Communication in Organizations: Interview Transcript Analysis Report

This report analyzes interview transcripts from an IT company, exploring various aspects of organizational communication. The analysis covers the company's approach to promoting cultural diversity, including initiatives like the Employee Community and specific groups for underrepresented communities. The report examines instances of culturally insensitive behavior and proposes solutions, such as manager training and team-building exercises. It delves into persuasive tactics used in team projects, negotiation strategies with clients and subordinates, and the challenges faced in these processes, including lack of trust and differing priorities. The report also investigates the issues encountered during meetings, such as conflicting schedules and lack of informal communication, and suggests improvements like formalized meeting minutes and conflict resolution training. The interviews also touched on dealing with conflicts in the workplace and the company's approach to conflict management training. The analysis provides a comprehensive overview of communication practices, negotiation skills, and conflict resolution strategies within the organization.

Communication
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Interview transcripts
1. Ok, to what extent do you feel that your organisation promotes cultural diversity?
My IT Company continuously strives towards building an inclusive work environment that plays
a big role in creating diversity for us. It has always been a major strength of our company that it
is able to accommodate talents that comes in every size and shape. In order to help foster
inclusion, the company invests hugely towards the creation and maintenance of the ‘Employee
Community (EC)’. This unique community helps in providing support from the very first day of
joining the company in terms of offering career development programs, networking scopes
community engagement and awareness towards various cultures. Out company has also created
two new groups, namely ‘Blacks @ Work’ (BAW) and ‘Global LGBTQ’ (GLGBTQ) to spread
the horizon of acceptance and tolerance towards different cultures and communities among all
its workers. Such endeavours from the company’s side can be seen in positive lights towards
promoting cultural diversity in the workplace.
2. Tell me about a time when you observed culturally insensitive communication and
behaviour at your workplace
Although promoting cultural diversity has always remained a focal point for my IT Company, n
some cases instances have been reported where employees had experienced culturally insensitive
issues. What I mean is that since we have people from different cultural backgrounds, people on
the work floor sometimes behave insensitively towards them, as they tend to associate some of
their own beliefs and perceptions with those cultures. Once a boy was newly recruited in our
company who belong to the Black Minority Community and was a Muslim. Unknowingly few
colleagues of mine started avoiding him after talking with him initially. Also, the manager, who
was supposed to entrust the key to the stock room to the newly recruited boy (as he access the
stock room the most), gave it to another employee since he was a Canadian by origin. When
asked, he and other employees confessed that they thought that it would be hard to put trust on a
BME man with Muslim background.
3. How do you think the intercultural communication issues be addressed within your
organisation?
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I feel that apart from formulating communities and groups, it is essential that the managers be
taught and trained to possess an inclusive attitude. They must be encouraged to adopt a wider
understanding of different cultures. Focus should be given on team building efforts, which can
help not only in building up of a cooperative and coherent workplace but also to understand
each other in terms of their culture, work styles, etc. Working on the language barriers can also
be essential. For this, workers can be provided with language classes – the most common ones
used in the company.
4. You have accomplished successful team projects, so what were your persuasive tactics?
In my quest of persuading people, I had always focused on using my inner strengths and wisdom.
By the virtue of god, I had always been able to complete and deliver my projects to the
organisation on time. Moreover, in terms of handling successful team project in my current
organisation, I always tend to focus and align on my basic principles and skills which revolve
around listening and remaining positive. I would also like to share some of the tactics that had
made me successful in my current job role in the IT company is handling objections and
modelling of the behaviour. It is very much important to identify the root because that leads to
team members showing discontent towards accepting decisions in the workplace. Therefore, I
also believed in the fact that communication as it had benefited me in persuading my team
members to achieve strict deadlines immediately.
5. Tell me about the issues you faced while persuading others to accept your ideas.
I personally believe that while persuading team member in the workplace, there are high
chances of receiving negative feedback, issues and challenges. As per my experience goes, I have
encountered wide range of issues while persuading other members in current job in the IT
company. The first major issue which I could recall is lack of support and attention. Personally,
I feel that concentration plays a crucial role in persuasion. But I had encountered situations
wherein my team members showed less attention towards me resulting in my failure to persuade
them to undertake opportunity to improve their career in the workplace. Secondly, I do feel that
lack of trust is another issue in persuasion. I prefer to engage in persuasion with only those set
of team members who believe in my skills, knowledge and ability to benefit both of them.
6. Describe a scenario where you were able to persuade others
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In my current job in the IT company, there were numerous situations wherein I was able to
successfully persuade others. However, I would like to stress upon one scenario wherein I was
authorized by top management to convince team members to work on Sundays to achieve
business targets. Though, it was challenging for me as convincing people to work on Sundays is
difficult as everyone has their own schedules. I accepted the challenge and invited my team
members over lunch and started asking about their plans on Sunday. Then I informed them about
Sunday’s roster upon which I encountered criticism. But somehow, I managed the situation by
convincing them to receive extra leaves later for the work done on Sundays. Therefore, my
persuasive skill and nature benefited me to convince my team members easily.
7. In your role, how often do you have to negotiate with others?
As an IT manager, I frequently have to make negotiations with my clients and subordinates to
undertake decisions related to contracts, prices, setting vendors for supply of software, delivery
dates, and level of service provided. In the case of negotiating with the subordinates, I have to
clarify their expectations about the work and set performance objectives. However, more often I
have to negotiate with my clients and service providers as negotiation is important for everything
within the business from budget to software application features.
8. Can you tell me a situation where you failed to reach an agreement in negotiations and
faced issues?
I could share an incident when I failed to reach an agreement while accomplishing a project task
working with 2 other team members. The project deadline was sufficient for the team achieves it
but one of the team members requested me to extend the deadline for which I found no reasons
enough. I kept stating the employee and negotiated with him to attain the deadline. One of the
biggest issues that I faced was when the individual on the other end fails to understand the
second party all. There are individuals who have the tendency to think about their interest and
do not want to indulge in group interest. In this case, the team member required a substantial
amount of leaves for the personal reason which would have hampered our project attainment.
Finally, I could not negotiate with the team member and requested the project coordinator to
replace my team member. Lack of time is a significant issue in negotiation as with approaching
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deadline and important tasks, one has to be quick in taking decisions otherwise with lack of time;
one is not in a condition to make decisions.
9. So, in what ways can you achieve negotiation success by addressing the issues?
Considering the experience that I faced and failed to achieve a negotiation, I need to improve my
negotiation skills to achieve success. In this regards, I should have understood the deal dynamics
of the situation and then make quick decisions to negotiate or not negotiate at all. If I would have
identified that the team member would be on leave during the project duration, I would not have
negotiated with him to keep up the deadline. It’s futile! I would have straightway sort for a team
member replacement. Therefore, individuals and professionals must understand the deal
dynamics and decide to leverage the negotiation to achieve success. Being prepared prior to the
negotiation is a critical success factor. In professional decisions, one must be aware of the
situation and review the background of the situation or the persons involved in the situation. This
would help in better negotiation with sufficient information to back the negotiation deal.
10. How do you plan and run meetings?
In our company meetings are called when there is any urgency at hand... “It could be called with
a prior notice of one-two days or on the day itself”. However, I must point out that, Group
meetings are held at the beginning of each month. “We make sure to discuss the productivity of
each of the staffs with the respective manager” “further, meetings are held on the profitability of
the company on a monthly basis, so that strategies could be implemented based on the last
month’s performances”. Apart from that small a small meeting is held at the middle of each
month in order to check on the progress of the staffs as well. We make sure to include
discussions like customer satisfaction, improvement in performance target achievements,
deadlines, so that these remains at the foremost priority of each of the staff, which they conduct
their works.
11. So, what issues do you have while conducting meetings?
Though we make sure to conduct the meeting in everyone’s presence, it is not always possible to
include all staffs and managers because of their prior engagements. Hence, some important
discussions are often missed by some of the staffs. Apart from that issues like conflict among
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team members, managers are also faced in the meetings which often prevents from taking
appropriate decisions. Apart from that, one issue which I face that is most pertinent is that,
there are less informal meetings in our organisation, which often restricts the employees to
collaborate and cooperate with each other beyond a certain extent. These small issues over
time, often restricts the staffs and employees to share their ideas for improvements in a meeting.
12. Given these issues that you shared, how can you overcome them?
Given the situation at hand, regarding the meetings and group discussions, it could be stated
that we need to make sure that the staffs and team members of every team communicate and
collaborate with each other, for which in formal gatherings needs to be arranged. Apart from
that, it is essential that the staffs are motivated and incentivised to work harder and come up
with innovative ideas. It might inspire and motivate the staffs to be present in meetings. Also it is
essential that we make sure that each and every detail of the meetings are presented in Minutes
and forwarded to each of the staffs, so that they are able to go through them and incorporate
those in their works. Conflicts need to be resolved among the team members for which training
needs to be provided to team leaders.
13. How often do you deal with conflict in the workplace?
When working in an organisation with other employees, one often has to deal with different
emergent conflicts. In our organisation, we often have conflicts during team meetings over some
issue at hand. This could occur within a space of one month’s time or even might be more spaced
out. Dealing with conflict could be difficult task at times as one has to often adopt a diplomatic
stance for being fair with all employees. I have to deal with such conflicts often during once or
twice a month and sometimes the conflicts are really serious.
14. Does your organisation provide conflict management training?
The aim of a training provided in conflict management is introducing strategies and techniques
for practical resolution of conflicts that team leaders and managers could effectively use for the
management of emergent conflicts at workplace. This needs to be founded on previous skills,
knowledge and training of effective management of performance. Such trainings are usually
aimed at team leaders and managers. It provides an insight into the situations that arise in the
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workplace with a comprehensive, assertive, constructive and clear viewpoint. An IT company
has many employees involved in various jobs. Thus, conflict management training becomes a
prerequisite in such companies. Our company provides a comprehensive but short crash course
and training in conflict management training. All our existing employees, including high level
management, could undertake this training session as it helps to develop their conflict
management skills. This training is known as “Conflict resolution” and the enrolled candidates
are provided both theoretical knowledge and practical exposure in the form of simulation
programs.
15. Then, tell me how do you deal with conflict resolution issues?
Giving a real-life example might be beneficial in understanding how conflict resolution issues
are dealt with in our company. For instance, once two employees had a fall out regarding the
handling of a client. While one claimed that accurate data had been provided, the other denied
it. This conflict escalated to such great heights that both team members refused to work on the
same team. This could have disastrous consequences on the team spirit and also on the progress
of the project. Therefore, intervening was important. Thus, I took it on myself to talk to each
member individually and explain why there was a necessity to deal with the situation in a
professional and diplomatic manner. Eventually, after the one-to-one conversation, they were
able to understand this lead to a transformation in their attitude towards each other. This lead to
the upliftment of team spirit and also brought about an improvement in team morale and work
condition. It brought about good outcomes for the project team as a whole.
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