Student Self Test:

1. Define communication and list four of the eight benefits of effective communication.

2. How has technology changed communication in the workplace?

3. How does internal communication differ from external communication?

4. In what directions can information travel within an organization’s formal hierarchy`

5. What is the grapevine, and why should managers know how it works?

6. In which of the six phases of the communication process do messages get encoded and decoded?

7. How can information overload affect communication?

8. Why should communicators take an audience-centered approach to communication?

9. How does corporate culture effect the communications climate within an organization?

10. Define ethics, and explain what ethical communication covers.

Exercises for HW (to be posted on EngSite when available)

1. Would written or spoken messages be more susceptible to noise?  Why?

2. An old college friend calls you to say “Truth is, I had to call you.  Don’t tell anyone, but when I heard that my company was going to buy your company out, I was shocked.  I had no idea that a company as large as yours could sink so quickly.  You guys must be in pretty bad shape over there.”  Your stomach starts to ache and you suddenly feel sick.  Before you could even get your old friend off the phone, you were wondering what to do.  You’d heard nothing about any buyout.  Of the following, choose one course of action and briefly explain your choice.

A) Contact your CEO directly and relate what you’ve heard.

B) Ask co-workers if they’ve heard anything about a buy-out.

C) Discuss the phone call confidentially with your immediate supervisor.

D) Keep quiet about the whole thing, because there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.

3. Your boss often uses you as a sounding board for her ideas.  Now she seems to want you to act as an unofficial messenger, passing her ideas along to the staff without mentioning her involvement and informing her of what staff members say without telling them you’re going to be repeating their comments.  What questions should you ask yourself as you consider the ethical implications of this situation?  Write a paragraph explaining the ethical choice you will make in this situation.

4.  Use the six phases of communication process to  analyze a miscommunication you have had recently with a co-worker, classmate, teacher, friend or family member.  What idea did you try to share?  How did you encode and transmit it?  Did the receiver get the message?  Did the receiver correctly decode the message?  How do you know?  Based on your analysis, identify and explain the barriers that prevented your successful communication in this instance.