Business Communication Assignments: Important concepts learned by scholars

Question

Task Description: The objective of this reflective essay is to summarize what you learned from the unit and how you believe your learnings could be applied by you in your future career goals.

Section one: For weeks one to ten you should identify one important or significant concept that you have learned about.

You should define the concept and then explain why it is important to you in your current or future line of work. It is not enough to simply say that the concept is important, you will need to explain why.

Section two: Based on your discussion of the ten significant concepts you should provide a literature review of one of the concepts. So for example, if you found that listening was an important communication concept then you should provide a literature review on the current academic understanding of the importance of listening within the work environment.

Section three: Lastly, you will need to discuss how two of the ten concepts could be important to your future career aspirations. Here you will need to identify where you wish to be in 5 years’ time, and then discuss how you think these concepts/skills will help you meet your career goal. It is important that you are specific as possible.

Your essay should follow the following structure:

1) Introduction

1. Opening statement that introduces the topic
2. Background information that introduces the context, significance and the purpose of the essay
3. Preview of the structure of the essay
4. Thesis
5. Transition to section one

2) Section one—identify and explain the importance of one weekly concept in terms of your work activities.

1. Week one
2. Week two
3. Week three
4. Week four
5. Week five
6. Week six
7. Week seven
8. Week eight
9. Week nine
10. Week ten

3) Section two—Literature review of one of the concepts identified in section one

4) Section three—Application of two of the concepts for future career aspirations.

5) Conclusion

1. Synopsis of the areas discussed in the essay
2. Restatement of the thesis statement
3. Capstone statement that signals that the essay has ended.

6) References (APA reference style)

Answer

Introduction: The purpose of this assignment is to provide a reflection on the class learnings of business communications (BUSN20017) unit. Communication that enables to promote a product, service, or organization is called business communication. Communication is considered as the lifeblood of an organization. It is needed to exchange information, make plans and decisions, and conduct business (“Business Communication and its Types”). Some of the concepts of business communication were discussed in the business communications unit. Based on the learning’s, one significant concept is briefly explained in the first section of this assignment. Literature review of one concept from each of the ten weekly learning is discussed in the next section. The third section discusses how two of these concepts could be important to my future career aspirations.

Business Communication Concepts that I Learnt About and its Importance

Week 1 – Communication Competence: I understood the meaning and necessity of communication competence from the first unit. It says that appropriate communication is necessary according to the context. It is important to understand what to communicate and when to communicate. I should expand my knowledge on the subject of communication and present it according to the target audience.

Week 2 - Non-Verbal Communication: I learnt the concept of non-verbal communication from week 2 module. As per the textbook, non-verbal communication is one that is sent by means other than words or graphics. People make interpretations about others primarily based on their non-verbal communication.

I learnt through this unit that I also have to study people’s facial expressions and vocalics when communicating with them. I learnt to look for the non-verbal signs and forms of expressions from people to understand what they really imply, rather than coming to conclusions based upon their verbal words.

Week 3 – Professional Written Communication: The third module of professional written communication gave me an overall idea about its genres like employment letters, curriculum vitae, email, reports, memos, and manuals. I understood that each type has its own format and outline, which should be strictly followed. If not followed, I may be considered as an unprofessional leader.

Week 4 – Academic Written Communication: Academic writing is just not referencing lots of contents and turning out a complex structured paper. It should be easily understood, properly formatted, and written with good grammar. I learnt the importance of writing academic papers with good grammar from unit 4 of the course.

Week 5 - Academic Written Communication (Continued): From unit 5, I understand the sources that could be included in a literature review and their evaluation. Literature is a study of existing information. But any information cannot be put into a literature. I understood that only reliable information can be used in a literature review.

Week 6 – Professional Presentations: One of the concepts that I learnt from this unit is to analyze the audience before making a presentation. The process involves analyzing the audience and tailoring the presentation according to their level of understanding, beliefs, and interests (Bannon, n.d.). I may be preparing an excellent presentation on the topic by studying the subject deeply and putting relevant information into the presentation. But if the audience do not understand it or except it to be different, then my presentation does not serve its purpose.

Week 7 – Intercultural Communication: In the event of conducting business, I shall be interacting with people of many cultures. I learnt the types of adaptation to cultures like enculturation and acculturation. I understood that cultural adaptation can be two ways - from myself and from other people. The module taught me to not be stringent in sticking to my own culture but be prepared to embrace other people’s culture also.

Week 8 – Internal Organizational Communication: I learnt the forms of organization communication like meetings, face-to-face discussions, email, telephone, and written documents. I understood the context in which each of them have to be used. This will help me in my future business communications.

Week 9 – Communicating within Organizational Teams: I have heard people saying that meetings are boring, unproductive, and waste of time. I felt sad at learning the amount of time and money wasted in inefficient meetings. This module taught me how meetings can be used productively and effectively. I learnt how to properly plan a meeting, which will help me to manage them better in my career.

Week 10 – Interpersonal Communication: This module taught me the necessity of interpersonal communication in a business environment and its types. To be a good leader, I learnt that a person has to be assertive in his talks and behavior. I hope to be an assertive leader and stand up for the rights of my business team in my career.

Literature Review
The communication concept of “Interpersonal Communication” was taught in week 10 of the BUSN20017 course. The course describes interpersonal communication as direct interaction between people. The different types of interpersonal communication like passive and assertive methods in the context of interpersonal communication were taught in the unit. This section provides a study of existing literature on interpersonal communication concepts.

The principles, uses, models, and characteristics of interpersonal communication (IC) are discussed in the section “Chapter 1: Interpersonal Communication: A First Look”. It says that interpersonal communication is about relationships, it takes two people, and is continuous. The elements of interpersonal communication like people, message, channels, noise, and others are also briefed out in this article. Communication models like linear model, interaction model, and transaction model are briefly explained. The uses and characteristics of IC are also explained. Overall this article is a good beginning to understand the underlying elements, principles, characteristics, and models of interpersonal communication.

Singh & Lalropuii (2014) present a research paper on the effect of interpersonal communication on various elements of organizational effectiveness. Organizational effectiveness is termed as the systematic approach to continuously improve the performance of an organization. Research finds that this performance depends on leader’s interpersonal skills. It also identifies that key point in interpersonal skills are assertion strategies. The respondents believe that strong communicators stand up for their rights and do not get intimidated in presenting their views.

Sethi and Seth (2009) say that lifeblood of a business is Interpersonal interaction. The authors define IC as the method of sending and receiving information between two or more people. This communication enhances relationships and the pattern changes based on the kind of relationship. The article presents an overall idea about the fundamentals of interpersonal communication, barriers to it and means of overcoming them, and the styles of interpersonal communication. There are different types of IC like controlling style, structuring style, withdrawal style, egalitarian, dynamic, and relinquishing styles. The authors explain how these different styles can be applied to appropriate situations in conducting business. Since organizations are run by people, their existence would be difficult without communication between people.

The class readings listed out some types of interpersonal communication. Along with other types, these interpersonal communication types are further studied in the article “The Four Basic Styles of Communication” (n.d.). This article briefs out four classes of communication. They are aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive, and assertive communication styles. This article explains each of the interpersonal communication types, the characteristics of this type, the characteristics exhibited by the people following this style, and their behavior. This article acts as a guide to study people’s characteristics in a communication as well as applying them as the situation calls for.

Luthra & Dahiya (2015) have tried to find out how leadership is affected by communication. Through previous readings, the authors say that key to great leadership is effective communication. Only good communicators can become effective leaders. Leadership communication is one that inspires and encourages people through information sharing by communication. The authors say that leadership styles also influence communication process, the styles being situation dependent, goal oriented style, directive, people centric, behavioral, and action based styles. The article also identifies barriers to effective leadership communication. It gives suggestions to improve leadership communication and to become an excellent leader.

The elements of interpersonal communication, models, their characteristics, and styles were studied in the previous literature. Barriers to effective communication were also touched upon in some articles, and these are studied exhaustively in the article “Communication Barriers” written by Usha Rani (2016). The author defines communication barrier as one that hinders people from getting and sending messages from / to others. The communication barriers in a workplace are caused by attitude, behavior, culture, language, and environment. The author explains each of these barriers in detail and how they interfere with the message being sent. The article offers suggestions to overcome these barriers, so as to communicate effectively.

Existing literature on interpersonal communication, characteristics and principles, models of communication, styles of communication, barriers, and steps to overcome them were studied. The studies show how interpersonal communication can help in becoming an effective leader. It also showed the need for applying communication style based upon the situation.

Concepts Important to My Future Career
I consider business presentation and organizational team communication skills as important capabilities for my future career aspirations. Professional business presentations were learnt in week 6 of BUSN20017 course and the module “Communicating within Organizational Teams and Groups” was studied in week 9. I am stating the reasons for considering these two concepts as important to my future in the subsequent paragraphs.

Where I see myself in 5 years
I see myself as a self-employed business entrepreneur in the next 5 years. I am planning to start my own business, grow it, and make it successfully operational in the next 5 years. Any business will need the first 5 years to hold root, break even, and generate revenue through its operations. I shall be interacting with lots of people in running my business, recruit people, build and manage teams to run operations. This career aspiration to be an entrepreneur leads me to believe that the two concepts of presentation and team communication will be vital in my career success.

How I Consider these Two Skills Will Help Me
Presentation is the simplest form of expression of a message to the audience in a public speaking setting. A presentation should be understandable, memorable, and emotional for it to be successful (“Presentation Skills”, n.d.). I learnt from the course that there are many different types of presentations like briefings, reports, training, proposals, and honoring a person. I am able to understand that different situations require different methods of presentation. In my business endeavors, I shall be meeting different types of people to discuss different subjects. I shall be adopting myself to make presentations depending upon the subject and audience. Hence I consider presentation skills as an important factor for my career aspiration.

The next skill that I consider important is team or group communication. I am planning to start my own business. I shall be recruiting people for my business and educate them about their work. As the business grows, I shall be recruiting more people, which eventually will lead to formation of teams. The teams will be working on different projects. Hence team interaction and communication within the team is important for the team to work effectively. I need to define the roles of team members, their reporting authority, and their respective tasks. Inter and intra team knowledge sharing is important to keep myself updated about the work. This process will help me to be a better leader and collaborator in my future career aspiration (Marsen, 2005).

Conclusion
This is an assignment to reflect the learnings of the study unit “Business communication” (BUSN20017), by considering 10 weeks of study. This is done to analyze the level of understanding got from studying a course. The first part of the assignment requires analysis of concepts from learnings of every week and its application in future career. The second part of the assignment is a literature review of one of the concepts, because of which an in-depth insight of the concept is acquired. The third part of the assignment considers two concepts which will help to attain career aspirations in the next 5 years. This assignment helped me to gain better insight of the course and its application in my future career ambitions.

References
Bannon, M. (n.d.). Audience analysis. University of Pittsburgh. Retrieved from: https://www.comm.pitt.edu/oral-comm-lab/audience-analysis

Business communication and its types. (2009). Retrieved from: http://www.notesdesk.com/notes/business-communications/business-communication-and-its-types/

Chapter 1: Interpersonal communication: A first look. (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://www.fd.unl.pt/docentes_docs/ma/AGON_MA_25847.pdf

Luthra, A. & Dahiya, R. Effective leadership is all about communicating effectively: Connecting leadership and communication. International Journal of Management & Business Studies, 5 (3), 43-48. Retrieved from: https://www.mcgill.ca/engage/files/engage/effective_leadership_is_all_about_communicating_effectively_luthra _dahiya_2015.pdf

Marsen, S. (2006). Organizational communication. In Communication studies (pp. 114-147). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved from: https://www.its.caltech.edu/~e105/readings/team/communication.pdf

Presentation skills. (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/168829-the-ocr-guide-to-presentation-skills.pdf

Sethi, D. & Seth, M. (2009). Interpersonal communication: Lifeblood of an organization. The IUP Journal of Soft Skills, 3 (3 & 4), 32-40. Retrieved from: https://iims.uthscsa.edu/sites/iims/files/Novel/communication/Communication-5.pdf

Singh, A.K., & Lalropuii. (2014). Role of interpersonal communication in organizational effectiveness. International Journal of Research in Management & Business Studies, 1 (4), 36-39. Retrieved from: http://ijrmbs.com/vol1issue4/dramit.pdf

The four basic styles of communication. (n.d.). UK Violence Intervention and Prevention Center. Retrieved from: https://www.uky.edu/hr/sites/www.uky.edu.hr/files/wellness/images/Conf14_FourCommStyles.pdf

Usha Rani. (2016). Communication barriers. Journal of English Language and Literature, 3 (2). Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304038097_COMMUNICATION_BARRIERS