21
Chapter Nine Communicating in Team and again
making decision without any information about the decision context, the alternatives
ing its objectives. All of these ingredients require communication from coworkers as well as
from stakeholders in the external environment. For example, airline cockpit crews make
much better decisions and thereby cause far fewer accidents --- when the captain encour
ages the crew to share information openly."
A fourth function is to change behavior. When communicating to others, we are often
trying to alter their beliefs and feelings and ultimately their behavior. This influence pro
cess might be passive, such as merely describing the situation more clearly and fully
Sometimes
, the communication event is a deliberate attempt to change someone's
thoughts and actions. We will discuss this function under the topic of persuasion later in
this chapter.
Finally, communication supports employee well-being. Informationally, communica
tion conveys knowledge that helps employees better manage their work environment. For
instance, research shows that new employees adjust much
better to the organization when
coworkers communicate subtle nuggets of wisdom, such as how to avoid office
politics,
complete work procedures correctly
find useful resources, handle difficult customers, and
so on." Emotionally, the communication experience itself is a soothing balm. Indeed, pro
ple are less susceptible to colds, cardiovascular disease, and other physical and mental
nesses when they have regular social interaction. In essence, people have an inherent drive
to bond, to validate their self-worth, and to maintain their social identity. Communication
is the means through which these drives and needs are fulfilled.
A Model of Communication
To understand the key interpersonal features of effective communication, let's examine the
model presented in Exhibit 9.1, which provides a useful conduit metaphor for thinking
about the communication process. According to this model, communication flows
through channels between the sender and receiver. The sender forms a message and
encodes it into words, gestures, voice intonations, and other symbols or signs. Next, the
The process by which information
encoded message is transmitted to the intended receiver through one or more commu-
and understood nication channels (media). The receiver senses the incoming message and decodesit
Web of more people into something meaningful. Ideally, the decoded meaning is what the sender had
intended.
Transmit
message
Receiver
Sender
EXHIBIT 9.1
The Communication
Process Model
Form
message
Encode
message
Receive
*** encoded
message
Decode
message
Noise
connect
Receive
encoded
feedback
Encode
feedback
(cca
Form
feedback
Decode
feedback
nd
Transmit
feedback
understood the transmitted message. This feedback may be a formal acknowledge
In most situations, the sender looks for evidence that the other person received and
such as "Yes, I know what you mean, or indirect evidence from the reces
sequent actions. Notice that feedback repeats the communication process. Intende
sender of the original message. This model recognizes that communications
feedback is encoded, transmitted, received and decoded from the receive to the
free-flowing conduit. Rather, the transmission of meaning from one person to another
is hampered by mouse--the psychological, social, and structural barriers that distort and
distorted or broken, the sender and receiver will not have a common
obscure the sender's intended message. If any part of the communication process in
understanding of
the message.
INFLUENCES ON EFFECTIVE ENCODING
AND DECODING
The communication process model suggests that communication effectiveness depends on
the ability of sender and receiver to efficiently and accurately encode and decode informa
tion. There are four main factors that influence the effectiveness of the encoding-decoding
process."
1. Communication channel proficiency. Communication effectiveness improves when
the sender and receiver are both motivated and able to communicate through the
communication channel. Some people are better and more motivated to communi
cate through face-to-face conversations. Others are awkward in conversations, yet
are quite good at communicating via smartphone or text message technologies.
Generally, the encoding-decoding process is more effective when both parties are
skilled and enjoy using the selected communication channel."
2. Similar codrhooks. The sender and receiver rely on "codebooks," which are diction
aries of symbols, language, gestures, idioms, and other tools used to convey infor
mation. With similar codebooks, communication participants are able to encode
and decode more accurately, because they both have the same or similar meaning,
Communication efficiency also improves because there is less need for redundancy
(such as saying the same thing in different ways) or confirmation feedback ("So.
you are saying that...?").
3. Shared mental models of the communication context. Mental models are internal
representations of the external world that allow us to visualize elements of a set
ting and relationships among those elements (see Chapter 3). When sender and
receiver have shared mental models, they have a common understanding of the
environment relating to the information, so less communication is necessary to
darify meaning about that context. Notice that sharing the same codebook differs
from sharing the same mental models of the topic context. Codebooks are sym
bols used to convey message content, whereas mental models are knowledge
structures of the communication setting. For example, a Russian cosmen
and American astronaut might have shared mental models about the design and
technology onboard the international space station (communication comest),
different codebooks)
yet they experience poor communication because of language differences (en
Experience encoding the message. As people gain experience communicating the
subject matter, they become more proficient at using the codebook of sy bols to
convey the message. For example, after speaking to several groups of
about the company new product development, you learn which words and phrases
Information to others
cflect of job training or sports practice. The more experience and practice and af
Communication Channels
LO2
A critical part of the communication model is the channel or medium through which infor
mation is transmitted. There are two main types of channels: verbal and nonverbal. Verbal
communication uses words and occurs through either spoken or written channels. Nonver.
bal communication is any part of communication that does not use words. Spoken and
written communication are both verbal (le, they both use words), but they are quite differ-
ent from each other and have different strengths and weaknesses in communication effec
tiveness, which we discuss later in this section. Also, written communication traditionally
has been much slower than spoken communication at transmitting messages, though
electronic mail, Twitter tweets, and other Internet-based communication channels have
significantly improved written communication efficiency
INTERNET-BASED COMMUNICATION
In the early 1960s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, university re-
searchers began discussing how to collaborate better by connecting their computers
through a network. Their rough vision of connected computers became a reality in 1969
as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). ARPANET initially
had only a dozen or so connections and was very slow and expensive by today's stan-
dards, but it marked the birth of the Internet. Two years later, a computer engineer devel-
oping ARPANET sent the first electronic mail (e-mail) message between different
computers on a network. By 1973. most communication on ARPANET was through
e-mail. ARPANET was mostly restricted to U.S. Defense Department-funded research
centers, so in 1979, two graduate students at Duke University developed a public network
system, called Usenet. Usenet allowed people to post information that could be retrieved
by anyone else on the network, making it the first public computer-mediated social
network.
We have come a long way since the early days of ARPANET and Usenet. The medium
of choice in most workplaces today is e-mail, because messages can be quickly written,
edited, and transmitted. Information can be appended and conveyed to many people
with a simple click of a mouse. E-mail is also asynchronous (messages are sent and re-
ceived at different times), so there is no need to coordinate a communication session
With advances in computer search technology, e-mail software has also become an effi-
cient filing cabinet."
E-mail tends to be the preferred medium for sending well-defined information for deci
sion making. It is also central for coordinating work, though text messaging and Twitter
tweets might soon overtake e-mail for this objective. As e-mail has been introduced in the
workplace over the past two decades, it has tended to increase the volume of communica-
tion and significantly alter the flow of that information within groups and throughout the
organization." Specifically, it has reduced some face-to-face and telephone communication
but increased communication with people further up the hierarchy. Some social and orga-
nizational status differences still exist with e-mail, but they are somewhat less apparent
than in face-to-face communication. By hiding age, race, and other features, e-mail reduces
already aware of the other person's personal characteristics
stereotype biases. However, it also tends to increase reliance on stereotypes when we are
PROBLEMS WITH E-MAIL
In spite of the wonders of e-mail, anyone who has used this communication medium knows
that it has its limitations. Here are the top four complaints
Poor Medium for Communicating Emotions People rely on facial expressions
and other nonverbal cues to interpret the emotional meaning of words e-mail lacks this
parallel communication channel. People consistently and significantly underestimate the
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