I have taken part in a 10 week learning session for the subject of business communications. The course essentially covered all the important aspects related to business communication and the various factors that affect it. The course learning focused on providing valuable insight into the usage or communication across organizations. How far I was able to understand the significant values concerning business communication is to be evaluated through the essay.
The introduction to the topic of the essay is followed by a week by week analysis of the significant aspects of communication that were learnt per week in section one. A significant concept that was learnt through the course will be analyzed through relevant literatures in section three. Section three is focused towards the essential understanding of the future implications of two of the most important concepts according to me which can help me towards my career aspirations in the future. The conclusion will present the essential implications of the study.
The thesis statement of this essay is that the course learning outcomes of business communications can positively guide the future prospects of a person.
In Week 1, the most important aspect that was learnt according to me was the purpose of communication. This was an important aspect to consider since communication depends on the essence of its purpose. Without purpose communication is incomplete and useless. Thus, this is the first important lesson I learnt along with the deep rooted purposes of communication.
In Week 2, I was able to learn the difference between verbal and non-verbal communication. Verbal communication is done on a word of mouth basis while non-verbal communication is anything that is sent through any other means than verbal (Kernbach, Eppler & Bresciani 2015). Non-verbal communication enhances the meaning of communication and no aspect is lost. This concept is important for me as I got to know how non-verbal communication is an effective means of communication in an organizational perspective as it ensures effectiveness of communication.
In Week 3, the most important lesson learnt was the importance of efficiency in communication. The implications concerning effective communication were very importantly discussed in this week. Incorrect communication can damage the perspectives of the receiver about the sender and this is an important factor to avoid in case of business communications. The reputations of companies depend on the efficiency of communication through e-mails, reports or manuals.
In Week 4, I got to learn how to write essays that were important for business communication. This was very important to me as this enlightened me about the technicalities of non-verbal communication. In the future this will help me to make effective communication with my peer or managers in office (Knapp, Hall & Horgan, 2013). Learning to write precisely directed essays with the use of strong focused language is necessary for flawless business communication.
In Week 5, I got to know how to write effective literature reviews. It further helped me to increase the effectiveness of my non-verbal communication. Literature reviews are the analysis of various literatures related to a subject in the context of a chosen subject (Mandal, 2014). This will help me to do better search in the future and understand about a new topic that I have to make a presentation about. Reviewing literature is much important.
In Week 6, the most important thing I learnt was public speaking. It is the effective dissemination of information or ideas to a broader public. It is important that this type of communication is utilized when addressing a large number of people. Public speaking becomes very important when providing a large number of people with essential information. In future public speaking will be a very important criteria to address by any person associated with an enterprise. It will make sure that in future if required I can take effective leadership roles.
Week 7 was important as I got to know about the cultural context of communication. Intercultural communication is the communication that takes place between people from different cultural orientations (Pudelko, Tenzer & Harzing, 2015). This is important more in the context of Australia, where people of various cultures live side by side. Understanding the essential barriers that could affect the communication can help me to develop effective communication techniques in the future while doing business with people of various countries (Pikhart, 2014).
In week 8, leadership communication was the most important concept that was focused on. I liked the subject as it effectively portrayed how good the communication value of a leader should be. Leadership communication is the effective ways in which a leader can communicate with subordinates. It is mostly used towards achieving crucial organizational goals (Barbour, Gill & Barge, 2018). It was important for me to understand the implication of leadership oriented communication as in the future there is a high probability that I will be taking up essential leadership oriented goals.
In week 9, the vital lessons learnt were in regards to the efficient formation of groups towards enhancing group communication in the workplace. The role of the group in business communication was essentially understood. In the context of business a group refers to a number of individuals with the same goals and objectives that are unified (Brook & Servátka, 2016). Understanding the role of groups will be important towards the future development of my group formation and understanding.
Week 10 was important as I got to know the differences between interpersonal and intrapersonal communication. Intrapersonal communication being the effective communication that a person can have with himself without the requirement of any other participants (Devet & Goldberg, 2014). Interpersonal communication is communication that happens between two or more person. This was an important lesion for me as I think intrapersonal communication forms the basis for effective interpersonal communication.
During my seventh week I got to know about the various aspects concerned with the intercultural factors that can affect communication. Moreover, the intercultural aspects of communication were effectively learned by me during this time. This was an important learning experience and I got to learn that an important aspect of communication was to bridge divides between cultures, nations and races. Intercultural communication was an important learning feature. Moreover it was taught that intercultural communication is quite important when put in the context of the multicultural nature of Australia (Syerov, Fedushko & Trach, 2016). Cultural sensitivity is an important aspect of this type of communication. Moreover, concepts such as selective transmission or the transmission of only those aspects that can be understood across the cultures were essentially learned through the study. I learned about how groups belonging to separate cultural backgrounds can effectively communicate with each other towards the achievement of significant goals in the context of business organizations.
I believe intercultural communication is especially an important concept in the midst of the environment of globalization across the world. It is important to be able to communicate with people across the globe as organizations are increasingly becoming global entities. It becomes crucial to understand that the global framework for business is essentially guided by the communication strategies that are being implemented across the global corporate scenarios. However, intercultural communication is hardly a business oriented concept as it is being used on a much wider sense (Zhu, Handford & Young, 2017). In Australia there is a substantial population of immigrants from Asian, African or American cultures. Moreover, the population is made mostly of European immigrants. Hence, it becomes necessary that the effective integration of people from all types of cultural backgrounds is done through proper intercultural communication channels. Cross cultural communication in the present world scenarios faces significant limitations with regards to the proper transmission of messages due to the difference in values and cultural perceptions. Communication accommodation happens in societies where different cultures are present. People tend to develop better intercultural communication in these situations.
It is now important to discuss two of the crucial aspects that I learnt from the course that can provide me greater success towards achieving my future goals. Week 3 focused on efficiency in communication and week 9 focused on group communication. The group communication focused on meetings and effective team management. Efficient communication refers to the increased requirement for maintaining effective communication at workplaces. According to me both efficient communication and group communication are important towards the growth of an individual in an organizational context (Moshiri & Cardon, 2014). The efficiency in communication course was related to how efficiently communication can be made. Thus, it essentially focused on improving the crucial business relationships that govern organizational progress.
Firstly, I believe that for effective communication efficient communication is a must. This is due to the fact that efficient communication can make the mutual flow of information between individuals or organizations effective. The meaning of communication can only be enhanced through efficient and correct use of words (Tracy, Randles & Steckler, 2015). This is important both in case of intra-organizational and inter-organizational communication. If I can be an efficient communicator with correctly writer and presented mails, documentations and presentations it can positively affect my growth as I aspire to be a manger of a reputed organization in the future.
Secondly, as I want to take up the role of an effective leader in the future I would need to manage groups and integrate important people towards doing the same. It is thus important that my group communication is effective. Moreover, I will require to master communication that can help me to effectively build my team and manage them accordingly. It is much important that I am a good team player primarily and a good team builder in the long run. Group communication has taught me the essentials of working within a team and using communication as a means of bringing people together towards mutually beneficial outcomes.
The main parts covered in the essay were related to the effectiveness of communications and the essential factors that affect them. The primary aspects concerned the introduction of the topic and the background of the reflective approach that is being utilized. The week by week understanding of the crucial elements connected with the writing helped to develop a systematic understanding of communication. The evaluation of essential aspects helped to determine concepts that have greater significance concerning business communication. Lastly, how some of the vital concepts that can be used towards the future growth of an individual was linked for greater clarity.
As per the thesis statement, it was crucially understood that the course of business communication was much important towards enhancing the future career prospects of the students that were engaged in the same.
It can definitely be said that the business communication course encompassed all the vital aspects that were required in order for the student to develop a wholesome understanding of communication and its significance in organizational functions.
References:
Barbour, J. B., Gill, R., & Barge, J. K. (2018). Organizational Communication Design Logics: A Theory of Communicative Intervention and Collective Communication Design. Communication Theory.
Brook, R., & Servátka, M. (2016). The anticipatory effect of nonverbal communication. Economics Letters, 144, 45-48.
Devet, C., & Goldberg, I. (2014, July). The best of both worlds: Combining information-theoretic and computational PIR for communication efficiency. In International Symposium on Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (pp. 63-82). Springer, Cham.
Holá, J., & Pikhart, M. (2014). The implementation of internal communication system as a way to company efficiency.
Kernbach, S., Eppler, M. J., & Bresciani, S. (2015). The use of visualization in the communication of business strategies: An experimental evaluation. International Journal of Business Communication, 52(2), 164-187.
Knapp, M. L., Hall, J. A., & Horgan, T. G. (2013). Nonverbal communication in human interaction. Cengage Learning.
Mandal, F. B. (2014). Nonverbal communication in humans. Journal of human behavior in the social environment, 24(4), 417-421.
Moshiri, F., & Cardon, P. (2014). The state of business communication classes: A national survey. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 77(3), 312-329.
Pikhart, M. (2014). Implementing new global business trends to intercultural business communication. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 152, 950-953.
Pudelko, M., Tenzer, H., & Harzing, A. W. (2015). Cross-cultural management and language studies within international business research: past and present paradigms and suggestions for future research.
Syerov, Y., Fedushko, S., & Trach, O. (2016). Improving the virtual communication efficiency as a fundamental factor of successful marketing strategy.
Tiirola, E. T., Hooli, K. J., & Lunttila, T. E. (2017). U.S. Patent Application No. 15/308,152.
Tracy, J. L., Randles, D., & Steckler, C. M. (2015). The nonverbal communication of emotions. Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 3, 25-30.
Zhu, H., Handford, M., & Young, T. (2017). Framing interculturality: A corpus-based analysis of on-line promotional discourse of Higher Education intercultural communication courses. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 38(3), 283-300.
