Professional Business Communication: Skills, Barriers, and Ethics

This essay delves into the multifaceted realm of professional business communication, emphasizing its critical role in the modern workplace. It begins by defining communication as a fundamental process of exchanging information and highlights the various forms it takes, including verbal, non-verbal, written, and visual representations. The essay underscores the importance of effective communication to avoid conflicts and build trust, with personal anecdotes illustrating the impact of clear and concise messaging. It then addresses common barriers to communication, such as shyness, fear, and language differences, and explains how overcoming these obstacles can improve relationships and teamwork. Self-awareness is also explored, with emphasis on how understanding one's strengths and weaknesses can enhance confidence and decision-making. The essay further examines cross-cultural communication skills as essential in a globalized business environment, stressing the need for coordination and ethical decision-making. Finally, the essay concludes by summarizing the key elements of effective professional communication, encouraging an open approach to address communication challenges and foster better workplace relationships.

Running head: PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS
Professional Business Communication
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Communication is the process of sending and receiving information between two or
more people (Habermas, 2015). Communication is a process that cannot be completed with
only one person. From the advent of human race, communication has been a very important
phenomenon that is required for the exchange of information. The one who sends the
information is known as the sender while the one on the other end is known as the receiver
(McQuail & Windahl, 2015). The information that is passed in the communication cycle
reflects various ideas, opinions and thought process of those who are involved in the process.
According to Broadbent (2013), the various kind of communication are mentioned below-
 Verbal communication
 Non-Verbal communication
 Written communication
 Visual representations such as maps, symbols and graphs.
Effective communication is one of the most important skills to have in this modern
world because effectively passing on the information is mandatory to avoid conflict or any
issues (Shockley-Zalabak, 2014). I have faced situations where incomplete communication
has lead to many problems including confusion, hurting of sentiments and even conflicts.
When I communicate with people I make sure that, the entire information is passed on to the
recipients and that I clearly state the ideas. My motive remains that people must clearly
understand what I wish to convey, and them agreeing to it or not is completely upon them.
This clarity increases the level of trust that people have on the communicator and it makes me
feel confident. I have successfully passed on difficult messages to people using effective
communication skills and have experienced no conflict or trust issues among the people.
When I saw people having a negative image among people and being referred to as an
unfriendly person, I realized that the problem was lack of effective communication on the

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part of that individual. Hence, it allowed me to pursue a positive body language while dealing
with people and it has enhanced my public relations massively.
Barriers to communication are known as the aspects that deter the communication
process and hinder the transfer of information from the sender to receiver (Conrad, 2014). In
my first encounter with my office colleagues, I was apprehensive and rather shy to
communicate with them. This led them to believing that I am a person with ego and I am a
weak communicator. However, soon I understood that I had to get rid of my shyness and
apprehensions. The moment I got away from those barriers, colleagues became friends for me
and soon we started to share light moments in the team and entire work environment became
better for me. Barriers may be of various kinds such as fear, lack of knowledge, natural
phenomenon, trust issues, self-image and personal interests (Wibeck, 2014). Individuals can
communicate freely with each other keeping the barriers aside but this is not always possible
because language may sometimes become a barrier and the receiver may not be aware of a
foreign language that the sender is speaking. Such barriers are very common and lead to
communication gap between people in foreign places. Barriers hinder effective
communication and this leads people being distanced from each other due to lack of
communication.
Self-awareness is the ability of an individual to understand their own personality and
make an analysis of the various strengths and weakness in their character (Vago, 2014). It is a
fact that a person can be happy only if there is awareness about the self. Self-awareness
allows me to understand the various qualities that I have in my character. When I face an
interview, I stay confident about it because I know where my strengths are and how I can use
them to impress the interviewer. Having an idea of the weakness also allows me stay away
from areas that can put me into trouble and hence I can work accordingly. The challenges that
are posed by various situations can be better analyzed because I know the limits to which I

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can push myself in order to achieve a target in life. The art of self-awareness came to my
attention when I started taking interest in self-talk sessions. Self-talk has benefitted me
hugely in allowing me to assess myself in light of the situations that demand my action in any
form.
In this world of globalization, the confluence of culture in the workplace is one of the
most evident characteristics of business communication. Cross-cultural communication
skills are the most sought after skill sets looked after by leading organizations in their
employees and new recruits (Piller, 2013). I am a person who likes communicating with
people and hence never faced issues related to cross-cultural communication. Being able in
freely communicating with people from various backgrounds, I have learned many things
from them and it has improved many skills of mine. Co-ordination is mandatory in the
workplace because every organization looks for people who will work as a team and achieve
the common goal of the organization. In order to achieve the common goal, it is must for
individuals to communicate with each other without any kind of apprehension or barrier in
their communication process. Treating people from different ethnic group or culture only
complicates the situation and worsens the overall performance because it induces bias
practices and hence de-motivates the person or group that is treated differently because of
culture or ethnicity (Modood, 2017). I feel that such communication should be practiced as
people can always learn something new from other culture and their thought process may
provide positive aspirations in workplace.
Ethical decision-making lays the foundation for successful business communication.
Whenever I see someone making a decision impulsively based on personal motives and
without a morality that supports the right cause, I can sense the fault in the entire decision
making process. Often such decisions backfire and lead to failure and harm the entire
organization or team. Learning from those faulty decisions of others, I have started to

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evaluate a situation deeply before coming to a decision. There are always various
implications to a decision that will be taken and all of the implications have to be kept in
mind before taking a decision. Ethical decision-making process includes on the part of
decision maker to be able to take decisions that are morally correct irrespective of the cost
(Crossan, Mazutis & Seijts, 2013). I have seen that foreseeing the consequences always helps
in taking the decision and it enables me to have a backup in case things go wrong. Taking
such ethical decisions has led to people gaining confidence on me and the fairness has made
people believe that I am a wise person and can be trusted with complicated issues. In order to
take ethical approach in decision making it is essential for individuals to refrain from any
kind of bias attitude or prejudgments towards the issues that are at hand and needed to be
taken a call upon.
To conclude, it is essential to have an open approach towards the various issues that
may arise in communicating at the professional level. I had weaknesses in communicating
with unknown people, but with time I realized that having such an attitude will lead to loss on
my part and people will have a wrong perception about me. Hence, I stepped out of my
comfort zone, interacted with everyone, and made sure that none of the barriers interrupted
my communication process. This lead to people winning trust on me and my overall image
became better among them and I received a greater acceptance on all fronts in the workplace.

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Reference
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Habermas, J. (2015). Communication and the Evolution of Society. John Wiley & Sons.
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