Business Communication Style Analysis and Action Plan Report

This report delves into the analysis of business communication styles, focusing on self-assessment and improvement strategies. The author begins with a self-diagnosis using five communication diagnostic tools, identifying personal challenges in public speaking and self-recognized communication capability. A literature review explores concepts like communication apprehension, tolerance for disagreement, and the impact of verbal and non-verbal communication in the workplace. The report culminates in a detailed action plan, including a Gantt chart, designed to address the identified communication issues and enhance overall business communication skills. The report emphasizes the importance of effective communication for business success and employee relations, highlighting the influence of communication apprehension and active participation in the workplace. The action plan aims to resolve communication problems, with the overall goal of gaining positive business communication skills.

Running head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION STYLE
Business Communication Style
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Executive Summary:
Aim of this report is to discuss about the different business communication tools and to
perform a self-implementation activity of those tools. From the results of those activities the
major issues of communication have been find out and have been studied according to
various researches. Literature review portion of the report contains this discussion. Following
those discussion an action plan has been made along with a Gnatt chart, which concludes the
report. Major objective of this action plan is to resolve those communication issues and gain a
positive business communication skill.

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Table of Contents
Diagnosis and Reflection:..............................................................................................3
Literature Review:..........................................................................................................5
Action Plan:....................................................................................................................9
References:...................................................................................................................12

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Diagnosis and Reflection:
Communication skills are the most important thing in human life, whether it is related
to business or something else. Analysing my communication skills, I have constructed this
report with the information that have developed using the five diagnostic tools for
communication. Two communication issues that have been generated in my case are Personal
Report of Speaking Concern in Public and Self Recognised Communication Capability. I
have identified these two issues among the five communication tools by experimental
measurements. A part of this report contains the literature review majorly focused on the
theories and concepts of issues related to business and personal communication. I have
analysed the five communication tools; that is Personal Report of Intercultural
Communication Apprehension, Questionnaire containing Self Recognised Communication
Capability, Personal Report of Speaking Concern in Public, Willingness to Listen Diagnostic
and Tolerance for Disagreement. I found that the last tool that is Tolerance for Disagreement
is not applicable in this scenario. I identified the major issues of myself, I have come to know
about the activities, which I can imply on myself in order to resolve my communication
problems. From the assumption, I have been able to develop an action plan for myself
following the literature review.
I have chosen five different diagnostic tools for my communication skill analysis.
These techniques focus on various situations regarding communication. The descriptions of
the tools are given as per understanding various literatures as well as implementing those
understandings in specific cases. The first communication tool that I have used is Personal
Report of Intercultural Communication Apprehension. This tool provides a quantification of
the feeling of an individual based on his or her communication. The methodology of this tool
is to analyse the communication of the individual in multiple, different situations and the

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behaviour of that individual there (DeKay, 2012). The second tool is a Questionnaire
containing Self Recognised Communication Capability. This tool provides an index of how
people examine their own capability of communication when subjected to a vast field of
communication where the number of receivers is high (Byrne, Flood & Shanahan, 2012).The
third tool is Personal Report of Speaking Concern in Public. This tool measures a person’s
discomfort and worries in speaking publicly. Finally, the fourth tool is Willingness to Listen
Diagnostic. This tool provides a clear description of one’s concentration by examining his or
her determination in listening to the diagnostics (Fall et al., 2013).
Fulfilling all the five questionnaires, I have achieved certain scores, from which I can
determine my comfort and discomfort zones in the communication. Among all the scores in
respective tools, the score in the Personal Report of Speaking Concern in Public and Self
Recognised Communication Capability are comparatively lower than other sections. My
scores in these two cases are 42 and 45, which set the measurement parameters at a moderate
level. The overall result shows my discomfort of speaking in public and my comfort zone of
speaking one to one, my moderate level of anxiety while speaking in public, a good level of
tolerance of disagreement and a moderate level of patience and willingness to listen to
diagnostics.
From the above diagnosis, the two areas that I have found to improve for myself are
Personal Report of Speaking Concern in Public and Self Recognised Communication
Capability. Although, all of my scores are in moderate range, but these two are low in
comparison to the others. My primary target is to improve my skills in business
communication by resolving the issues of developed from the application of these two tools.
The first business communication tool is Personal Report of Speaking Concern in Public.
This tool measures a person’s discomfort and worries in speaking publicly. This fear
develops while communicating in public, which invites anxiety and fear. The other tool is a

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Questionnaire containing Self Recognised Communication Capability. This tool provides an
index of how people examine their own capability of communication when subjected to a
vast field of communication where the number of receivers is high. I always try to understand
any process quickly from my viewpoint, but my patience is low in case of hearing lectures,
either boring or not. I believe that big lectures must be limited to its objectives, as the
listeners must not get bored from it.
I can explain my Personal Report of Speaking Concern in Public by giving the
example of an incident. In an international education event, I became the speaker of a group
consisted of students from different countries and our objective was to prepare a discussion in
a specific topic. To develop the discussion all the members of the group were required to
deliver their viewpoints and discuss it with the others. However, I was the most
uncommunicative member but I was made the speaker, in order to represent my team.
Knowing that the performance of my group will depend on my public speaking and
communicating abilities, I could not communicate well due to my fear and drawbacks in
communication. I fear speaking in public as I think a lot. Due to this, I cannot even engage
my audience. Lack of confidence, is the major reason for this, which hampers my ability to
speak fluently and clearly.
To give an example of the second tool, Questionnaire containing Self Recognised
Communication Capability, I can mention certain events. I am most comfortable while
talking with my friends or relatives or known ones with whom I can connect myself
emotionally. I prefer interpersonal or face-to-face communication the most and small group
conversations is fine with me, but to some extent. I feel somewhat uncomfortable while
talking in public, as I have mentioned before. Public speaking is not my cup of tea. I feel
nervous while talking in public or large groups or meetings. During a university power point
presentation, the whole class was given the task of preparing individually. I prepared my

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slides well and memorized the lines, which I was going to say in front of the whole class.
However, on the presentation day, I got so nervous that I forgot everything and could not
utter a word.
Literature Review:
The fear of communication in different situations with different people or a group of
people can be identified as communication apprehension. According to the experts, the terror
in communication-related to people belonging to different cultures can be called intercultural
communication apprehension (Neuliep, 2017). This can be divided into four categories is the
basis of the matters related to anxiety, which are audience, context, trait and situation.
Audience anxiety is related to the kind of audience associated with the communication as the
speaker becomes nervous while talking in front of that kind or that number of audiences
(Arquero et al., 2017). Context anxiety is generated due to the uncertainty or unfamiliarity of
any situation. Trait anxiety is an example of a person’s fear of communication due to lack of
knowledge and situation anxiety is caused by social, cultural and psychological factors.
Communication apprehension is totally different from active participation in communication
despite a negative association, which is strong enough to observe (Fall et al., 2013). The
capability of an individual to overcome all the anxieties provided by unfavourable
circumstances along with the negative associations is the measure of that person’s
communication skills.
Agreeing or disagreeing with some context totally depends on an individual when
subjected to a group communication. The concepts of tolerance for disagreement hence come
from conduction of group communication within any kind of organisational settlement
(Quintanilla & Wahl, 2015). The background behind any disagreement and the effects varies
from person to person depending on their nature and mentality and especially on the

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circumstances. Depending on the opposition in any disagreement, the topic of disagreement
and the positional weight of the individual who is disagreeing, the depth of any disagreement
tend to change (Russ, 2012).The procedure of any disagreement can be changed based on the
mode of that disagreement as these modes can be online or face to face. Styles of
communication are another important factor in disagreement as it influences the weight of the
subject of disagreement. Tolerance in disagreement plays a vital part in communication as it
explains the different communication style of a person under total disagreement in a topic
(Waldeck et al., 2012).
There are certain factors in communication those control the unfolding of any
disagreement, especially in a workplace. Emotions in communication, verbal and non-verbal
communication and workplace disputes are the different factors that affect this tool (Verčič,
Verčič & Sriramesh, 2012). Verbal communication is further affected by several factors like
support, assurance, precision, arguments, verbal aggression and expression (Guffey &
Loewy, 2012). Communication style of an employee and manager constructs business
environment and communication (Men, 2014). The verbal factors, in this case, are the most
crucial communication factors. An improved verbal communication between the managers,
team leaders and team members increases the efficiency of any work team as decrease its
productivity. However, disagreement is a negative factor for a team and tolerance is a
limiting barrier to that negative effects. It is also noted that different situation has different
impacts on the communication style of an individual and it makes the individual adjust his or
her communication style accordingly.
Non-verbal communication can be identified as a positive expression like smiling or
listening while being in a situation of disagreement. This communication is an example of
interpersonal communication where the personal emotions are suppressed (Bodie, 2012). The
communication develops according to the tolerance level of any individual. However, this

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communication is not a very effective for enhancing team performance as the communication
integrity is very low. Conflicts in workplace communication, which can be stated as a result
of either disagreement in any matter or unwillingness to be involved in a matter is another
factor that reduces the efficiency of a team.
Willingness to listen to diagnostics increases the work understanding level of a team
(Burnside-Lawry, 2012). However, sometimes the diagnostics become too lengthy a
repetitive which is not appreciated by any worker. Lengths of diagnostics have a good impact
on the communication in a workplace. Depending on the diagnostic communication
frequency either increases or decreases.
Ultimately the objectives of all these tools are same, and it is to check the capability
of an individual for public communication (Thomas & Stephens, 2015). For any business,
communication is the fundamental tool for progression and success. Communication
apprehension and active participation in communication both affect the inter-relationship of
employees in the workplace (Mai & Hoffmann, 2014). An effective level of communication
apprehension within the managers of any organisation results in less employee involvement
in decision making (Dasgupta, Suar & Singh, 2012). This along with with the absence of co-
operative communication generates dispute among the employees of the organisation and
affects employee relation in a negative manner (Neuliep, 2012). On the other hand,
communication apprehension among the employees creates a loss of balance among the
workplace environment and the productivity of the organisation automatically starts to reduce
(Ghosh, 2012). In this case the authority approaches with two kinds of solution one is to
identify the employee problems with intervention planning and the other is to fire the
incompetent employees.

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Improvement in communication is a preferable pathway for any business
organisation. In order to improve personal communication skills, one must imply all the five
tools on himself or herself (Gallagher, 2012). The results of those implementations surely
find out the areas those are needed to be improved for any individual. The overall approach
definitely finds out the anxiety of any individual, his or her tolerance level, communication
apprehension and the will of an individual for listening as well as communicating
(Macnamara, 2014). From the results, one can take effective measures in order to solve those
issues and improve his or her communication skills.
Action Plan:
The main objective of implying these five communication tools on me was to identify
the areas where I lack communication skills and the measures I can take in order to solve
them. From the results, I have identified two issue regarding communication which are
Personal Report of Speaking Concern in Public and Questionnaire containing Self
Recognised Communication Capability. Following those, I have made an action plan from
which I can be benefitted. The first thing that I need to do will be maintaining a personal
diary to track my activities and effectiveness of those activities. Time to time review of that
diary will ensure me about my progression or degradation. After a certain period of time, I
will receive a certain amount of benefits as I will have a daily track-record of activities and
effects. It will also help me to plan activities for future. In order to resolve the communication
apprehension, I need to control my sensitivity issues. I will primarily focus on the specific
factors which develop fear during communication and will note them down. To maintain that
I need to build an anxiety hierarchy which will enlist all the situations that develops anxiety
in me. Following that hierarchy, I need to imagine some situations and to find the ways to
resolve them. To familiarise myself with different relaxation technique in different situations

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I need to see some experts. This is also included in my action plan. I need to improve my
listening and talking efficiency following the expert advices provided by the mentor. Anxiety
issues can only be resolved by any professional who is very well in the department of
communication and understands the issues behind the anxieties of any people.
An individual’s performance can be enhanced by improving his or her communication
skills. Implementation of various mental strategies and skills has proved to be more authentic
in this case. I felt that implementing several of these practices would provide help in my
case. I can solve my communication apprehension or capability issue by applying several
practices that help in releasing the stress created due to anxiety. This stress releasing practices
can be associated with several body exercises as well as some mental exercises. Along with
these, taking part in, group communication can help me work with my introvert nature. I need
to deal with my incapability alone. Another activity that is embedded in my action plan is
reading literature associated with these mental and meditative practices as it will give clear
insights about the relevance and expectation of these practices.
To increase my public communication abilities, I will participate in different group
discussion or communication courses, hosted as an international event. The objective for this
activity is simply to improve my public speaking and workplace communication skills.
Moreover, I will attend more seminars related to my specialisation. I will try to gain some
leadership qualities, in order to lead my team. Even practicing it in front of my relatives and
friends will help me a lot. Public speaking is a very useful exercise as it helps in gaining
leadership skills. Being a good orator can help any person achieve a lot in his/her life.
Task January February March April May June
Maintenance
of personal

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diary
Course from a
mentor on
public
speaking
Physical and
mental
practices
Participating in
group
discussions
Gaining
knowledge
from various
sources
Professional
communication
course
Attending
seminars and
anchoring
classes
I believe this action plan will help me in solving the disputes regarding
communication at the workplace and make me comfortable in intercultural work