Chapter 1 Business Communication
During your income-producing years, you will probably spend most of your communicative time within an organization. As a manager in business, government or other industry, you will have a variety of responsibilities. You will be required to motivate, to instruct, and to control people in ways that will contribute to the success of your organization. This success depends greatly on the ability to communicate.
1.1 Purposes of Communication
Communication is a process by which information is exchanged between or among individuals through a common system of symbols, signs and behavior. As a process, communicating has synonyms such as expressing feelings, conversing, speaking, corresponding, writing, listening and exchanging. People communicate to satisfy needs in both their work and non-work lives. People want to be heard, to be appreciated and to be needed. They also want to accomplish tasks and to achieve goals. Obviously, then, a major purpose of communication is to help people feel good about themselves and about their friends, groups and organizations.
Communicating informs, persuades and entertains through verbal and non-verbal messages. Verbal means “through the use of words”, either written or oral. To be precise, speakers and writers should avoid using “verbal” when they mean “oral”. Non-verbal means “without the use of words”. People constantly send non-verbal messages through body motions, appearance, aromas, clothing, uniforms, facial expressions, automobiles and a variety of other symbols, signs and behaviors.
1.2 Four Levels of Communication
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Intrapersonal Communication. This is the way in which individuals process information based on their own life experiences. Therefore, communicating may be
difficult when a sender of a message has significantly different life experiences from the recipient of the message.
. Interpersonal Communication. This level of communication takes place primarily when two people are involved in the process. They have two goals: (1) They want to accomplish whatever task confronts them, and (2) they want to feel better about themselves as a result of the exchange. These two goals are commonly referred to respectively as task goals and maintenance goals, and they exist side by side in varying degrees in most of our daily activities.
. Group Communication. A group consists of more than two people, so does a committee, a club, or all the students enrolled in a class. Groups are formed usually because the combined efforts of a number of people result in greater output than the individual efforts of the same number of people. In other words, groups can do more for the individual than the individual can do for himself.
. Organization Communication. This level of communication arises when groups discover that they are unable to accomplish their goals without some kind of organization.
Despite the differences in size and complexity, each of these levels of communication continues to have task and maintenance goals. And the idea of maintenance goals can be expanded, or divided, into two distinct goals: (1) the self-maintenance goal that describes the individual’s need to maintain his or her personal worth or psychological well-being, and (2) the group-maintenance goal that describes the group’s need to maintain its esprit de corps – the non-task relationships they have established by interacting with one another as a team.
Factors in Group Communication
. Leadership. The ability of a group leader to work toward task goals while, at the same time, contributing to the development of group and individual maintenance goals is often critical to group success.
. Longevity. Groups formed for short-term tasks, such as to arrange for a dinner or a program, will spend more time on the task than on maintenance. However, groups formed for long-term assignments, such as an audit of a major corporation by a team from a public accounting firm, may devote much effort to maintenance goals. 中國航空網(wǎng) www.k6050.com 航空翻譯 www.aviation.cn 本文鏈接地址：電子商務(wù)專業(yè)英語實(shí)用教程(6)
