What is communication?
Communication is the act of exchanging information.
Can be used to inform command, instruct, assess, influence and persuade other people.
Having good communication skills are important in all aspects of life.
Managers spend ¾ of their day communicating.
They use their communication skills to absorb information, motivate employees, and deal effectively with customers and coworkers.
Communicating effectively is an important management skill because:
Managers must give direction.
Managers must be able to motivate people.
Managers must be able to convince customers to do business with them.
Managers must be able to absorb the ideas of others.
Managers must be able to persuade other people to accept their ideas.
Before a manager can be good at communicating, they must first:
Understand the audience.
Managers communicate with many different kinds of people.
In order to be a effective communicator, a manager must know the audience they are addressing, and answer the following questions:
1) What does the audience already know?
2) What does it want to know?
3) What is its capacity for absorbing info?
4) What does it hope to gain by listening? Motivation? Inspiration?
5) Is the audience friendly or hostile?
Develop good listening skills.
One of the most important skills a manager can develop is the ability to listen.
Active Listening: absorbing what another person is saying and responding to the person’s concerns.
Learning to listen effectively includes:
1) Identify the speaker’s purpose.
2) Identify the speaker’s main purpose.
3) Note the speaker’s tone as well as body language.
4) Respond to the speaker with appropriate comments, questions, body language.
Understand the importance of nonverbal communication.
People communicate in many different ways- eye contact, facial expressions, tone, dress, etc.
Non-verbal cues: pieces of information acquired by observing rather than listening to other people. Sometimes nonverbal cues can provide more info about someone than