While preparing a written or an oral business message, you need to plan, organize, compose, edit and revise it. The message must also be proofread and corrected before it is mailed. Apart from the steps mentioned above the writer must take care of seven C qualities and also of legal aspect. Careful preparation of communication is important, even if the writer / speaker has the modern technology. The basic planning steps are as follows:
Five Planning Steps
Before writing a message, the following steps are necessary for effective communication.
1. Define the purpose of the message.
2. Analyze your audience – readers or listeners.
3. Choose the ideas to include.
4. Collect all the facts to back up these ideas.
5. Outline – organize – your message.
1. Define the purpose of the message.
1. General Purpose
To inform, to persuade, to collaborate with your audience
This deters the amount of audience participation and amount of control your have over your message.
to inform: you control is high you inform you need with interaction. Audience absorb or reject the information
to persuade: you require a moderate amount of participation / moderate amount of control.
to collaborate: with audience you need maximum participation / you control is minimal.
Specific purpose
That purpose you be clear and straightforward.
To achieve this are your self what you want to achieve / accomplish with your message and what your audience should think after receiving the message.
Is you purpose realistic
Is this the right time?
Is the right person delivering the message?
Is your purpose acceptable to you organization?
2. Analyze your audience – readers or listeners.
It is very important to write the message to the recipient’s views and needs. You might or might not have met the recipient. It is better to visualize the individual. Try to picture that person – business or professional person or labourer, superior (boss) colleague, or subordinate, man or woman, new or longtime customer, young, middle-aged, or elderly client. Also, consider the person’s educational level, attitudes, and so on. If the message is for many people, try to find some common characteristics. In all communications, the areas must be considered on which the recipient is likely to be well informed or uniformed, pleased or displeased, positive, negative, or neutral, interested or uninterested and unreceptive.
As yourself some key question about your audience
1. Who are they?
2. What is their probable reactor to your message?
3. How much do they already know about the subject?
4. What is their relationship to your
Audience profile
1. Who is your primary audience?
2. How big is your audience?
3. What is your audience’s composition?
4. What is your audience’s level of understanding?
5. What is your audience’s probable reaction?
3. Choose the ideas to include.
While answering a letter, one can underline the main points to discuss and get the ideas briefly on a pad. If one is writing unsolicited or a complex message, one can begin by listing ideas as they come to mind. Then most important facts can be changed into message. It is better that the message written to welcome a customer should have other incentives or policies what the firm offers.
* Consider your reader’s viewpoint (be in his place)
* Read company’s document
* Talk with your colleagues, customer etc.
* Ask your audience for input
4. Collect all the facts to back up these ideas.
After the main ideas, the writer / speaker should ask himself what specific facts, updated figures or quotations he needs. The knowledge of the company’s policies, procedures, and product details is necessary for an effective communication. A brochure, table picture, or product sample is also useful to enclose.
Find out
* be sure the information is accurate
* be sure the information is ethical
* be sure the information is pertinent
* select appropriate channel
5. Outline – organize – your message.
The order in which the ideas are to be presented is as important as the ideas themselves. Disorganized writing reflects disorganized, illogical thought process or careless preparation.
Choose the organizational plan after the purpose has been finalized collecting all necessary facts. Ask yourself: “How will the reader or listener react to these ideas?”
Saturday, December 4, 2010
LECTURE 08
Listening
• Difference between hearing and listening
• Hearing is a physical process. The ear receive stimuli or sensations and transmit them to brain
• Listening refers to the interpretive process that takes place when we hear something. When we listen, tore ,classify and label information
• Listening is the most important of all the communication skills. Upon awakening we listen to people, friends around us. Wherever we go, we listen to something. We spend most of our time engaged in listening. Listening occupies more time than any other communication.
What is listening?
Listening is an active process of receiving aural stimulus. Listening is an active rather than a passive process. Listening does not just happen we must make it happen. A great time is spent listening and talking listening serve two purposes in its process 1 As the sender of the message, listening to your receiver tells you how the other person has interpreted your message 2 As the receiver of a message listening to the other person allows you to understand their meaning.
Purpose of listening
Serves a number of important purposes. It enables the listener to check on the accuracy of understanding what the speaker said. Besides, the listener expresses acceptance of speaker’s feelings. Most important of all, listening provides a chance to the speaker to explore his or her feelings and thoughts further.
A variety of listening skills can be learned and developed with practice The following skills are worth practicing
• Attending listening
• Encouraging listening
• Reflecting listening
• Active listening
In attending listening you focus on speaker by giving them your physical attention you use whole body, eye contact posture personal space in short complete feedback .
Encouraging listening
It invites speaker to say more without pressuring them to disclose their feelings or though it is their choice.
Minimal and brief responses
Brief spoken responses let speaker know you are listening and encourage them to talk.
Pause
Brief pause allows speaker time to consider reflect and decide whether to continue speaking Allow silence
Use encouraging question (5w)
Reflecting listening
Restate the speakers feeling and contents it shows the other person you understand.
Active Listening
An active listener has empathy with the speaker that shows that you understand the issue from other person’ point of view. Feedback is the connecting continuing or completing link.
Faults in listening
Remember that every sound or voice that we receive cannot be termed as listening. There are certain occasions when you receive some certain sound stimulus but you do not understand it because your attention is towards something else. In such cases, we say that you heard something but you did not listen to anything. Moreover there are certain other factors which bar our proper listening. An average person remembers only half of what is said during a 10-minute conversation and forgets half of that within 48 hours. Studies agree that listening efficiency is no better than 28 to 30 percent. Following are the causes of listening pit falls:
Prejudice
All of us have personal opinions, attitudes, or beliefs about certain things. When we listen to a speaker who is contrary to our ideas, we cannot maintain attention. As a result we do not listen to whatever he says. We should give a chance to the speaker to finish his message. Later, we can agree or disagree.
Distraction
Not only the verbal messages but also the nonverbal cues of the speaker affect our listening. Actually, the entire physical environment affects listening. Among the negative factors are noisy fan, poor light, distracting background music, bang of a horn, extreme weather. Among the speaker’s nonverbal cues are his clothes, his voice quality, his wearing of a certain perfume, reek of sweat, excessive gestures, etc.
Semantic barrier
Meaning of words also create problem in listening, as meaning of words vary from person to person influenced by feelings, attitudes, prejudices and biases. Sometimes the way a speaker utters a word annoys us.
Preshrinking
The average thinking capacity of a person is up to 800 words per minute while the average speaker utters 80 to 160 words per minute. This difference sometimes makes listeners deviate from the speaker’s words and they shift to something else. On the other hand people fill this gap by premature evaluation of what they are listening to. They arrive at the concluding thought quickly. This premature evaluation poses us our effective listening is impaired.
• .Boredom or lack of interest
• Listener’s dislike of speaker
• desire to change rather then accept the speaker
• Tendency to make early conclusion
• Intrusion of listeners’ own values or attitude
• Listener’s opinion that the speaker lacks credibility Ways to improve listening
Ways to improve your listening
(1) Be prepared. By knowing the speaker and the topic beforehand you can prepare yourself for better understanding of the topic.
(2) Show positive attitude. Don’t make premature assumptions before listening to a certain speaker. Always be ready to learn new ideas or facts that you are not aware of.
(3) Listen to learn, not to refute. While listening, try to understand the points. Don’t let them mix up with your biases before you have listened and evaluated the message.
(4) Concentrate.
Pay attention to what is said. You know that everything that is said has a special meaning in a certain context. Out of the context it may be misunderstood.
(5) Jot down notes.
If possible, take down main ideas. These notes will help you a lot later on.
• Difference between hearing and listening
• Hearing is a physical process. The ear receive stimuli or sensations and transmit them to brain
• Listening refers to the interpretive process that takes place when we hear something. When we listen, tore ,classify and label information
• Listening is the most important of all the communication skills. Upon awakening we listen to people, friends around us. Wherever we go, we listen to something. We spend most of our time engaged in listening. Listening occupies more time than any other communication.
What is listening?
Listening is an active process of receiving aural stimulus. Listening is an active rather than a passive process. Listening does not just happen we must make it happen. A great time is spent listening and talking listening serve two purposes in its process 1 As the sender of the message, listening to your receiver tells you how the other person has interpreted your message 2 As the receiver of a message listening to the other person allows you to understand their meaning.
Purpose of listening
Serves a number of important purposes. It enables the listener to check on the accuracy of understanding what the speaker said. Besides, the listener expresses acceptance of speaker’s feelings. Most important of all, listening provides a chance to the speaker to explore his or her feelings and thoughts further.
A variety of listening skills can be learned and developed with practice The following skills are worth practicing
• Attending listening
• Encouraging listening
• Reflecting listening
• Active listening
In attending listening you focus on speaker by giving them your physical attention you use whole body, eye contact posture personal space in short complete feedback .
Encouraging listening
It invites speaker to say more without pressuring them to disclose their feelings or though it is their choice.
Minimal and brief responses
Brief spoken responses let speaker know you are listening and encourage them to talk.
Pause
Brief pause allows speaker time to consider reflect and decide whether to continue speaking Allow silence
Use encouraging question (5w)
Reflecting listening
Restate the speakers feeling and contents it shows the other person you understand.
Active Listening
An active listener has empathy with the speaker that shows that you understand the issue from other person’ point of view. Feedback is the connecting continuing or completing link.
Faults in listening
Remember that every sound or voice that we receive cannot be termed as listening. There are certain occasions when you receive some certain sound stimulus but you do not understand it because your attention is towards something else. In such cases, we say that you heard something but you did not listen to anything. Moreover there are certain other factors which bar our proper listening. An average person remembers only half of what is said during a 10-minute conversation and forgets half of that within 48 hours. Studies agree that listening efficiency is no better than 28 to 30 percent. Following are the causes of listening pit falls:
Prejudice
All of us have personal opinions, attitudes, or beliefs about certain things. When we listen to a speaker who is contrary to our ideas, we cannot maintain attention. As a result we do not listen to whatever he says. We should give a chance to the speaker to finish his message. Later, we can agree or disagree.
Distraction
Not only the verbal messages but also the nonverbal cues of the speaker affect our listening. Actually, the entire physical environment affects listening. Among the negative factors are noisy fan, poor light, distracting background music, bang of a horn, extreme weather. Among the speaker’s nonverbal cues are his clothes, his voice quality, his wearing of a certain perfume, reek of sweat, excessive gestures, etc.
Semantic barrier
Meaning of words also create problem in listening, as meaning of words vary from person to person influenced by feelings, attitudes, prejudices and biases. Sometimes the way a speaker utters a word annoys us.
Preshrinking
The average thinking capacity of a person is up to 800 words per minute while the average speaker utters 80 to 160 words per minute. This difference sometimes makes listeners deviate from the speaker’s words and they shift to something else. On the other hand people fill this gap by premature evaluation of what they are listening to. They arrive at the concluding thought quickly. This premature evaluation poses us our effective listening is impaired.
• .Boredom or lack of interest
• Listener’s dislike of speaker
• desire to change rather then accept the speaker
• Tendency to make early conclusion
• Intrusion of listeners’ own values or attitude
• Listener’s opinion that the speaker lacks credibility Ways to improve listening
Ways to improve your listening
(1) Be prepared. By knowing the speaker and the topic beforehand you can prepare yourself for better understanding of the topic.
(2) Show positive attitude. Don’t make premature assumptions before listening to a certain speaker. Always be ready to learn new ideas or facts that you are not aware of.
(3) Listen to learn, not to refute. While listening, try to understand the points. Don’t let them mix up with your biases before you have listened and evaluated the message.
(4) Concentrate.
Pay attention to what is said. You know that everything that is said has a special meaning in a certain context. Out of the context it may be misunderstood.
(5) Jot down notes.
If possible, take down main ideas. These notes will help you a lot later on.
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