Chapter 9 - Communicating in Teams and Organizations

Question 1

What is Communication?

Answer 1

The process by which information is transmitted and understood between two or more people.

Question 2

What are some functions of communication?

Answer 2

• Changing Behaviour
• Support Employee Well-being
• Coordinating Work

Question 3

What is noise?

Answer 3

Noise is psychological, social, and structural barriers that distort and obscure the sender’s intended message

Question 4

What are the 4 influences on effective encoding and decoding of information?

Answer 4

• Similar codebook
• Sender’s Encoding Experience
• Communication Channel Motivation and Ability
• Shared Mental Models of the Communication Context

Question 5

What are the two main types of channels?

Answer 5

Verbal and nonverbal

Question 6

What are some benefits of digital written communication?

Answer 6

• More efficient
• Acts as an easily searchable storage system for previous communications
• Reduces stereotyping and discrimination since you can’t visually see the other person
• Removes the need to be time-coordinated

Question 7

What are some problems with Digital Written Communication?

Answer 7

• Less effective at communicating emotion to people
• Requires less social respect which quickly leads to disrespectful interactions, or people misinterpret it as such due to less emotional context
• Not good for novel and ambiguous situations, works better with well defined situations)
• Glut/Congestion, its easy to send information therefore people will do it in excess

Question 8

What is Social Media?

Answer 8

Any channel that allows people to create and exchange information together (user-generated content)

Question 9

What are some benefits of Social Media style communication?

Answer 9

• Prevents one-sided communication
• Removes hierarchical barriers
• Make it easier to form social connections
• Social media channels specialize in different aspects of communicating information

Question 10

What are some traits associated with Nonverbal Communication?

Answer 10

• Involves a lot of facial gestures, voice intonation, distance, silence, body language
• Intuitively understand cues (reliant on this due to lack of official training to understand any other cues)
• Base reactions that we interpret consistently that are usually hardwired responses such as smiling
• Used to communicate relationship status and hierarchical status

Question 11

What is Emotional Contagion?

Answer 11

• Unconscious process of mirroring a person’s emotions
• Functionally allows us to more effectively and strongly understand someone’s experience through nonverbal mirroring
  Emotional Contagion also serves the purpose of helping us bond

Question 12

What are some factors to consider when choosing the best communication channel?

Answer 12

• Synchronicity
• Social Presence
• Social Acceptance
• Media Richness

Question 13

What is Synchronicity?

Answer 13

To what extent the channel requires the two parties to be present during the communication

Question 14

What is Social Presence?

Answer 14

How much more connected the sender and receiver feel in this channel. Face-to-face communication for an example is very high in social presence (less formal and more personal channels as well)

Question 15

What is Social Acceptance?

Answer 15

How well the channel is accepted by various interest groups. This will differ between industries, cultures, nations.
Another factor is the individual’s attitude towards that specific channel
Aditionally the symbolic meaning of the channel is important as well, using Tinder to talk to your boss isn’t usually acceptable socially.

Question 16

What is Media Richness?

Answer 16

A medium’s data-carrying capacity

Question 17

What is persuasion?

Answer 17

The use of facts, logical arguments, and emotional appeals to change another person’s beliefs and attitudes, usually for the purpose of changing their behavior.

Question 18

What are some factors related to persuasion?

Answer 18

• Face to face is the most persuasive (provides faster feedback, therefore faster rephrasing dependant on what the receiver’s reaction is)
• People tend to be more likely persuaded under the conditions of higher social presence rather than lower social presence

Question 19

What are some examples of communication barriers (noise)?

Answer 19

• Perception, different level of understanding from both perspectives
• Language, mismatch in code books
• Jargon
• Filtering
• Information Overload

Question 20

What are some gender differences in communication?

Answer 20

• Men engage in “report talk” whilst women engage in “rapport talk”
• Women tend to make indirect requests while men make direct requests
• Women are more sensitive than men to nonverbal cues

Question 21

What are the two things we can do to improve interpersonal communication?

Answer 21

1. Empathize with the receiver
2. Repeat / rephrase the message a couple of times

Question 22

What are the three components of active listening?

Answer 22

1. Sensing - receiving signals and paying attention to them
2. Evaluating - understanding the meaning of the message and remembering said message
3. Responding - providing feedback to the sender which usually motivates and directs their communication

Question 23

What are some ways of improving communication throughout the hierarchy?

Answer 23

1. Workplace design - not too much or too little interaction
2. Digitally based organizational communication
3. Direct Communication with Top Management

Question 24

What is the grapevine?

Answer 24

An unstructured informal communication network founded on social relationships rather than organizational charts or job descriptions

Question 25

What are some benefits of using the grapevine?

Answer 25

• Fast
• Easily Available
• Relives Anxiety through social interaction

Question 26

What are some downsides of using the grapevine?

Answer 26

• Messages can be distorted
• Relied on by people too heavily
• Hard to trace back