the hares—those that shoot up in value and fall just as quickly.”
Felipe has opportunities to use vivid language to describe plant conditions. Each sentence describes a factory condition. Click to see a more
vivid alternative.
Each day they spend in a factory instead of a classroom, the children lose another day of their future.
The factory poses a complicated set of issues that are not all clear-cut.
Some of the adult workers are exposed to high temperatures and toxic fumes.
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Energizing the Visual Channel
Energizing the Visual Channel
As you know, audiences learn more through the dual channels of hearing and sight than from one or the other. You can use the visual channel for
content other than slides, props, and handouts.
A quick and simple method for adding visual content to a presentation is the traditional flip chart. Like slides, use them to communicate key points.
Flip charts can also be used in conjunction with audience participation. For instance, if you ask the audience a question, you can record responses on
the flip chart.
Images
Images
With or without words, images can be emotionally evocative. Get in the practice of exercising your visual imagination.
Quantitative information expresses relationships and relationships usually make good visuals. Spreadsheets serve a purpose in handouts, but they are
ill suited to presentations because of their visual complexity.
From spreadsheets and other structured arrangements of numbers, extract the relationships of greatest importance to the presentation: major
differences or similarities, relevant increases and decreases, notable trends, critical sequences, and the like.
How a simple cartoon in a presentation cut through complexity, confusion, and conflict.
Review the spreadsheet titled "Sales of Tents." It gives data on three models of tents (SCR-1, SCR-2, and SCR-3) over five years.
The data are not difficult to read. However, say you are giving a presentation and want to call attention to the sales trends of the three models. If
you display the spreadsheet, you have to explain the trends as the audience studies the spreadsheet. Now view a graph based on the spreadsheet.
The line graph, on the other hand, conveys the information in a couple of seconds, leaving you very little to explain. Instead, you can concentrate on
the meaning of the trends.
Video
Video
Video has become a valuable tool for communicating with business audiences. Cellphone video cameras have gotten better and video-editing software
is cheaper and easier to use. In addition, some screen-capture applications can create videos for presentations.
Even so, video has to be used carefully, like any other visual content. You should take the less-is-more approach. Video clips should be short—under
30 seconds. Poor-quality video can make the presentation seem unprofessional.
Say that your presentation requires the explanation of a highly technical financial concept. Instead of trying to explain the concept yourself, you can
record an in-house expert explaining the point and play the video during the presentation.
In this video clip, an expert on accounting defines concepts. The video would not only provide information but would also enhance the
audience's perception of the speaker who includes it in a presentation.
Budget Impact
Videos of customer testimonials helped motivate sales representatives to sell an innovative service.
Internet-Based Technologies
Internet-Based Technologies
Web technologies have potential roles in presentations. Here are a few examples:
YouTube
You can post videos on YouTube, for example, and then play them in a presentation using an Internet link.
Skype
Instead of making the video of an in-house expert (as suggested previously), you can use Skype or other conferencing applications to bring the
expert into the room.
Internet databases
The Internet has a vast amount of information and data, some of which is well designed visually and can be displayed directly in a presentation.
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Technical malfunctions can make using online material perilous. You have to manage the details of web technology before and during the presentation,
just like you do display equipment in the room. In addition, you need a contingency plan for technical failures.
For instance, links to websites need to be set up and tested in advance, volume has to be adjusted, and a guest using Skype needs to be ready to speak
on time and know what to say.
Props can be used in presentations to illustrate a point, reinforce the message, and capture audience members’ attention.
A salesperson, for instance, might use a product sample when presenting to a group of customers. Or say that a speaker wants to stress the limited
time her company has to act. She turns over an hourglass and uses the draining sand as a visual metaphor for the rapid passage of time.
A more elaborate example of using props involves a financial executive’s attempts to centralize purchasing of standard work gloves. He made several
unsuccessful attempts to persuade the managers of the company’s plants that many of them were paying too much for the gloves.
At a meeting, he displayed on a table outside the meeting room the gloves each plant was buying. A price tag was attached to each. For a standard pair
of gloves, the prices varied widely. Many plants were paying absurdly high premiums. From the price tags, everyone could tell which plants were paying
more. The financial executive quickly struck an agreement for centralized purchasing.
In the Guangdong factory, young women assemble circuit boards for hours without using magnifying glasses. Felipe can describe how hard the work is,
but he wants the audience to have a physical sense of it.
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When you start to design slides, do not allow the need for handouts to constrain you. Presenters often use printed versions of their slides as handouts.
But effective designs do not necessarily print well. Slides with a solid dark background may be nearly illegible when printed on a black-and-white printer.
To solve the design conflict between slides and handouts, create separate handouts in a word-processing program. The solution requires a little more work, but
it is worth the effort.
Slides as Organizers
Slides as Organizers
The visual nature of slides makes them well suited to organizing a presentation for listeners.
At the beginning of a presentation, provide a roadmap slide of what you are going to say; at the end, provide a summary slide of the points you want the
audience to remember. In the body of the presentation, sign post slides tell the audience where they are.
The first slide Felipe will show is a roadmap slide. Most conventional roadmaps use bullet points, but he is using a more visual approach. For a better fit
on his slides, he shortens the part titles he used in his persuasive memo.
Felipe’s sign post slides signal the major parts of the presentation. Using the same design as the roadmap slide makes each sign post slide easy
to recognize.
A summary slide displays the key points the speaker wants the audience to remember. Felipe’s summary slide has text and visuals to make it more
memorable.
Number of Slides
Number of Slides
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How many slides should a presentation have? Think back on your experience of presentations. How many had too few slides? How many had too many? You
can probably think of many more instances of the latter.
Here is a process for keeping your slide count under control. Imagine that you aren’t going to use any slides for a presentation. Then ask these questions:
1. What are the points I will have the hardest time getting across to the audience using only spoken words? Create slides for these points.
2. What emotions that align with my purpose could I draw out better using slides instead of spoken words alone? Build emotion into the slides
you’ve already created or create new ones.
3. What additional slides do I need to assist the audience? Examples are the roadmap and summary slides.
PowerPoint templates for formatting slide titles assume a headline of a few words. However, in the report of a 2005 study, investigators concluded that one
or two full sentences at the top of a slide are better memory aids than headlines. They added a caveat: These lead line sentences need to be short.
Not all slides serve the same purpose, however, and some do not need a lead line. A sign post slide, for example, does not.
Probably the majority of presentation slides you have seen had bullet points with a title. For presenters, bullet points let them put a lot of information on
a slide. For the audience, they pose a problem. Too often slides have too many bullet points with too much text in each item. Not only do these slides tax
the concentration of the audience; but they also are not efficient. Most audiences will remember little or nothing of the detail on them.
Try to limit use of the bullet point design. In many cases, you can do without bullets by putting a single concept on a slide and telling the audience the details.
Why not have them recall one thing rather than nothing?
When you do use bullet points, keep the items short. When you show the slide, use the “Build” function to display bullet points one at a time. Literate adults
automatically read written language. A slide that displays all of the bullet points at once forces viewers to read them, which can cause information overload.
Here is an example of a slide that gives the audience a lot of information about the source of Coca Cola Company’s growth.
How much of the information would you remember? The amount of information on the slide works against retention. And if the presentation has many
similar slides, audience members might not remember the slide at all.
A lead line and a visual representation of the data make the slide more memorable. This version sacrifices some of the detail of the first version.
However, if the essential message is that Coca Cola now earns most of its operating income outside North America, the second version is more efficient
and more memorable.
The slide you will view has too much information for an audience to take in easily. After you view it, answer the question about it. Click the icon to see the
slide.
Findings
How would you change the slide to place less of a burden on the audience?
Click the icon to see the two slides that replace the original slide. Note how the “Build” function is used for both.
Findings 1
Findings 2
Slide Animation
Slide Animation
Presentation software has many different slide animations, including multiple options for moving text, images, or objects onto the screen. Some animations
like builds (the sequential appearance of items) can be useful.
But animation can divert audience members’ attention from the content. And animation quickly becomes stale with repeated use. Animation also takes time;
if it is used on many slides, it can lengthen the presentation considerably. Use slide animation sparingly, if at all.
1. Relevance
2. Simplicity and clarity
3. Forcefulness
4. Readability
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Relevance
Relevance
People retain more of a presentation’s content when the visual and speech channels reinforce each other. Visual content irrelevant to the spoken
content actually reduces retention.
Slide A Slide B
The clip art image in Slide A has nothing to do with the point about the location of the world’s fresh water. Slide B, on the other hand, uses the
subject of the slide as the background image, providing the audience with a visual memory associated with the main point.
Simplicity has two dimensions: a manageable amount of information and uncomplicated design. A slide with clarity immediately communicates its
meaning.
Speakers often fill slides with information and data to convey the complexity of their topic. Other presenters want to convince audiences that they have
done thorough research and have all the necessary data. But simply mirroring the complexity in a slide does not help the audience.
Good presenters have great faith in their ability to use the data rather than merely display it. They break down complexity into smaller pieces and show
how they fit together. As Albert Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Nevertheless, not everyone agrees with Einstein. An MBA student prepared slides with simple designs for her boss during an internship. After reviewing
them, he insisted that she fill up all the empty space on the slides with numbers and other details. She felt she had no choice but to give him what he
wanted.
The culture of complexity isn't going to yield overnight, but you can be part of furthering a culture of clarity.
Slide 1
The correct answer is (c). If you didn't know the answer, it's likely that most of the slide's detail would be lost on you. If you did remember, you
have an unusual ability to take in details quickly. But how would you feel trying to remember the details of many slides like the one you just saw?
In an actual presentation, the audience would have more time with the slide you just saw, but they would also be listening to the speaker. If the
information on the slide is important for audience members to know, it should be given to them as a handout. The slide can be redesigned with a
lead line that succinctly expresses the point to be remembered. The speaker can give examples of the positive effects on each functional area.
Slide 2
Forcefulness
Forcefulness
Slides can have a significant impact on audience members. Skilled presenters use less text and exploit the power of images and sound to make
an impression.
Compare the two slides. They are alternatives that Felipe could use for his presentation if he decided to feature a story of one of the workers in the
Guangdong factory.
Slide A Slide B
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Which one do you think will make a more forceful impression?
Slide A humanizes the factory issue by showing a worker. The text in Slide B certainly tells the audience what will follow, but it would not spark
the same interest in the story as Slide A.
Readability
Readability
Can the person farthest away from the screen read the slides easily?
To fit a large amount of text on a slide, the size of the type has to be small. Small type makes slide text hard to read.
Keep to type sizes of 36 to 44 points for headings and 24 points for text on presentation slides. Even for small venues, err on the side of larger rather
than smaller. One rule of thumb: Don't use type smaller than 18 points.
A second good practice is to have a clear contrast between the type and the background. A lack of contrast reduces readability.
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Felipe has created a slide to illustrate how inexpensively Tech Musica can improve conditions in the Guangdong plant. He will use it in the “Why
We Should Act” section of the presentation as part of the cost argument.
At the end of the presentation, a slide carries a quote by a Nike executive who had to cope with a situation similar to the one Felipe’s company confronts.
Given the executive’s experience and status, the quote should have more impact on Tech Musica management than a comparable statement by Felipe.
The list of dos and don’ts for presentation delivery is long. Those imperatives can be confusing, discouraging, and even annoying. Why should you make eye
contact with the audience? Why should you avoid reading your slides to the audience?
But the imperatives do have an underlying rationale. They support the core of a presentation: a connection between the speaker and the audience. Despite all
the media tools available today, you are the content of a presentation. You are the reason people are in the room.
Another reality of face-to-face presentations is that emotions are always alive in the room. If you simply stand in front of an audience and say nothing,
the audience will have feelings about you. Delivery shapes the way listeners react emotionally. You want to align what they feel with your purpose.
Communication apprehension
Voice
Nonverbal communication
Practice
Communication Apprehension
Communication Apprehension
Nearly everyone gets nervous before they present. That is not a problem. In fact, nervousness is a natural performance enhancer. It energizes speakers
and makes them more alert, focused, and attuned to the situation. But too much nervousness can be a problem.
Surveys show that public speaking is one of people’s greatest fears. This fear, called communication apprehension, strikes both novice and experienced
speakers.
Barbra Streisand, a famous singer and actress who won both Grammy and Academy awards, gave up performing on stage when she was suddenly struck
by communication apprehension. It took her nearly three decades to overcome it.
Communication apprehension can have long-term consequences. Individuals who suffer from it can dodge opportunities to speak and improve (as
Streisand did). Sadly, research has shown that communication apprehension reduces academic performance, limits career choices, spoils job
interviews, and erodes satisfaction with work.
Whatever level of fear you experience, you need to accept it. Trying to ignore or suppress communication apprehension does not work. But
acceptance does not equate to resignation.
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Only Woman in the Room
“But the other choice I have is to realize the position of power I'm in because I am unique.”
Research has identified three causes of communication apprehension: the situation, the audience, and the speaker’s goals.
Situation
Audience
Goals
Locating your greatest sources of anxiety can inform the coping strategies explained in the next section.
Coping Strategies
Coping Strategies
Research has identified numerous practices for coping with communication apprehension. Here are seven that are widely used.
1. Welcoming Anxiety
Anxiety about speaking should never surprise you. If you have felt it before, you should expect to feel it again. Allow the anxiety to unfold; it is not an
alien force taking over your body. But be prepared. An expert on communication apprehension recommends that you write out an anxiety
management plan describing how you will respond. Any of the six remaining tactics can be part of the plan.
As you become more skilled at something, you worry about it less. People who do not like presenting often try to avoid it. But instruction and
practice can help build confidence and be conducive to other ways of reducing communication apprehension.
3. Visualization
Visualization can also build self-confidence. It involves making a movie in your head of a successful presentation. Visualization helps only when
you imagine the entire performance, not a single scene from it, and for several days in a row prior to speaking.
4. Reframing
When you reframe something, you change the way you think about it. A speaker who is anxious about the audience can reframe them as people who are
interested in his topic and open to what he has to say.
You feel vulnerable if you view a presentation as a solo performance with all eyes on you. But you can reframe it by practicing it as a conversation with
a friend. You can also deal with the anxiety that all eyes are on you by "sharing the stage" with a video, a prop, audience participation, or a co-presenter.
Expressing yourself in writing can lessen anxiety. Answer questions such as: What are my greatest fears about public speaking? What is the worst thing
that can happen if I don’t present well?
Putting fears into writing makes them concrete. When they are in writing, you have a chance to reflect on them, considering whether they are realistic.
You can write down positives about the presentation you will give. For example, you might say that you are grateful to have a chance to talk about a topic
that’s important to you.
Regardless of the content of the writing, it is most effective when you do it regularly. You also can record your thoughts and feelings after a
presentation, creating a baseline for your speaking experience grounded in reality.
6. Positive Self-Talk
Negative self-talk can be self-fulfilling by stoking fear. Positive self-talk can do the opposite—focusing you on positives such as the fact that your accent
has never been a serious impediment to communication.
You can script your self-talk by reading from positive written comments you have written previously.
Fear of consequences from an unsuccessful presentation can trigger communication apprehension. Because those consequences are in the future, an
antidote is staying in the present before and while you speak.
With a racing mind and stressed body, you cannot will yourself into the present. You need to engage in an activity that grounds you. Techniques
for grounding include listening to music, challenging exercise (such as running up stairs), counting backward, and meditation.
Although he has given quite a few presentations, Felipe has always fretted about them and never felt they went as well as they should. For the
upcoming event, he has two sources of anxiety:
Aware of his communication apprehension, Felipe has taken some steps to diminish it.
Practice
He is not fighting his nerves and has committed to practicing as much as he can.
Positive Self-Talk
He is also trying constructive self-talk. In the past, he has been hard on himself about his speaking skill. But his speaking has been well received in the
past, and he is making those experiences the new narrative of his self-talk.
Reframing
The presentation includes a prop and audience participation, both of which allow him to converse with the people in the room. He will arrive early
and introduce himself as people come in. Each of these measures allow him to reframe the event as an interaction with people, not a one-way
individual performance.
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Voice
Voice
We are born with our voices, but we can train them. Opera singers are not born knowing how to sing arias, and theater actors are not born with the ability
to make their lines heard in the balcony.
Your voice is not merely a delivery device for communication. It communicates something about who you are and your feelings about what you are telling the
audience.
Projection
Emphasis
Rate of speech
Tone
Verbal fillers
Projection
Projection
Projection is how well a person’s voice carries. The goal is to speak so that the person farthest away from you can clearly hear your words. Achieving the
goal can be a problem if you have a soft speaking voice.
Projection does not require you to shout. If you talk much louder than you normally do, you strain your vocal cords and alienate listeners. To project,
do the following:
Good posture helps the body produce more resonant speech. Speaking from the
diaphragm projects your voice better than speaking from the throat and saves
wear and tear on your vocal muscles. If the room is large, consider using a
microphone.
Listen to the two audio clips below. Note the difference in clarity and projection
when a presenter speaks from the throat and then from the diaphragm.
Consider which speaker would be easier to hear if you were not sitting close.
Using your diaphragm for speech takes practice. Try the following suggestions:
Take a few breaths while concentrating on pulling the air in with your diaphragm—this is called belly breathing. It also triggers a
relaxation response, which can be useful to calm nerves. Put your hand on your stomach; if you are breathing from the diaphragm, you
should feel a pronounced in and out movement.
After you get a feel for belly breathing, hum as you expel air. This exercise lets you experience what making sounds from the area below
your lungs feels like.
Continue belly breathing. Try saying a single word as you expel air. Then try saying the word from your throat. You should feel a difference.
When you rehearse a presentation, make a note to yourself to speak from the diaphragm. Eventually, speaking from the diaphragm will become
automatic.
Emphasis
Emphasis
Listening to a monotone is not only fatiguing for an audience, but it also strips away a dimension of meaning. We change the pitch of our voices as part
of the meaning of spoken words, especially to signal significance. All words in a sentence do not have the same importance. The voice tells listeners
which ones are and are not.
Read the following sentences, putting emphasis on the words in boldface. Think about how the emphasis expresses the speaker's interest.
The emphasis indicates primary interest in the person who might go to the store.
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Rate of Speech
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Rate of Speech
You have no doubt heard speakers whose concern to get through a presentation as quickly as possible caused them to speak rapidly. Rapid speaking can
be a side effect of nervousness. The faster they talked, the less likely it is that you listened carefully.
Rapid speech has another bad effect from the audience’s point of view: It eliminates emphasis on key words.
Talk at a comfortable pace. Monitor your rate by making audio or video recordings of your rehearsals.
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Tone
Tone
Tone expresses how speakers feel about the topic and the people they are speaking to. Many speakers unwittingly adopt a tone that does not make a good
impression on listeners. Speaking in a monotone or a colorless tone of voice may be due to nerves or a consequence of reciting from memory. However,
listeners can hear this tone of voice as boredom, indifference, or fear.
You want to be very careful about a negative tone. It may be appropriate on rare occasions, but in general that type of tone will complicate or sever
a connection with the audience.
Practicing a presentation by delivering it to a friend will help you maintain a conversational tone—one that has energy and positive feeling.
Verbal Fillers
Verbal Fillers
Most of us do it numerous times during a day. We do it when we are addressing a business meeting and when we are talking to a friend on the phone.
People who speak different languages do it, sometimes using identical sounds.
Uh, ah, and um and phrases such as you know and like—these sounds and phrases are verbal fillers because they fill what otherwise would be silence.
Occasional fillers are not a problem, but when they are frequent, they distract and annoy listeners. This problem has a simple solution: Replace the fillers
with silent pauses.
While the solution is conceptually simple, the implementation is difficult. Fillers are habits so they need to be ushered out of an individual’s vocabulary
gradually. Also, speakers tend to be afraid of silence and often have an exaggerated sense of how long a silence lasts, even though audiences do not notice
when speakers pause or they quickly forget that they did.
Study the notes below. Do not memorize them but remember the main ideas. Then deliver the ideas out loud as if you were giving a presentation.
Note when you use fillers, but keep going. After finishing, repeat to see if you can replace some of the verbal fillers with a silent pause.
Wages
Geography
Conclusion
Mexico more competitive with China for products exported to the United States.
Nonverbal Communication
Nonverbal Communication
Nonverbal communication conveys meaning through facial expression, gestures, and other means that do not rely on words. Nonverbal
communication can be divided into five sources:
Facial expression
Eye contact
Posture
Movement
Gesture
This form of communication has a profound effect on people, starting with first impressions. As you know, people form a first impression of a stranger
in about a tenth of a second.
You can manage first impressions by thinking ahead. Audience members are likely to feel more positively toward you if you exhibit what
psychologists call immediacy behaviors, or nonverbal behavior that brings individuals closer to each other. They include:
Smiling
Relaxed posture
Eye contact
Exhibiting immediacy behaviors while speaking nurtures and sustains a favorable impression. The behaviors can be augmented with expressions
of feelings such as concern, reassurance, humor, confidence, and empathy.
Your physical appearance matters too and should fit what your audience thinks is appropriate, for instance, business attire for bankers and casual
clothes for video-game developers.
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Facial Expression
Facial Expression
Smiling is a vital element of immediacy behavior. If you are not happy speaking, why should the audience be happy listening? If you are not
excited about your topic, why should the audience be? Surprisingly, quite a few presenters do not smile, even momentarily.
Anxiety about speaking can lead to a blank or frowning face. The people in the room do not know what you are feeling; they can only go on what
they see and hear. From their viewpoint, you may appear slightly hostile, unhappy about having to present, or uninterested in the topic and them.
You want the audience to like you. When people smile at you, you tend to like them—that is a well-documented psychological response.
You don’t have to smile all the time. Many other expressions are appropriate according to the circumstances. For example, a look of
concentration when an audience member speaks to you shows that you are listening intently.
Look at the three photos and think about the question below.
In which photo does the speaker seem most interested in connecting with the audience?
The speaker is more likely to connect with listeners when he is smiling (photo on the left) than when he has no expression (middle photo) or
is frowning (photo on the right).
It may seem strange to practice smiling. Yet many speakers are not aware of how somber or noncommittal they look to an audience.
In front of a mirror, talk for 15 seconds about a topic you know well. Try smiling three times while speaking or when you pause. You may find
this surprisingly tough to do. You can also record the exercise as a video.
Eye Contact
Eye Contact
Whether you are moving or standing still, face the audience as much as possible and look at audience members in their eyes. That keeps
you connected with them. Try not to stand in one place, rotating your head back and forth to scan the audience. Your head will look like a
video surveillance camera.
At a visceral level, we have negative feelings about people who won’t look us in the eye. This reaction is not a conscious judgment. It
happens automatically and can color our attitude toward the speaker without our being aware of it.
However, in certain cultures, steady eye contact is not regarded as a positive behavior. As always, you have to be sensitive to the cultural context.
One of the biggest liabilities of presentation slides is that they exert an almost magnetic attraction on the presenter’s eyes. All of us have stared
at the back of presenters who seem mesmerized by their own slides—and probably all of us have turned our own backs to an audience. Part of
rehearsing a presentation is establishing the discipline of facing the audience as much as possible.
Posture
Posture
When speakers stand erect but relaxed they seem comfortable with us, and we usually feel comfortable with them. As for the perennial question of
what to do with your hands, when they are not doing something—such as making gestures—put them where nature did: at your sides.
Slumped shoulders, a rigid body, standing sideways to the audience for long periods—all of these postures signal a presenter's discomfort, which is
readily communicated to audiences.
Even the position and movement of your head can affect audiences. In psychological studies, people tend to perceive a slightly raised head
as expressing confidence or happiness and a lowered head as meaning sadness or submission.
A head tilted to the right or left is usually seen as a desire for rapport, although when combined with a negative facial expression such as a frown,
it communicates disagreement or disapproval.
Movement
Movement
Movement helps maintain the audience’s focus on you. Remember that people have three systems of attention and one, alerting, is sensitive to
movements.
Maintain purposeful movement while you speak. For example, walk toward part of the audience, make eye contact with individuals, and then
walk toward another part of the audience and again make eye contact. Return to a spot in the front of the audience and stand for a few moments.
Then repeat the process, but approach different parts of the audience than you did the first time.
Getting close to individuals in the audience breaks down the barrier of space and strengthens the impression that the speaker is talking to each
of them.
In the photos the presenter engages the audience (left) but focuses on the flipchart (right).
Many presenters look at their visuals more than the audience.
Gesture
Gesture
Along with movement, gesture is the kinetic companion of speaking. Think of gestures as visual aids that happen to be attached to you.
Gesture has another purpose besides signaling the audience. According to scientific research, gesturing helps people think. Scientists speculate that
the movement of arms and hands makes people’s thoughts more concrete. The gesture–thought connection implies that suppressing gestures can
make speaking more difficult.
Some people say that they feel exposed and awkward with their hands at their sides. They want to do something with their arms that makes them
feel safer. Instead of fighting the tendency to clasp hands or put them behind your back, keep them at waist level, close together but not clasped.
The hands need to be free so that you can gesture with them.
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The most useful gestures are those that come naturally. Let your head, hands, and arms move as they do when you have a conversation.
However, you can employ a few standard gestures when speaking.
Gestures to Enumerate
Use fingers to enumerate up to three items. Beyond three the gesture becomes awkward.
The second standard gesture is emphasis, which actually involves a family of gestures.
In his experience with public speaking, Felipe knows he has anchored himself to one spot on the floor at what felt like a safe distance from
the audience. In addition, he has slipped his hands into his pockets without knowing it.
Recognizing speaking habits can direct practice at change. Since his audience will be senior to him in the organization, he could easily give in to his habit and
take a defensive position distant from the audience. In his rehearsals, Felipe makes a point of moving forward toward his listeners.
On the move, he cannot put his hands in his pockets. When he feels his hands seek their habitual positions, he takes a few steps forward or to
the side.
Practice
Practice
You should spend more time practicing your presentation than actually delivering it.
Speaking is a skill involving both the mind and the body. People do not give presentations in their heads or wander around a room, gesturing,
smiling, and saying nothing. They integrate thoughts, feelings, and body movements. Speaking is therefore analogous to sports, which also
incorporate the mind and body. The only way to get better at either is to practice.
Presentation practice has a memory component—learning the content of the presentation so that you can deliver it fluently but not
memorizing anything more than a few sentences, if that.
Presentation practice has emotional and physical components. You should get used to smiling and other immediacy behaviors as you speak.
Monitor your speaking voice for a positive tone. Allow your hands and arms to gesture naturally, move forward, and maintain a comfortable
posture. Practicing silently in your head may help you remember the content, but it does nothing for the other elements of your presentation.
Researchers who study memory recommend fairly brief periods of practice (10 to 15 minutes), short breaks, and then tests of what you have learned.
Studying chunks of content and other aspects of the presentation followed by self-tests to see if you can perform the chunk without major mistakes
leads to better retention than studying all of the content at once, along with all the slide changes, movements, and other details of speaking.
You also are better off practicing different parts of the presentation rather than practicing one part over and over. If you have divided
your presentation into smaller parts, practice them one at a time.
Memory Aids
Memory Aids
The best memory aid is practice. The ideal is to speak without notes. An individual speaking to the audience without referring to notes or constantly
looking at her slides helps establish a strong connection to the audience and enhances how they perceive her.
But a memory aid, such as an outline, is helpful as a reference. Memory aids can make a presenter feel more secure, because he has recourse if he
forgets. Slides can serve the same purpose as notes, but be sure not to become over-dependent on them. If you do, you will have your back turned to
listeners and read the slides to them.
Do not read your presentation from notes or recite it word for word from memory. Both kill any engagement between the speaker and the audience.
You should try to practice in the room where you will be speaking. The venue makes a difference: Speaking in a small conference room differs
markedly from speaking in a large room or auditorium. For example, voice projection and movement are variables that depend on the size of
the space.
Practicing in the room where you will speak gives you an opportunity to check conditions such as lighting and equipment (for example, the
projection system and sound). You have enough on your mind before you speak; you do not want to add trying to figure out the
audiovisual equipment.
1. Use Video
Watching a video of your rehearsals is probably the most effective teaching tool available other than audience feedback. Most people do not
like looking at themselves on video. Recruiting a friend to watch with you can moderate the tendency to harsh self-criticism.
For realistic practice, ask several friends to serve as the audience. Have them sit on your right and left so you can get used to moving and
making eye contact with the audience. Ask them for honest feedback.
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Because of cellphones with video cameras, recording is easy. You can have a friend record you or do it yourself by placing a phone on a
flat surface or using an inexpensive mini-tripod.
Rehearse in front of a trusted audience without recording yourself. Arrange the audience members as described in number 1. Then ask them for
feedback.
Practicing in front of a mirror can help you work on specific visual aspects of delivery such as posture. As you watch, you can change the way
you are standing or refine a gesture in real time. However, watching yourself in a mirror can be distracting and can encourage bad habits such
as not moving.
Rehearsing by yourself without a mirror or video camera is better than no rehearsal—as long as you talk out loud. You might feel self-conscious
sometimes, but you need to use your voice, as you will in the presentation.
Answering Questions
Answering Questions
Think of a question-and-answer (Q&A) session as part of a presentation rather than an add-on. For a persuasive presentation, a Q&A provides more
opportunities to convince the audience as well as a chance to reengage them when their interest and energy may be flagging.
At the same time, Q&As have risks. Audience members cannot always be counted on to give presenters the respect and empathy they deserve.
You can never include every important point about a topic in a presentation—nor should you. To prepare for questions, consider what you are
leaving out that audience members may have questions about. (Sometimes this thinking will identify content that does need to be in the
presentation.)
Every conclusion about a complicated, controversial issue inevitably has weaknesses or downsides. These can often be the subjects of audience
members’ questions. A good response will explain how to mitigate those weaknesses or downsides. You may also have to defend your conclusion
by reviewing the evidence you have presented. You should know how to summarize it quickly.
Imagine a company in which innovative ideas have dried up. You think one of the causes is the bureaucratic vetting process that has
developed over the years and stifles new ideas. Your solution is to streamline the process.
You expect this issue to come up in the Q&A. Several powerful managers will have to give up their roles in evaluating new ideas. Your idea for
mitigating their resistance is to have each of them participate in the vetting process on a rotating basis.
Close
Previous
Next
Reset Exercise
Rehearsing a Q&A
Rehearsing a Q&A
Write down the questions you expect so that you can practice answering them. A practice method is using online or mobile applications for
creating flashcards. (Many of these applications are free.) They allow you to randomize the order of the flashcards, and some of them have the
capability to speak the questions. Another option is to have a friend ask you questions.
Try to practice answers as you do the presentation: Stand and speak out loud.
After delivering a presentation, you are probably keyed up and may have strong emotions. This is not an internal state conducive to listening
patiently. But that is what you need to do in a Q&A—observe questioners closely and listen to them carefully.
To strengthen your concentration, note questioners’ nonverbal communication—facial expression, posture (even when seated, people have
different postures), and gestures. The information helps you concentrate and assess the questioner’s motivation and attitude.
Be certain that you understand a question. Your job is to answer questions, not sort out vague or confused audience statements. Never
answer what you think was asked—ask for clarification. For example, “I have a sense that you don’t find the evidence convincing. If that’s
true, tell me why you aren't persuaded and I can speak to that.” Be alert for questions that give you an opening to reinforce your main points.
Speak to everyone.
Repeat the question so that everyone knows what it is. Remember to speak to the whole audience, not the questioner alone.
You have to take to heart the fact that no position is without weakness and therefore no presentation is impregnable. In addition, understand
that you probably can’t convince everyone in the room. Show respect for critics, even if you think they are wrong, and do not try to deny or hide
from fair criticism.
What if a questioner has noticed a mistake in the presentation? Thank her for it. It is embarrassing, but it is better to have the chance to
correct the mistake than to have audience members realize it later.
When you do not know the answer to a question, say so. Faking an answer risks destroying your credibility. If your answer is wrong and the
audience accepts it, it could lead to bad consequences later on. Tell the person who asked the question that you will get back to him with an
answer. (And make sure you do.)
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Maintaining Control
Maintaining Control
Occasionally, audience members can feel competitive with speakers. They may think they are right and the speaker is wrong, and attempt to hijack
a Q&A for a counterargument.
As soon as you see this situation developing, politely tell the individual that you want as many audience members as possible to have a chance to ask
questions. Propose a conversation after the session has ended. Without an audience, the individual often will not be interested in pursuing the
discussion.
Another risk is people who do not dispute the presentation but want to talk about something they consider more interesting. Be watchful for
topics that have nothing to do with the presentation. If this happens, a response similar to the one just described is appropriate.
After his presentation, Felipe will take questions—and he expects some hard ones. Here are a two he anticipates and outlines of his
responses.
Question: If we subsidize improvements in the factory, won’t every vendor we work with expect the same treatment? Some of them
might even decide not to spend money on improvements because they think they can get us to pay for them.
Good question!
In the future, we should insist on certain standards before we sign a contract.
Our standard contract should require vendors to maintain standards.
If the vendors do not maintain these standards, we can terminate the contract immediately.
Question: I think the ethical problem is easy to solve. We tell the factory owner we want him to stop employing children and upgrade
factory conditions. Then it’s up to him to do something. If any outsiders ask, we can say we’ve put the owner on notice. Why should we do
more?
Answering a Question
Listen as Felipe responds to a challenging question from the audience of his presentation.
Team Presentations
Team Presentations
In business school and the corporate world, presentations are often done in teams. Team presentations are not merely a series of individual
presentations. They add a layer of planning, preparation, and practice to the individual presentations.
Content
Slides and other visuals
Delivery
Transitions and timing
Content
Content
Content may be the toughest aspect of a team presentation. As with any form of teamwork, individuals easily head in different directions,
resulting in incoherent, disjointed material. To avoid this, all members of the team should agree on a written presentation plan. A crystal clear
statement of purpose forms the foundation of the plan.
Use the plan as a blueprint to assign team members responsibility for the major parts of the presentation. Their first task is generating content.
Teams should regularly communicate about progress and discuss any problems that crop up. For example, a team member may find little
material for the part she has been assigned. The team can decide whether to change the presentation plan or see if they can help with the
research.
For a team presentation to be effective, you need to have a very, very clear storyline the team can agree to up front.
Assuming the team will take questions, each member should write out a few questions that audience members may ask about his or her portion of
the content. Team members should ask each other the questions and answer them as part of the presentation practice.
Team members have decisions to make about slides. Will the team use them? If they will, how many will they use? Will some parts of the
presentation need more slides than others?
If slides are used, the team should develop a common slide template to ensure a consistent look and feel. Because people have different ideas about
slide design, the group should also talk about design principles.
The team should discuss other visual materials, such as video or props that could enhance the presentation and decide who will be responsible for
them.
Having another team member advance slides and handle other media takes some pressure off the speakers and eliminates the need for them to
take turns holding the remote.
Delivery
Delivery
Everyone has a unique personality and therefore a unique delivery style. The differences are an advantage because they can keep
audience engagement alive.
But all of the presenters should follow certain best practices. They should express a similar level of emotion, such as enthusiasm, and make similar efforts to
engage the audience, such as eye contact and body movement. A high-engagement speaker followed by a low-engagement speaker will jar
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audience members and possibly cause them to wonder whether the low-engagement presenter believes in the team’s message.
The transitions between the team’s speakers should not be left to improvisation. The team should agree on how to handle them and practice them.
One approach to transitions is having each speaker introduce the next one. Or one person can handle the transitions; that person can also open
and conclude the presentation.
Presenters can practice their parts on their own, but the team should rehearse the full presentation, including transitions, several times. Team
members should give each other honest but constructive feedback.
Careful attention should be paid to how long each person speaks and the total time of the presentation. Adjustments should be made when one
person runs long and puts pressure on the speakers that follow to cut short their remarks. Making adjustments in front of the audience is much
more stressful than making them in practice sessions.
Speakers can lose track of time in front of an audience. A team member should be responsible for monitoring the time speakers are taking and
give a sign agreed on in advance if they do not finish when they are supposed to.
The next time you participate in a team presentation, consider using the Team Presentation Assessment. Review the checklist with the members so
that they understand and commit to the work that goes into a successful presentation.
Internet-based conferencing applications are routinely used for business communication. Although they have real shortcomings, their physical
and economic benefits ensure their wide usage.
Technical Considerations
Technical Considerations
For virtual presentations to be successful, both the speaker and the audience need to know how to use the software. Presenters, therefore,
should practice extensively with the application they will use, especially when they are new to it.
Even when they are skilled, however, presenters should have an experienced producer for every event. Decades ago, speakers worried that the light bulb in the
overhead projector would burn out. Now they worry that the audio and video feeds will be dropped in the middle of their presentations.
Experienced producers can save web presentations from disruption. They can be responsible for making sure that participants have correct login
information in advance and are able to connect to the event. They can monitor the software during the presentation, troubleshoot, assist
participants, and manage communications such as chat and email.
A virtual event can quickly run into trouble if participants are unfamiliar with the software. Presenters should be sure the audience knows
the software before the day of the presentation. If they do not, the presenter should make sure they receive the necessary technical support.
This section assumes the use of web presentation applications with and without video. It does not cover high-end products such as Telepresence
or applications such as Skype or FaceTime that are primarily used for one-to-one or small group communication.
Audience size
The "virtual conference room" of a web-based presentation can accommodate a few participants or hundreds or even thousands.
Because it is web based, the technology can reach all over the globe and make time differences less important.
Cost
Virtual presentations can be far less expensive than face-to-face meetings if significant travel is involved.
Maturing technology
Software used for virtual presenting has been in use for years. Reliability has improved and the range of features and tools is large.
Audience attention
The competition for the audience's attention is worse during virtual presentations than live events. Audience members can be doing
anything instead of listening and watching—reading and writing emails, texting, or staring out a window.
Nonverbal feedback
Presenters receive no nonverbal feedback from the audience. They can't read how attentive participants are or their emotions such as
confusion, satisfaction, or dissent.
Making a connection
Except when using high-end software, virtual presenters have limited ways of making a connection with the audience: voice, facial expression,
simulated eye contact (looking directly at the video camera), limited gestures, and slides and other visual material.
To prepare for a virtual presentation, you can use the process, techniques, and guidelines taught in this Module. Excluding the software platform
and other supporting technologies, virtual presenting is a stripped down version of face-to-face speaking. As a speaker, you have to adapt to the
limitations.
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Virtual presenting diminishes the human connection possible in face-to-face encounters, thus making it harder to keep the audience's attention.
So does the fact that participants can do many other things while they are supposed to be paying attention. Therefore, you should cut the
content down to the bare essentials and restrain the length of the presentation.
Prepare a statement about why participants should pay attention to you. Think of them as sitting in their office or home with many options
for directing their attention. Give them reasons why they should choose you and your message.
A presentation consisting of several small chunks with clear boundaries can give the audience a sense of forward progress. The momentum
can assist you in keeping them focused. Prepare yourself to describe the structure at the beginning of the presentation.
Build in interactivity.
Since the interaction between the speaker and audience is so limited, build in two-way events such as question-and-answer periods, discussions (including
calling on audience members by name), problems participants have to work through, polls, games (if appropriate), and teamwork.
Keep your visual messages as simple as possible and tastefully eye-catching. For example, visually simple charts and graphs in bright colors will
attract and hold attention better than tables with rows of numbers.
Practice the presentation as much as possible, using the software. If the application has the capability, record rehearsals, critique them,
and practice again.
The following guidelines are based on a presentation team of at least two: the speaker and the producer. A technical support person makes a good addition.
Your goal as the speaker is to be able to concentrate as much as possible on communicating and as little as necessary on the technology.
Besides telling the audience why they should listen, let them know that in return for their attention, you will keep the presentation moving
and end on time. Then clearly state the purpose, structure, and length of the presentation.
Make sure everyone can hear you (and see you if using video). Check whether any participant is having a technical problem.
Check the positioning of the video camera before you begin. It should be at eye level and far enough away that viewers can see you from the
waist up. Speak to the camera most of the time.
Your voice is your main medium of communication in a virtual presentation. For presentations without video, it is your only medium other than
text and visuals. Use it wisely. Follow the advice in this Module. Imagine that you are talking to someone in his or her office. Speak at a
moderate rate and modulate for emphasis. Be sure you are talking at a volume comfortable for the listeners.
If you have a video channel, gestures play a role in communicating meaning. So use them, but remember that in the small frame of the
typical web video camera, movements are magnified. Try not to move your hands and arms quickly and keep them close to the body.
As the presenter you can't be constantly worried that people are paying attention. At the same time, silence can be a bad sign. Asking a
participant by name if she understands a point you've just made shows the audience that you will be monitoring their involvement. Other types
of interactivity accomplish the same goal.
You have worked hard to understand the audience and are confident you will be persuasive. You have a small slide deck that you expect will have
a large impact. The rehearsals have helped hone your content and delivery. You thought through the questions you may be asked and practiced
answers.
In the room 45 minutes early, you first check the temperature and the lighting. There is noise outside the room and you close the windows. You have
brought a memory stick to transfer the slide and media files to the room computer and have copies on a laptop that can be used as a backup. After
putting your slides on the projection system, you run through them twice using the remote to ensure that they display properly. You also test a short
video that you will show.
You have a stress management plan. Besides rehearsals, you visualized the presentation in your mind each day for a week and have just briskly walked
up and down several flights of stairs. The exertion leaves you feeling more relaxed. Although you will not be using notes, you review your major points
on a sheet of paper you brought—but you find that the review is not necessary.
As people start to enter the room, you greet them with a smile and handshake and ask their names. One person mentions an interest in a particular
topic. You note the person’s name; when you reach the appropriate point in the presentation, you plan to say, “Laurel, I’m now going to talk about the
topic in which you have a special interest. Maybe others have the same interest.”
You have finished the hard work. Now you can reap the benefits. Just before you start speaking, as you walk easily toward the audience, make eye
contact, and smile, you realize you are going to enjoy yourself.
Felipe has finished his work on the presentation. Although he does not know whether the CEO has a truly open mind, Felipe does not worry because
he has chosen to concentrate on making the presentation something he can be proud of—and let the chips fall where they may.
Felipe's Presentation
In the brief excerpt of Felipe's presentation, he puts into practice many of the lessons taught in this course.
Notice how Felipe looks at everyone at the table and continues to do so throughout.
He stands close to his audience to connect with them. His speaking is clear and unhurried.
In his opening, Felipe has described the issue and its risk for the company.
He uses his voice to stress the example of Nike.
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Felipe's gestures and enumeration emphasize essential points.
Felipe states his conclusion about the issue and gives a roadmap of the presentation.
Navigation:
To advance from one question to the next, select one of the answer choices or, if applicable, complete with your own choice and click the "Submit"
button. After submitting your answer, you will not be able to change it, so make sure you are satisfied with your selection before you submit each
answer. You may also skip a question by pressing the forward advance arrow. Please note that you can return to "skipped" questions using the "Jump to
unanswered question" selection menu or the navigational arrows at any time. Although you can skip a question, you must navigate back to it and
answer it—all questions must be answered for the exam to be scored.
After completion, you can review your answers at any time by returning to the exam.
Good luck!
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