Organizational Communication: Processes Underlying Communication Success

The aim for this essay is to reflect on the successes and failures of my own communication experiences within an organization. For my scenarios, I will be looking at two different assignment groups, where one was an example of successful organization communication and another which was an example of ineffective organizational communication. Organizational communication is the sharing of information among members of an organization, where interaction can occur horizontally or vertically and using different communication channels. I will be examining and analyzing each scenario and identifying the factors that contributed to each scenario by reflecting on the relevant theories and principle of communication. Lastly, I will be using the knowledge I gained to come up with a couple of recommendations to improve my ineffective organization communication scenario.

Successful organizational communication scenario

An example of a successful organizational communication was with my project team from my BISM2233, in which we had to develop a business plan, a working website and a presentation. Since, we had never met each other before and there were a couple of things that needed to be discussed before we could start the project, we decided to have a meeting. In this meeting we had a specific agenda that we had to go through:

1. Ice Breaker
2. Go through the rubric
3. Discuss on what business to get into
4. Clear any confusions or questions.
5. Split the task evenly and set a deadline
6. Decide best way to communicate with each other.

To get the meeting going smoothly I took the position of chairperson, to maintain everyone’s focus and to not waste too much time discussing something not important. The outcome of this meeting was we had a better idea of what the assignment needs, decided on a business idea we are gonna pursue, split the tasks evenly and cleared up any confusion. Furthermore, at the end of the meeting, one of the team members had some problems in time management and stress and came to me for advice. While listening to him, I leant forwards, kept eye contact and listened to understand the problems he has. I then summarized it for him to see if I fully understood him, also I gave him some advice and helped him keep up with the time line for our project.

Analysis of successful organizational communication

Analyzing my successful organizational communication in depth, there are a couple of factors present that helped promote this effective communication. Firstly, I was able to help one of my group members with his problems by applying active listening. Release of stress is a regular and important coping mechanism. Although there are many behaviors that enable healthy trouble talks, none is as fundamental as active listening. Active listening is the use of verbal and non-verbal behavior that is done to show the speaker you are paying attention, understanding them, responsive and empathizing with them, to encourage them to keep expressing their thoughts and feelings and help in relational maintenance. Some non-verbal behaviors of active listening are head nodding, eye contact and forward leaning that presents the degree of closeness with others. This kind of non-verbal behaviors in the topic of trouble talks signals involvement, attentiveness and awareness. Furthermore, non-verbal behaviors in conversations about problems have a positive role for instantaneous behaviors. Other than using non-verbal communication, active listeners also show they are paying attention by using a number of verbal behaviors such as paraphrasing, asking questions, assumption checking and reflective feelings. Active listeners, who use paraphrasing and reflective feelings, also implement a strategy to be certain they are not misinterpreting the speaker by assumption checking or the use of short questions to check the degree to which they have accurately captured the meaning of the speaker. In some cases, active listeners use open ended questions to shift the conversation in a certain direction. In my scenario, I used both verbal (paraphrasing, assumption checking) and non-verbal (leaning forward, eye contact) communication in the way of an active listener when listening to my team members problems. This helped by showing him I was actually listening to him and paying attention to his problems. Also, by paraphrasing and assumption checking, I could fully understand his problems and I could see he felt relieved after talking to me. Moreover, by applying active listening, I could not only help someone with their problems but also able to keep our project on track for our deadline. Another important that made it a successful organizational communication was the use of effective meetings. Meetings refer to a group of two or more people with common goals and communicate to acquire those goals.

Another way to look at meetings is a group of two or more people that have common purpose and missions in a particular place or time to discuss about a topic (solutions for an organizational problem or decision making) and finding an appropriate solution. Meetings if not done properly can be expensive, time consuming and lowers productivity but if done right meetings can be an effective instrument in an organization. Effective meetings can improve productivity, enhance teamwork and increase employees work rate. As we can see, there are major benefits of knowing how to have effective meetings. For a meeting to be effective, the expected outcome of the meeting should be determined before the meetings, there needs to be a specific agenda and members of the meeting should be well prepared. There should also be a chairperson to get the group to maintain focus, follow procedure and to maintain order. With my group the meetings were effective as we always had a predetermined agenda and goals we needed to achieve. This helped, as everyone knew what was going to happen and they could prepare solutions or problems before the meetings.

Furthermore, by having an agenda we did not waste time talking about other topics or procrastinated. We also had a chairperson position in our meeting, to keep the group focus on the specific topic and kept everyone in check. As, with website design, there are smaller details that can get a group to get stuck in and waste time discussing. With using these tactics, we had effective meetings, that gave us constructive outcomes, which helped us do outstandingly in our project with minimal stress and conflict.

Ineffective organizational communication

An example of an effective organizational communication was with my project team for my BISM3222, in which we had to analyze a dataset, gain insights using Rapidminer and give a presentation of our findings. During our meetings, there was one member of the group who, when he did not get his way or the group decides to do something other than what he says becomes aggressive saying he had more experience and his way is the right way. Furthermore, he would start raising his voice in a threatening tone, start waving his arms rapidly and move in closer to try to show his dominance. After he realized, he could not get people to follow him, he started coming late to meetings, and did his parts poorly which needed to be redid by the other group members. The result of this was the group started to have conflicts as every meeting virtual or in the real world always ended up in a heated discussion, that would result in nothing resolved and people getting angry with each other. Moreover, since a number of people in the group were close to each other, there were lot of gossips about the unruly member and did not want to change their approach for a better way. This reduced overall team morale and productivity, the knock over effect was the assignment was below expectation and only managed to make the deadline with a couple of minutes to spare.

Analysis of the ineffective organizational communication

By examining my scenario of an ineffective organizational communication, there were a number of factors that contributed to the shortcomings of the group. Firstly, was one of the team members aggressive communication style. Verbal aggressiveness is a hostile communication trait that involves criticizing the self-concept of others. A verbally aggressive message has the intention to hurt the other person. Findings show being verbally aggressive in a relationship leads to negative relational outcomes as these kind of people have low responsiveness to others. Furthermore, verbal aggression reduces the receivers motivation and receivers perceived feeling of learning. Aggressive communication can be shown in different ways such as trying to control others, belittling others, always wanting to be right and putting the blame on others. With my scenario, we could see one of the team members shows characteristics of an aggressive communication style by trying to be in control of what the group does and wanting to be right in every aspect of the assignment. Even when we explained and showed evidence of why we are doing it a different way he disregarded our opinions and ideas. This reduced team morale and lowered productivity in terms of completing the project as some felt hurt and frustrated by the way he communicates and did not want to work together with him.

Another factor, that was seen in the scenario was the way the aggressive team member used non-verbal communication to make his argument and to try to threaten others. Non-verbal communication happens every time a person communicates with another, it can be intentional or unintentional and is a rapid flow of communication between two individuals. Interpretation of this non-verbal communication play a big part in a person’s perception of the particular event. Studies show almost 90 per cent of communication is non-verbal, which included body language like facial cues, eye contact, gesturing, posture and distance between individuals. Also, non-verbal communication can stretch into delivery of speech with the volume used and intonation of the message delivered. Gabott (2006) split non-verbal communication into four groups: Proxemics (personal space and distance), Kinesics (body posture), Oculesics (eye behavior) and Vocalics (vocal tones and intonation). These behaviors help convey a meaning and a direct impact in the communication process between parties, but an issue with non-verbal communication is the ability of a person to accurately interpret certain behaviors, at a simple level non-verbal communication could be misunderstood or interpreted differently that what was intended. Some variables, known to have an impact on interpreting non-verbal communication correctly are gender, culture and personal traits. Men and women perceive and understand communication cues differently.

Furthermore, evidence shows people can understand non-verbal behavior of someone with similar culture, linguistics and race easier. Also, an individual traits have an effect on the way we handle a specific situation. With my scenario, the aggressive team member used a higher tone of speech and an intonation that is perceived as anger. He also started becoming more elaborate with his hand movements pointing and gesturing more sternly and rapidly. Also, moved closer to the group which made some members feel uncomfortable. With his behavior, the group members took it as him getting angry, and not someone easy to deal with which upset and angered the team. This made it hard to work and collaborate with the team, with many meetings not going to plan with very little constructive outcome, as we spent a lot of time debating and arguing. The last factor, I pinpointed from my scenario was the disadvantages of informal networks as with the problems previously discussed, the group was split into smaller groups who became resistant to changes and were involved in a lot of conflict and gossips. Defining an informal network in an organization is difficult with the lack of structure and implicit nature of these networks. Although on analogy from the theories, explained it really well, with comparing informal networks in an organization to a nervous system in a living creature, and the formal organization to the bone structure. This is because the skeleton is strong and firm, but the nervous system is fragile but flexible. Furthermore, the skeleton can be seen in a way, but the nervous system can only be felt, with it being unrestricted without specific subdivisions.

One of the disadvantages of informal networks is the spreading of false rumors. The grapevine a term for informal networks are usually accurate with the news but when it is not, is more likely to cause significant damage, as by discussing rumors a person waste time they could be doing more important tasks, and false news damages the credibility of the grapevine. Another disadvantage is the emergence of groupthink as the group could develop their own set of norms which could reduce productivity and organization morale when cooperation required between two different groups. Due to groupthink, the group can become resistance to changes in working conditions, which is where conflict can arise between the group and management (Mayo, 1949). Due to informal networks having no checks an balances it creates smaller groups and isolates and a majority rule mindset, with power and influence being more unethical can be harmful to an individual (Farris, 1979). As, with my group there were smaller informal group that emerged who had the majority rule, who did things their way and were resistance to any changes about the group assignment. Moreover, gossip of the unruly team member started circulating and conflicts arise between he two parties. These problems made the group have a toxic environment that made it hard to get anything done, as there was very little communication between team members and it did not help that the task for the assignment could not have been split between us and needed to be done stage by stage. The result of this was an unsatisfactory work product, and a stressful condition to work in.

Recommendations

As we are done analyzing the successful and ineffective organization communication scenarios, I will be providing a number of recommendations to improve the communication in my ineffective organizational communication scenario. The first recommendation is I could have adopted an assertive communications style to better handle the aggressive team member and reduce the conflict in the team. Assertiveness is the ability to recognize my rights as an individual and the right of others. An assertive person is able to communicate in a way that maintains their self-respect, the satisfaction of person’s needs, defend their own rights and personal space without violating another person’s right. By being clear, precise and specific about the goals of the group there would be less confusion on the activities needed to do and how to accomplish them. Also, using some assertive skills such as active listening, explaining topics and problems clearly and checking if they understand, I could have made sure everyone was on the same page and I could have answered any problems also I could have minimizes the aggressive members frustration about not having his way. Moreover while communicating with the aggressive person, I should keep a relaxed body posture, keep my voice calm and have appropriate eye contact, this would have no further angered him compared to getting angry as well but could have defused the situation without fracturing the team chemistry. I believe if I had implemented an assertive communication style, I could have kept the team together and work more efficiently compared to what actually happened. Another recommendation, to improve the ineffective communication scenario, is to set some guidelines that should be followed by all members and have a group leader. A important rule to have is the team should make decisions by having a vote. This helps resolve any issues about having different opinions and not knowing which way to go ahead with. It also negates any potential conflicts and lowers the chances any of member will feel wrong or upset. Also, it gives team members a chance to make their case on why their way is better. In a group, there should always be leader to as they like a chairperson in a meeting should keep the team focus and deal with any personality problems in the group. It would be better if the group leader has an assertive communication style as it would help that person motivate other group members and make sure the project is progressing smoothly.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have distinguished that in my successful scenario the factors that contributed to its success was using active listening and having effective meetings. This helped in keeping the team focus and producing above average results. The factors, detected as the reason for the ineffective organizational communication scenario was a team members aggressive communication styles, including non-verbal communications and the disadvantages of informal networks. These factors, increased the number of conflicts in our team, reduced productivity and lowered team morale, which resulted in below average results. Some recommendations to improve this was the use of assertive communication styles, having set of guidelines and a group leader. By implementing these strategies, the group could have reduced conflict and increased constructive teamwork.