Effective Business Communication And Planning

Diagnosis and reflection

Discuss about the Effective Business Communication and Planning.

Effective communication is considered as one of the most vital aspects of an organization. It helps the individual concerned in appraising their performance and enhancing their ability to planning, organizing, leading and controlling the group (Knapp, Vangelisti & Caughlin, 2014). Effective communication helps in performing the duties and the responsibilities associated to that individual in an efficient manner. It serves the foundation for planning, where the ideas, strategies and planning processes are very effectively highlighted and implemented. It is quite important for an individual to understand their abilities and the communication styles. As stated in the Transaction Model of Communication, individuals respond to a situation, phenomenon or environment based upon their own set of interpretations. Hence, this would state that there must be clarity in expressing views to each other.

In order to analyse my own communication style, in this report I have conducted five self-assessment tests, based on effective communication capability. With the help of these communication tests, I found the incentive of acknowledging my strengths and my weaknesses about communication with others. I has give me the ability to understand the reasons for hindrances that I have faced in my past due to the lack of effective communication. The five tests that have been conducted by me could be listed as follows:

• Johari window model
• Assertive questionnaires
• Communication style questionnaire
• EQ self assessment checklist
• Splitzberg and Cupach’s Interpersonal Communication Competence.

Two American psychologists, Joseph Luft and Harry Lngham in the year 1955, have framed Johari window model (Austin & Pinkleton, 2015). This model lays emphasis on the soft skills, behaviour, cooperation, empathy; inter group development and interpersonal development. The Johari window is divided into four segments, open area or the arena, blindspot, hidden area or facade, and unknown area. After taking the self assessment tests, the results for my Johari window could be seen as below:

FIGURE 1:Johari window model

Accroding to the figure above, my main segments to focus on are facade and unknown. Under the facade segments I am confident,friendly, independent, logical, loving and powerful. These characters in me are not known to others and hence, i must imporve my self to geth acknowledged by others. By unknown capabilities that are neirher kown to me nor to others is that I am able, accepting,adaptable, bold, brave, calm, caring, cheerful, clever, complex, sensible, sentimental, shy, sympathetic, trustworthy, warm, wise and witty (Krum, 2013).

The second diagnostic tool that was preffered by me was the Assertive Qustionnaire tools test. After analysing the questionnaire of the assetive questionnaire, I got more than 5 ticks in column four. This shows that I am an assertive person. Being assertive means being able to stand up for your own or other people’s rights in a calm and positive way, without being either aggressive, or passively accepting ‘wrong’. I not only stand up for myself for my own risghts and felings, rather I stand for the rights of otherhs too. I acknowledge the fact of opening up my feelings to others, rather than being supressed within it. This is considereds one of the good aspects of communication. Hence, it provides me a clear veiw regarding my Intrapersonal and Interpersonal ways of communicating with others. Intrapersonal communication refers to your thoughts, feelings, emotions and internal conversations. Interpersonal communication on a very basic level refers to communication between two people.

Johari window model

The third diagnostic tool that has been taken into consideration is  the type of communication that would justify my type. The Communication Type questionnaire had been provided in this test, depending upon which the type of communication a person has would be stated. After analysing the tests, my results state that the scores that I got were as follows:

• Aggressive 11.
• Passive 8.
• Passive aggressive 9.
• Assertive 17.

It is seen that one of my major attruibutes are that i am assertive in nature. I clearly and directly express my needs, desires and opinions in a way which is considerate of others.finally, in this communication style, psychologically, we end in a win, win scenario, for both sides within the communication process (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). My next highest score is agressive which is quite below the points acheived for assertiveness. Hence, it could be stated that assertuveness is my communication style.

The fourth diagnotsic tool that has been conducted is EQ Self Asessment Checklist. In this analysis i had to answer the questionnaires of 28 questions. After analysing my answers, the rsult that i recievd was that i am 40% dominant, 37% influential, 14% steadiness and 9% compliance. The major traits that are in me is that of being dominant in nature. This shows that i have a strong inner motivation to influence people and circumstances. I thrive on competitive situations and challenging assignments. The stresses and pressures of everyday work and life are unlikely to reduce your effectiveness and enthusiasm.

 

Figure 2: Eq Self Asessment Checklist

The results show that here are some traits and behaviours that describe people who are comparatively high in dominance. I enjoy competition and challenge. I am goal orientated and want to be recognised for their efforts. I aim high, want authority and are generally resourceful and adaptable and is usually self-sufficient and individualistic. I may lose interest in projects once the challenge has gone and they tend to be impatient and dissatisfied with minor detail. My weaknesses are that i tend to enjoy change and variety and non work life. I am quite expansive by nature and tend not to like routine and repetitive work or activities. I am quite indepndent and inhabitant in nature, where i resent ruls and regulations. I prefer to be measured by my results and am always willing to try the untried.

The fifth diagnotsic tool that has been asessed by me was Spitzberg & Cupach’s Interpersonal Communication Competence Self-Assessment Test. It has been stated that Interpersonal communication competence is the “ability to demonstrate the appropriate communication in a given context”. This initiates the thought of Commuication Competence. In thius asessment, I had been provdid with the questionnaire consisting of 18 questions (Fan, et al., 2015). According to the answers I had given, I scored the highest in motivation followed by knowledge and skill.  I easily adapt to the changes and cognitively involve myself  in conversation and demonstrate involvement through interaction behaviors like head nods, vocal cues, etc.

Assertive Questionnaire tools test

Depending upon the above five diagnostic tests that have been undertaken by me, I havce come up to the conclusion that there are two communication issues that I persist. These two issues are that I lack steadiness and compliance in communication. These two communication issue in me has made me face variosu hindrances in the past. Without maintaining steadiness in communication, I lack the art of organziaing myself and maintaining reliability on others. While organizing a meeting in my office, due to my lack of steadiness, I was not well organized or well prepared for the meeting to be conducted. I had to take the asisstance of my colleagues to help me in the matter. This shows that inspite of being assertive and dominant in nature, I loose the ability to express myself. Another incident which took place in the past that proved my lack of compliance to me, was the time when I felt too confident on taking hasty decisions. The decisons that were taken by me had placed a risky situation in front of my group. I lost the ability to be tactful and sensible in front of others.

In order to overcome such hindrances, it is quite vital for me to accomplish certain activiries and plans to imporve my lack of steadiness and compliance while communicating wirh others. This would enhance my effectiveness of taking decisons and would help in leaving an impressive mark on others.

The act of passing on projected meanings from one individual to a different individual with the help of communally understood signs as well as semiotic rules is termed as communication. The basic step of communication includes the formation of communicative target as well as encoding and decoding of messages. The channel of communication can either be visual, tactile or auditory. According to Baessler et al., (2016), good communication acts as an indispensable tool that helps to accomplish productivity and maintain powerful working relationships at every levels of an organization. In order to build trust amongst workers, employees require to invest time as well as energy to deliver apparent lines of communication. On the other hand, poor communication will inevitably lead to unmotivated staff that might initiate to question their individual confidence in their capabilities. In order to improve communication skills and to have an effective communication it is important to define objectives and expectation as well as to deliver messages clearly (Marsh, 2017). Effective communication is an imperative life skill that enables an individual to better acknowledge and connect with the people around them. Lack of effectual communication unintentionally leads to conflict as well as frustration in both personal and professional relationships. Good communication skills include non-verbal communication, stress management as well as emotional awareness. 

Communication Type questionnaire

Several diagnostic tools used for self-assessment. These tools are taken as a part of an interview method as well as administration training. There is a list of completed diagnostic tools for diverse professional development programs. One of the major examples of a diagnostic is the leadership emotional intelligence structure. It prompts to provide a methodical shape to review the traits as well as competencies (Poletti et al., 2017). The consequences are valuable however; the outcome may be biased as it is based solely on the perception of the individuals. The Johari Window tool is described as a simple as well as useful tool that is used to understand and train self-awareness, personal development as well as improvement of communication. It is also referred to as a disclosure model of self-awareness and also an information processing tool. There are mostly four areas associated with Johari window (Berland, 2017). The first area deals with open area, free area and open self. The second area deals with blind area, blind self as well as blind spot. The third area deals with hidden area, avoided area and façade. Lastly, the fourth area deals with unknown area or unknown self. Diagnosis is also performed with the help of Assertiveness Questionnaires that is mostly based on balance. In other words, it requires forthnight about the requirement of individuals while considering the rights and demands of others. Being assertive is not essentially easy however; it is a skill that can be learned.

The development of assertiveness takes place with a good understanding about the individual. Assertiveness helps to bring out self-confidence as well as it provides may other advantages that helps to improve relationships at work. On the other hand, the self-assessment questionnaire is designed to make the participant think about several competencies of emotional intelligence as they apply to the participant. It helps to highlight self-awareness that provides the ability to identify the feeling of the individual in order to understand the customary emotional response of the individuals. Diagnosis via Spitzberg & Cupach’s Interpersonal Communication Competence deals with motivation that indicates the desire to approach or get rid of conversation at social circumstance (Yousefi & Moghadam, 2016). It also comprises knowledge that involves the knowledge of acting. Skills on the other hand involve the behaviors that are actually performed whereas; adaptability deals with the score that reflects the ability to change attitudes and behaviors.

After conducting the reflection test, I have come across the fact that I lack in two areas that includes lack of compliance and lack of steadiness. Compliance communication illustrates the communication of rules, regulation as well as legislation that applies to role and industry of a worker. The lack of compliance will not allow to demonstrate a honest commitment to all the stakeholders. A visual compliance communication helps to deliver bite size chunks of data in order to engage formats right to devices of workers without confusing email inboxes. The lack of compliance will also hinder communication in several visual formats as a campaign and over repeated times (Schilling, 2016). The major objective for compliance communication is to discourage non-compliant behavior by pertinent workers or third parties. However, the setting up of compliance communication plan of a company is not a part of the compliance effort of the Company. Lack of steadiness will hinder the communication with the customers in order to enhance as well as optimize the individual crates modern. Steadiness leads to effective communication mostly during the time of crisis. Steadiness in communication also helps many companies to maintain a good collaboration with their suppliers and also leads to constant analysis of the market. It is imperative to have a good communication skill with steadiness and compliance as it helps to make favorable impression and it also helps to connect with individuals. Effective communication helps to lead to time management as well as independence decision-making. With the help of steadiness, an individual will be able to perform predictably as well as consistently and will also become a good listener. It will also lead to areas for growth that will acknowledge the efforts that contributes to growth to end result (Janin et al., 2016).

EQ Self Assessment Checklist

Good communication acts as an indispensable tool that helps to accomplish productivity and maintain powerful working relationships at every levels of an organization. In order to build trust amongst workers, employees require to invest time as well as energy to deliver apparent lines of communication. Effective communication is an imperative life skill that enables an individual to better acknowledge and connect with the people around them. Lack of effectual communication unintentionally leads to conflict as well as frustration in both personal and professional relationships. Good communication skills include non-verbal communication, stress management as well as emotional awareness. 

After analysing the five diagnostic self asessment tools, i have come upto the conclusion that in order to overcome the hindrances, it is quite vital for me to accomplish certain activiries and plans to imporve my lack of steadiness and compliance while communicating wirh others. This would enhance my effectiveness of taking decisons and would help in leaving an impressive mark on others. An action plan is prepared further, that would help me imporve my abilities and enhance my activities of effective communication in future. This ction plan is spread out on a span of six months.

Month	Action	Measurement
February, 2017	Maintaining pre planned organized meetings to be conducted.	Measurement must be done on the basis of help that has been taken from other. The lesser help taken is better.
March, 2017	Organizing various cultural programs and social gatherings.	The feedback of the gatherings from the guests would measure the performance.
April, 2017	Socialising with people.	Acceptance of others into their gatherings would measure this action.
May, 2017	Taking decisions after a thorough research on the pros and cons.	The result that is retrieved from such a research would measure the consequences.
June, 2017	Involving the ideas and suggestions of others while taking any decisions.	Success of the plans would measure such actions.
May, 2017	Motivating others to participate in the group activities rather than being the sole developer of plans.	Happiness of the group in being together.

References

Austin, E. W., & Pinkleton, B. E. (2015). Strategic Public Relations Management: Planning and Managing Effective Communication Campaigns (Vol. 10). Routledge.

Baessler, F., Weiss, C., Juenger, J., & Moeltner, A. (2016). Good Communicators and Their Failure in Interprofessional Communication. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 85, 54-55.

Berland, A. (2017). Using the Johari Window to explore patient and provider perspectives. International Journal of Health Governance, 22(1).

Fan, S. P., Liberman, Z., Keysar, B., & Kinzler, K. D. (2015). The exposure advantage: Early exposure to a multilingual environment promotes effective communication. Psychological Science, 26(7), 1090-1097.

Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.

Janin, A., Barela, J. A., Dupui, P., Gross, M. T., & Janin, M. (2016). Posturodynamic 6 Test: A New Scoring Method for Effective Communication of Results. International Journal of Clinical Medicine, 7(01), 77.

Knapp, M. L., Vangelisti, A. L., & Caughlin, J. P. (2014). Interpersonal Communication & Human Relationships. Pearson Higher Ed.

Krum, R. (2013). Cool infographics: Effective communication with data visualization and design. John Wiley & Sons.

Marsh, D. R. (2017). Multi Professional Team: Coordination and Communication. In Orthogeriatrics (pp. 165-169). Springer International Publishing.

Poletti, R., Aimo, A., Castiglione, V., Di Gangi, A., Iudice, G., Micalizzi, M., … & Emdin, M. (2017). Diagnostic Tools: The Easier, the Better. In The Breathless Heart (pp. 219-234). Springer International Publishing.

Schilling, F. (2016). U.S. Patent No. 9,485,213. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Yousefi, F., & Moghadam, N. (2016). Relationship between commitment identity and assertiveness with students sense of loneliness. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies (IJHCS)? ISSN 2356-5926, 1(1), 244-260.