Unit 4 Discussion with students

For business to thrive great communication must be shared amongst those involved. An employee at a company will converse on behalf of the company externally to represent the organization, internally to co workers and supervisors, also to different departments, and so on. It's imperative communication stays consistent and thorough across the organization.

Our text discusses a Peter Drucker who believes managers must first understand language and the meaning behind words spoken, they must be able to encode and decode language to effectively communicate, this brings me to my first challenge in many organizations today, the understanding of context is not parallel across the board. Three people can look at the same message and configure three different conclusions. Making sure a message is clear and straight to the point helps for others viewing the same message to interpret the same outcome. Technology largely plays a role in ineffective communication today, but it also serves purpose cutting down on time and face to face interactions. A few concepts to consider when evaluating challenges companies face with communication is intergroup relations, intergroup interaction, noise, and discussing conflict and differing perspectives.

Intergroup relations influence performance, it's how organizations sets rules and procedures, the exchange between it's members, and monitoring the linking roles of the organization. This tool is important to effective communication because this communicates the standard of expected behavior in work environment. Without this concept being used or considered in modern business the organization will fail it's own internal operations. Same idea for intergroup interactions, its how groups within an organization communicate with each other. It depends on how dependent one group is of another, but at every angle intergroup interaction helps an organization share it's resources, without efficient communication in this area an organization can also suffer internally. Noise is another challenge companies face in regards to communication. The media, or employee perspectives, or company reputation are all areas of noise the company must be aware of to respond on behalf of the "noise." Communication from an organizations platform should be open and appropriate for everyone to see, this helps cancel the noise that distracts most companies and causes conflict in exchanges. Staying consistent helps keeps noise down to a minimum. Another challenge an organization can face is discussing conflicts and addressing opposing/different perspectives. Sometimes topics are difficult to address, but our text suggests that even the most uncomfortable discussions are worth having because they bring insight to the environment, different perspectives inspire ideas and creativity as long as they are safely discussed appropriately.

With these concepts in mind the greatest challenge in communication in my opinion is technology. How many times have we doubled checked a message was sent before the recipient says they never received anything? Or how many times have we responded to the wrong group text with information for a different set of group texts? For me personally, I have more problems with WiFi and troubleshooting than I do walking upstairs or down the hall to pass on a message. However in this century we use technology to communicate so following concepts learned in this chapter and embracing modern technology can help an organization become effective communicating internally and externally.

2nd students response

This discussion prompt immediately made me think of my own workplace and the major shortcomings in the communication channels. I have often wondered why it is such an ongoing issue, and have concluded a number of things. I believe the main cause is the lack of organization on behalf of upper management. They do not work together as a unit, instead seemingly preferring to establish themselves as the proverbial "alpha," which only serves to create conflict and leads to the ball being dropped over and over again. There seems to be a constant pushback between morning and afternoon supervisors and so, naturally, the morning and afternoon employees are rarely up to speed with each shifts operational challenges.

The text mentioned that in Japan there is an expression which states "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down." This is used to describe the fact that Japanese society encourages unity in the workforce and dissuades individuality. While I do not agree that this technique is always the best option, particularly amongst employees, I do believe that it is an excellent concept to be practiced amongst management as it ensures everyone is on the same page and committed to achieving the same goal. In doing so, communication is also immensely improved. If my supervisors were to act in unison, I feel as though morale would be boosted and my coworkers would be more willing to go the extra mile as opposed to just showing up to work to do the minimum and then go home.

-Megan Zupan