COM502 Business Communication: Self-Evaluation of Communication

This essay presents a self-evaluation of communication skills in a business context, referencing the COM502 Business Communication for IT Professionals course. It explores the impact of personal factors and behaviors on the communication process, using the Johari Window model to assess personal strengths and weaknesses. The essay also examines the role of culture, time, and distance in communication, and provides real-life examples of communication scenarios. The author reflects on their personality, communication style, and feedback received from peers, ultimately emphasizing the importance of adapting communication strategies to different stakeholders and situations within an organization.

Management
COM 502

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According to me, communication refers to the process of sending and receiving the
messages with the aid of the spoken and written words. In the words of Newman (2015),
business communication also involves a number of nonverbal factors such as the facial
expressions, gestures and voice modulations and I accord the importance of the same. I feel
business communication plays a phenomenal role in management, creation of an effective
work atmosphere and overall leadership within an organisation. In addition, I feel the more
aware an individual is about his personality and communication style, the more effective he
or she is able to communicate with others, thereby enabling efficient collaboration in an
entity. This is because I believe while an extrovert is able to render value addition in the form
of suggestions and opinions to an organisation, introverts need to be inspired to speak up.
Further, I believe that culture plays a vital role in the individual interactions at
workplace. In the words of Geert Hofstede, culture collectively programmes a human mind
and is known to differentiate the members of specific group of people from others. This is
comprised of self-perceptions, values, norms, cognitive ability and behaviours (Hofstede et
al. 2010). The model states that words, objects, gestures play an essential role in interaction
because the same have a particular meaning for people who share the same culture, thereby
influencing communication. I further feel time and distance have an important role too in the
communication. The virtual organisations suffer from the limitations of the time and distance
and thus lack interpersonal relationships among the team members. In terms of assessment of
my own personality on the lines of Johari window’s model some of the qualities that fall in
the open area of the arena are that I have an ambivert personality. In addition, the fact that I
am curious by nature and that enables me to understand new processes and objectives of the
organisation. The better understanding in turn leads to efficient communication between team
members. In addition, being a leader with the above qualities helps to gain better
understanding of team members. The blind spot according to the Johari window model can be
stated to be that I lack patience at times and which can hinder my communication with the
subordinates and I must work on the same. Accordingly, the hidden area of personality that
impacts my communication is that I am spiritual and which makes me a polite and receptive
person during the organisational communications.
As per the feedback obtained from my peers, friends and relatives, I can state that
people are fond of my accent and consider the same as my unique feature. This in turn aids in
communication, as it draws attention of the audience instantly. One of the peers of mine had
rendered the feedback that while my communication style is unique, I lack the ability to make

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changes to the same depending upon the authority I am conversing with. The feedback made
me feeling bad, nevertheless I realised that the accent, pauses, tone, modulations play a vital
role in the verbal communication and to an extent establishes the level of attention of
listeners (Quirke, 2012). I believe the same plays a chief role in both internal and external
communications of an entity.
The two instances of real life situations are presented as follows that further describes
the various facets of the communication within an organisation. First was when I had to lead
a group and include the ideas of the members while a policy formulation of a company. I
realised it is important to be aware of the personality of the team members. This is because
when a leader has an understanding of the same, he or she is able to facilitate the team
member accordingly to speak in the group discussions and enable healthy collaborations.
Further to note, as per the cognitive dissonance theory of communication, the human minds
have tendency to avoid lashes and tensions at workplace through various methods and attain
harmony (Barnlund, 2017). Accordingly, as a leader it was a challenge for me to convince
introvert members to give their valuable suggestions for the policy formulation as a whole.
The second instance was when communicating with an unsatisfied customer. It is of vital
significance to obtain feedback form the customers in terms of the external communication
(Guffey and Loewy, 2012). As per the Lasswell model, the messagse flow in a multicultural
society with multiple audiences. Accordingly, it is important to evaluate the message on lines
of who is saying, what is being said, the channel to be used, to who it is to be said and what
will be the effect of the message (Murphy& Sashi, 2018). In order to communicate efficiently
one should be open to criticisms and take them as means to constructive feedback. As the
stakeholders of an organisation are associated with a company with varied range of interests,
the leaders and managers must amend their ways to address their issues. For instance, I
realised while the customer needs his feedbacks to be taken positively, the communication
with employees is necessary to be more concerned with motivation and boosting self-
confidence. Similarly while interacting with the shareholders the communication should be
with the aim of transparency and accountability.
Thus, as per the discussions conducted in previous parts it can be stated that
communication is one of the prime functions of organisational operations and the same is
dependent upon a number of cultural, personal and other incidental influences.

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References
Barnlund, D. C. (2017). A transactional model of communication. In Communication theory
UK: Routledge.
Guffey, M. E., and Loewy, D. (2012). Essentials of Business Communication. (9th ed.).
United States: South Western Cengage Learning.
Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., Minkov, M. (2010). (3rd edition.). Cultures and organizations:
Software of the mind. UK: McGraw-Hill.
Murphy, M., & Sashi, C. M. (2018). Communication, interactivity, and satisfaction in B2B
relationships. Industrial Marketing Management, 68, 1-12.
Newman, A. (2015). Business Communication: In Person, In Print, Online. (10th ed.).
Cengage learning.
Quirke, B. (2012). Making the Connections: Using Internal Communication to Turn Strategy
into action. (2nd ed.). England: Gower Publishing Ltd.