Effective Business Communication: Strengths and Weaknesses

This assignment assesses the importance of business communication in an organization. It discusses the three points that define a good listener: cognitive, effective, and behavioral characteristics. The report also highlights the roles and responsibilities of HR in creating an effective communication strategy. Additionally, it evaluates strengths and weaknesses in oral and written communication, providing insights on how to improve these skills.

BUSINESS
COMMUNICATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
ASSESSMENT 1.............................................................................................................................1
ASSESSMENT 2.............................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
1. Principle and purposes of HR director in communication strategy....................................1
2. Characteristics of good listeners and speakers...................................................................2
TASK 2 ...........................................................................................................................................4
3. Evaluation of strengths and weaknesses in terms of communicating orally and in writing4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Business communication is the process of sharing information between people within and
outside of a firm which is performed for the commercial benefit of organization. In this present
report, principles and purposes of HR director in communication strategy will be mentioned.
This assessment is a brief study and analysis on business communication and its types. Further,
emphasis is given on the characteristics of good listener and speaker accompanied by strengths
and weaknesses of oral and writing communication in business context.
ASSESSMENT 1
Enclosed in power point presentation (PPT)
ASSESSMENT 2
TASK 1
1. Principle and purposes of HR director in communication strategy
Human Resources is the backbone of any organization because it deals with almost every
aspect of employees from their recruitment to retirement inclusive of their wages and welfare.
There are many principles of human resource director (Berger and Iyengar, 2013).
Below mentioned are some principles of HR director that are needed in forming effective
communication strategies:
 Recruitment to retirement: HR is all about dealing with employees from their
recruitment to retirement. It is the duty of the human resource department to make its
employees feel comfortable. This will improve their performance as well. HR should
also have clear thoughts on their objectives and mission that has to be achieved by them.
 Hire for attitude, recruit for skills: It is the responsibility of HR director to recruit an
individual with good attitude and personal skill and knowledge, as these are the key
requirement for success and employee engagement in business activities.
 Appreciate attitude but respect intelligence: HR leaders should choose attitude over
intelligence as it assists firm in accomplishing organizational objectives and goals. These
qualities help in improving the working efficiency of their employees.
 Confidence: It is very essential for the HR of the organization to boost the confidence
level of their employees as this will help to make their communication skills more
skilled and polished.
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 Reduce complexity, apply simplicity: It is noticeable that people nowadays prefer to
work in organizations where work is easy to understand. To achieve organizational
excellence and effectiveness, a HR manager should focus on shedding complexity and
replacing it with simplicity.
It is the duty of a HR director to form and implement different communication strategies
in order to achieve environment with free communication without bounding anyone (Bovee and
Courtland, 2012).
Following are purposes and need of HR director in forming communication strategy:
 Clarity and consistency: It is the duty and responsibility of HR director to conduct free
and fair communication within the organization by clarifying thoughts and ideas of every
employee. It is not possible to conduct effective communication without clear thoughts
and ideas, which can help in bringing consistency among employees and managers
during communication.
 Share value and vision: It is important for HR manager to convey values and vision
regarding organizational objectives and personal goals to enable free flow of
communication with clear views. Vision should be shared and convey to have common
mind-set and efforts in one single direction i.e. achievement of group goals.
 Talk and Listen: Talking and listening should be done on daily basis, as without
initiating communication with employees or listening to them, the firm will not be able to
know their views and ideas for a diversified environment and culture.
 Ensure mutual, professional aspect: This could be achieved through proper flow of
communication between employees and management. This is the duty and purpose for
which HR director is responsible to form and implement better communication strategy.
Moreover, HR directors are also responsible for smooth and profitable functioning of a
company's human resource department (Define Business Communication, 2018). The main
purpose that come out from this analysation is that, HR director also selects the best
communication directions through which every individual in the company would communicate.
2. Characteristics of good listeners and speakers
Characteristics of a good listener
Listening is one of the important factors in communication that mainly includes cognitive
processes like understanding and interpreting messages, effective processes like being motivated
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to pay attention, etc. (Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz, 2013). Some characteristics of effective
listening across cognitive, effective and behavioural frames are as follows:
1. Cognitive characteristics of effective listening: It mainly includes probing,
paraphrasing and summarizing. These all activities fall under cognitive characteristics
which shows listener's engagement in conversation which indicates that he or she is
making his or her efforts to understand and interpret of the message correctly which is
being conveyed.
2. Affective characteristics of effective listening: It mainly consists of focusing of
attention, acceptance and empathy. This characteristic suggests that, a listener should
show his or her effective engagement in the communication by giving their sole focus
attention and accepting received message with a fellow feeling. To enable this, it is
required that the listener should avoid giving his or her opinions, feelings onto the
speaker and should accept its communication with a simultaneous response to it.
3. Behavioural characteristics of effective listening: Generally, it includes non-verbal
behaviour and advice. A listener can communicate his or her thoughts and messages
through non-verbal communication as well. This could be done through eye contact,
nodding, erect posture and other positive body language.
Characteristics of a good speaker
1. Dynamic: This is an important quality of a good speaker. There must be variation in
tone, style, approach and voice of speaker which depends upon the situation and timing.
2. Clear: It is the first major characteristic of a good speaker (Hooker, 2012). A speech
must be successful in conveying ideas or emotions, arguments or facts to listener to
whom speaker wants to express.
3. Vivid and concrete: A good speaker's speech must be vivid and concrete in nature.
4. Brevity: Speech should be shorter and concrete but comprehensive.
5. Fluency while speaking: Communication that is taking place should be free from any
error to communicate effectively and to prevent misinterpret of information that is being
conveyed.
6. Authentic: The facts and figures that are presented in communication must be true and
authentic to prevent any kind of mislead of information by listener.
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Besides all the above mentioned criteria, a good speaker can also use some criteria like
visual presentation, result oriented, timely presentation, etc. It is the responsibility and need of
the speaker to consider all these qualities while presenting information to the listener.
TASK 2
3. Evaluation of strengths and weaknesses in terms of communicating orally and in writing
For making effective communication it is very important to have a good command in
both, orally and in writing as well. It is essential to evaluate own strength and weaknesses in
terms of communicating orally and in writing, which is explained below in detail:
Strength and weakness in Oral Communication
Strength Weakness
 Good listening skills.
 Understanding capability is good.
 Good Concentration.
 Lack of confidence.
 Fluency in speaking.
In self evaluation process I realized that I have good listening skills which is very
important while making an oral communication with other person. I have the ability to listen as
well as respond. While making oral communication it is very important to understand what other
person wants to convey. In this way it becomes easy to understand each others thoughts.
Taking about weaknesses, I become very nervous when talking in a large group of people
which makes me conscious as well. For improving this weakness I have started to talk to more
people as much as I can. This has helped me in improving my oral communications skills to a
large extent.
Strength and weakness in Written Communication
Strength Weakness
 Good command on language.
 Good writing skills.
 Grammatical mistakes.
 Clarity issues.
According to my evaluation, I have a good command on my language which make me
confident in written communication. This also helped to make it more improved. For this type of
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communication, it is very essential to have good writing skills a swell which according to me is
quite good. In weakness, I have to work on my grammar as I made a lot of grammatical error
while making written communication. This has a huge impact on personality as well. Other than
this I also have to improve my understanding skills for any particular topics as it affects my
writing ability.
Communication, orally or in written is a very powerful means of communication and
when evaluating own strengths and weaknesses in that area will help to communicate much more
efficiently with people (Business Communications, 2018).
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that business communication has a huge
impact on an organization as it can affect their overall performance in industry. It was
summarised that there are three points on which quality of a good listener are defined such as
cognitive, effective and behavioural characteristics of effective listening. This has also provided
a brief understanding of business communication and its types and effectiveness in enterprise
context. Present assessment also discussed about the roles and responsibilities of HR in the
organization in making effective communication strategy.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Berger, J. and Iyengar, R., 2013. Communication channels and word of mouth: How the medium
shapes the message. Journal of consumer research. 40(3). pp.567-579.
Bovee and Courtland, 2012. Business Communication Today, 10/e. Pearson Education India.
Gumperz, J. J. and Cook-Gumperz, J., 2013. From Oral to Written Culture: The Transition:
Literacy. In Writing (pp. 99-120). Routledge.
Hooker, J., 2012. 19 Cultural Differences in Business Communication. The handbook of
intercultural discourse and communication. 29. p.389.
Okoro, E. A., Washington, M. C. and Cardon, P. W., 2011. Eportfolios in business
communication courses as tools for employment. Business Communication Quarterly.
74(3). pp.347-351.
Singhal, A. and Rogers, E., 2012. Entertainment-education: A communication strategy for social
change. Routledge.
Online
Define Business Communication. 2018. [Online]. Available Through:
<https://smallbusiness.chron.com/define-business-communication-828.html>
Business Communications. 2018. [Online]. Available Through:
<https://www.edx.org/course/business-communications-ubcx-bus2x>
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