Administrative And Business Communication

Meaning and Definition of Communication .Significance of Communication . Role of Communication in Management .Importance of Communication

Communication is an active process which involves a series of actions and reactions with a view to achieving a goal. Communication, is a complex process undertaken to have a shared importance among the sender and receiver, this also has many elements involved in the communication model. The communication mix intermingle together several different elements. Many of the problems that occur in an organization are the direct result of people failing to communicate. Faulty communication causes the most problems. It leads to confusion and can cause a good plan to fail. Communication is the exchange and flow of information and ideas from one person to another. It involves a sender transmitting an idea to a receiver. And effective communication occurs only if the receiver understands the exact information or idea that the sender intends to transmit.

Building effective communication skills is essential for anyone whether we want to succeed in business or personal relationships. These communication skills, both—oral and written, are the foundation for helping you express yourself clearly and correctly. When there it poor communication in an organization, there can be any number of negative outcomes, including errors, productivity declines, distrust, lower morale, confusion, absenteeism, and general dissatisfaction. As a leader or manager, you are expected constantly to advise, inform, explain, discuss, review, counsel, guide, suggest, persuade, convince, coach, humor, and respond. Employees seek a leader or manager who is open, accessible, and responsive.

Communication plays an important role in almost all aspects of life. Work in business, government or organizations is impossible without communication. People have to communicate internally and externally in order to exchange information, make decisions, talk about new ideas, plans, proposals etc. No business can develop in the absence of effective internal and external communication. Each organization has its own approach to transmitting information, both within the organization and to the outside world. Depending on where the business communication transpired we can categorize communication into Internal and External.

Public Relations (PR) primarily concerns enhancing and maintaining the image for businesses, non-profit organizations, events or highprofile people, such as celebreties and politicians. Public relation is deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its public. The public of the organization include all the people who come into the contact such as customers, dealers, suppliers, investors, transporters, bank and media people.

Thinking of conducting modern business without the use of communication technology is unimaginable. In 19th century, the use of technological communication became extensive. These technology based communication tools created a major insurrection in business practices. Technological developments have eliminated two great obstructions to communication—time and distance. Some most dramatic changes have occurred in communication and information technology, which, of course had a major impact on the communication within the office. The Continental PIR Communication Chairman and CEO, Christopher H. Bunting, believes that leading companies place a high priority on both internal and external communication.

Media of communication is the channel through which messages are directed towards the receiver. Medium is the method used to deliver a message. As a business communicator, we can often choose whether to put our message in writing as a letter or memo. We can deliver our messages by hand or send it via regular mail or use delivery services like fax or electronic mail. Or we can communicate it orally, either over the phone or in person. We might also opt for non-verbal form of communication.

Speech is the process to create a common understanding among people within a business environment by means of spoken language. The widely applied means of oral communication in face-to-face business situations are listening short talks and presentations, conducting interview and meetings. Speech is one of the media of communication that we use to deliver message or information for many people at once.

Oral communication is the life – blood of our personal and business lives. Our ability to communicate is a process which begins in childhood; the roles we play become gradually more complex as we become adults and assume more responsibility. The essential ingredient is you, and it is important in this respect to recognize that you play two roles in oral communication: listening as well as speaking. If we aim at a success of our secretarial career, and whatever career may follow, our success will depend on much more than our practical skills no matter how good our short hand or typing skills or our ability to present documents effectively, we will not get for if we can not get along with people.

Listening is a process of receiving, interpreting and reacting to the messages received from the communication sender. Effective listening is an art of communication, which is often taken for granted and ignored. Like any other art, listening requires to be cultivated consciously and carefully. Poor listening can be considered, as a mighty barrier to communication as listening is fundamental to all communication. It often results in losing messages due to improper functioning of communication. Listening requires conscious efforts of interpreting the sounds, grasping the meanings of the words and reacting to the message. Interpreting the sound signals is a cognitive act, which depends on the listener’s knowledge of the code signals and on its attitude towards the communication sender.

Interviewing is a basic means of interactive communication. A person may come across a number of employment interviews while searching for job. A person comes across a number of training and instructional interviews in which he is trained and instructed by his job properly and efficiently. The person may be called by the supervisor for the purpose of job assessment and appraisal.

The meeting with the employees is found to be very useful in building formal communication the higher-ups are to encourage the employees to talk about their constructive suggestions, job problems and needs. They are also to be encouraged to express their views on whether the management practices help the job performance or interfere with it. Well planned and productive group communications are essential for conducting modern business, to achieve objectives and results that cannot be accomplished effectively in another way. Meetings have always taken a large part of the average manager’s time. In addition the increased use of teams also means that meetings are even more frequent. Just because meetings are common doesn’t mean that they are always productive. A survey by one marketing research company showed that gatherings meetings executives consider one third of the they attend to be unnecessary. So, to be productive, any type of meeting will require a good preparation from all participants in general and the chairperson in particular. The chairperson is the one who takes the responsibility for planning and conducting or leading the meeting. The activities and discussions in the meeting can be well directed if the purpose of meeting is specific and the agenda is strictly followed. The meetings help to heighten the team spirit and assure the necessary information flow by encouraging two-way communication. The useful knowledge and experience of the employees is mutually shared during the meetings.

The concern of this chapter is the verbal symbols in written communication media that we call as business letters. Making choice of symbols and channels helps to ensure effective communication. This is achieved when the intended meaning of the sender and the meaning perceived by the receiver are one and the same. Despite the recent growth in electronic communications and the convenience of telephone, letters are still a very widely used medium of communication in businesses. They are cheap to produce and postal delivery is quick and generally reliable. They also provide both the receiver and the sender with a permanent record of what has been discussed and agreed for later reference. Letters may lack the personal touch of meetings or the immediacy of a telephone call, but when matters are relatively straight forward and there is no urgency for a decision- as is the case in most routine business-they are an effective and valuable form of communication.

To carry on efficient operations, businesses need various reports. In almost any kind of responsible business job-whether you are a management, trainee, a salesperson, an accountant, a junior executive, or a vice person, you may have to write reports. Your communication effectiveness and, often your promotion and salary increases are affected by the quality of reports you write. This chapter is exclusively devoted to written reports. It provides overview of business reports. It includes their meaning, classifications, objectives and main parts. It discusses how to prepare, organize and outline reports.