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CHAPTER 14: INTERPERSONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

I. THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF COMMUNICATION

1. What is communication?
- Communication: The transfer and understanding of meaning
- Interpersonal communication: Communication between two or more people
- Organizational communication: All the patterns, networks, and systems of communication within an
organization

2. Functions of communication
- Communication serves four major functions: control, motivation, emotional expression, and
information.
- Control: Organizations have authority hierarchies (hệ thống phân cấp quyền hạn) and formal
guidelines that employees are expected to follow.
- Motivation: Motivating by clarifying to employees what is to be done, how well they’re doing,
and what can be done to improve performance if it’s not up to par
- Emotional expression: Providing a release (sự giải phóng) for emotional expression of feelings
and for fulfillment of social needs.
- Information: Individuals and groups need information to get things done in organizations.
Communication provides that information.

II. METHODS AND CHALLENGES OF INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

- Interpersonal:
- Is that you speaking with employees, managers, customer nice?
- It’s about individual skill
- (school cannot teach you this, you need to learn it by yourself. The lesson can only go through it
generally)
1. Methods
- Communication processes: The seven elements involved in transferring meaning from one person to
another

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- Message: A purpose to be conveyed

- Encoding: Converting a message into symbols
- The sender put their thought (message) into language, body language, images, etc.
- Good or bad encode is depending on your personal skill
- Channel: The medium a message travel along
- The sender send the massage to the receiver through medium
- If they can skip the medium, which the mesage go directly to the receiver, called
telepathy =))
- Decoding: Retranslating a sender’s message
- The receiver read/hear the message and they try to understand it, which mean they turn
the message into the meaning
- Noise: Any disturbances (bất kỳ sự xáo trộn nào) that interfere (cản trở) with the transmission,
receipt, or feedback of a message
- Incurred throughout the whole process. It’s external information
- E.g: manager told you to met him in his room. Noise occur like this: your coworker said
<he would scold on you=; the others said <he will promote for you=
- When you receive a message, the very first person that you should ask/confirm the
message is that sender, not the others.
- Managers have a wide variety of communication methods from which to choose and can use 12
questions (12 principles - said Berlin) to help them evaluate these methods:
- Feedback: How quickly can the receiver respond to the message?
- Do I need an immediate response?
- Urgent situations: used fast medium feedback like phone call
- Not really urgent: email, letter, message

- Complexity capacity: Can the method effectively process complex messages?

- E.g: teach the new employees to use the machine operation. You would rather choose
face to face meeting or video call

- Breadth potential: How many different messages can be transmitted (truyền tải) using this
method?
- Can the medium contain different messages at one
- Complexity is about the complex level of a message, but breadth is about the quantity of
the message (should not confuse about this)

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- Confidentiality: Can communicators be reasonably sure their messages are received only by
those intended?
- Can the medium keep secret?
- MIS is the company public chat; thus, it’s very lack of confidential.

- Encoding ease: Can sender easily and quickly use this channel?
- Is it easy to be used?
- Is it understandable?

- Decoding ease: Can receiver easily and quickly decode messages?

- Same as encoding ease
- E.g looking on the laptop screen at night is eyesore, therefore, letter’s somehow better

- Time-space constraint: Do senders and receivers need to communicate at the same time and in
the same space?
- Does the medium require both sender and receiver are in the same time - same place?
- Linking with the feedback principles
Time Place

Face to face Same Same

Zoom - Google meet Same Different

Phone call same Different

Email Different time Different

- The medium that constrain time, it will lead to the fast feedback
- The more constrain time and space, the worst the ease.

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- Cost: How much does it cost to use this method?

- Does that medium cost you lots of money? Cheap - expensive?

- Interpersonal warmth: How well does this method convey interpersonal warmth?
- Can the medium be used to build relationships?
- Choose the medium that receiver can feel the level of interaction on it
- It can be also build warmth through the way sender encode the message

- Formality: Does this method have the needed amount of formality?

- Messenger, Zalo, Viber, etc. super informal
- Letter: super formal
- Email: 50 - 50
- Face to face: it’s depended on your behave and performance (it’s very special medium)

- Scannability: Does this method allow the message to be easily browsed or scanned for relevant
information?
- E.g: you plan for an outgoing trip. Then, how can you announce this information?
- Posted paper document or send an email: easy to scan for the information, avoid
missing information
- Broadcast or oral announcement: only galaxy brain can remember it - said Berlin

- Time of consumption: Does the sender or receiver exercise the most control over when the
message is dealt with?
- The combination of feedback - encode/decode ease - time-space constraint

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- Types of interpersonal communication:

- Nonverbal communication: Communication transmitted without words
- Body language: Gestures, facial configurations, and other body movements that convey
meaning.
- Verbal intonation: An emphasis given to words or phrases that conveys meaning
- Cloth:
- Ugly - beautiful
- Cost: is it suitable for my pocket :(
- Formality: very important in business
- Warmth: express the way you feel about this relationship
- Represent the confidentiality: can I trust this person? Each industry, position will
have different dress code
- Others:
- Smell: of the company, not individual
- Make up, hairstyle, watch, etc.
- Care, laptop, phone, etc.
- Non-verbal is the thing you don’t need to try, you can prepare it. However, Verbal cannot
be prepare, it depend on your encode - decode ability
2. Barriers
- Cognitive: two cognitive barriers to communication:
- Information overload: When information exceeds our processing capacity
- Filtering: The deliberate manipulation (cố ý thao túng) of information to make it appear more
favorable to the receiver.
- Emotions
- When people feel they’re being threatened, they tend to react in ways that hinder (cản trở)
effective communication and reduce their ability to achieve mutual understanding (thấu hiểu)
- They become defensive - verbally attacking others, making sarcastic (châm biếm) remarks, being
overly judgmental, or questioning others’ motives.
- Sociocultural
- Age, education, and cultural background are three of the more obvious variables that influence
the language a person uses and the definitions he or she gives to words.
- In an organization, employees come from diverse backgrounds and have different patterns of
speech.
- Even employees who work for the same organization but in different departments often have
different jargon
- Jargon (thuật ngữ): Specialized terminology or technical language that members of a group use
to communicate among themselves
- National culture
- In an individualistic country like the United States, communication is more formal and is clearly
spelled out. Managers rely heavily on reports, memos, and other formal forms of
communication.

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- In a collectivist country like Japan, more interpersonal contact takes place, and face-to-face
communication is encouraged.

3. Overcoming the barriers

- To overcoming the barriers, managers should:
- Use feedback
- As a sender: ask, confirm with the receiver if they have any feedback
- As a receiver: always turn back to the sender and confirm with them. Except for the very
simple, too clear message
- E.g: manager require you to sign a contract with the client.
- Good feedback: confirm with the manager about the name of the client, date,
content, etc.
- Silly/stupid feedback: confirm with the manager about the email format, the
signature, etc.
- Simplify language
- Listen actively
- Active listening: listening for full meaning without making premature judgments or interpretations
(không đưa ra phán đoán - lý giải quá sớm)

- Constrain emotions: Calm down and get emotions under control before communicating.
- Watch nonverbal cues
- Characteristic: show empathy, show interest by making eye contact, exhibit affirmative head
nods and appropriate facial expressions, ask questions, avoid distracting action or gestures,
paraphrase what’s been said, don’t interupt

III. EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

1. Formal versus informal
- Formal communication: Communication that takes place within prescribed (quy định) organizational
work arrangements

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- Informal communication: Communication that is not defined by the organization’s structural hierarchy
(cấu trúc phân cấp)
- Two purposes of informal communication:
- It permits employees to satisfy their need for social interaction
- It can improve an organization’s performance by creating alternative, and frequently
faster and more efficient, channels of communication.

2. Direction of flow
- Downward communication
- CEOs use town hall meetings to communicate with employees.
- Town hall meeting: Informal public meetings where information can be relayed (chuyển tiếp),
issues can be discussed, or employees can be brought together to celebrate accomplishments
- Downward communication: Communication that flows downward from a manager to
employees
- Upward communication
- Communication that flows upward from employees to managers
- Lateral
- Communication that takes place among any employees on the same organizational level
- Diagonal communication
- Communication that crosses both work areas and organizational levels.

3. Networks
- Communication networks: The variety of patterns of vertical and horizontal flows of organizational
communication
- Types of communication networks
- Chain network: Communication flows according to the formal chain of command, both
downward and upward. (filtering)
- Wheel network represents communication flowing between a clearly identifiable and strong
leader and others in a work group or team. (báo cáo trực tiếp cho the highest manager)
- All-channel network: communication flows freely among all members of a work team.
- The form of network you should use depends on your goal.

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- The grapevine
- Grapevine: The informal organizational communication network (also noise)
- Acting as both a filter and a feedback mechanism, it pinpoints those bewildering issues that
employees consider important. (xác định chính xác những vấn đề hoang mang mà nhân viên coi
là quan trọng)
- From a managerial point of view, it is possible to analyze what is happening on the grapevine -
what information is being passed, how information seems to flow, and what individuals seem to
be key information conduits.
- Managers can identify issues that concern employees and in turn use the grapevine to
disseminate (phổ biến) important information.
- Benefit of grapevine (by Berlin)
- Review manager, boss, others coworker
- Figure out who hold the soft power - hard power, influential person
- Leaking information (by the manager’s secretary)
- If you can control information, you hold the soft power in the company
- From grapevine, the manager can set up how this person communicate with the others

4. Workplace design and communication

- A workplace design should successfully support four types of employee work: focused work,
collaboration, learning, and socialization.
- Open workplaces: Workplaces with few physical barriers and enclosures (bao vây)

IV. COMMUNICATION IN THE INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA AGE

1. The 24/7 work environment
- IT has made it possible to stay connected around the clock, seven days per week.
- IT has made it possible for people in organizations to be fully accessible, at any time, regardless of
where they are.

2. Working from anywhere

- As wireless technology continues to improve, we’ll see more organizational members using it as a way
to collaborate and share information.

3. Social Media
- Devoting a channel (dành một kênh) for information exchange about a specific topic can help
compartmentalize the conversation.
- It can also start a useful conversation in which employees can share their experiences and make
suggestions for creating competitive advantage.

4. Balancing the Pluses and Minuses

- Communication and the exchange of information among organizational members are no longer
constrained by geography or time.

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- Constantly staying connected has its downsides, such as impeding (cản trở) creativity.
5. Choosing the Right Media
- It is important for managers to understand the situations in which one or more media facilitates effective
communication.

V. COMMUNICATION ISSUES IN TODAY’S ORGANIZATIONS

1. Managing communication in a digitally connected world
- Managers are learning, the hard way sometimes, that all this new technology has created special
communication challenges.
- The two main challenges: Legal and security issues - Lack of personal interaction.

2. Managing the organization’s knowledge resources

- Managers need to enable employees to communicate and share knowledge so they can learn from each
other.

3. The role of communication in customer service

- The three components working on communication:
- Customer
- Service organization
- Individual service provider
- Getting Employee Input
- Letting employees know that their opinions matter is an essential first step in building effective
suggestions systems.

5. Communicating ethically
- Ethical communication: Communication that includes all relevant information, is true in every sense,
and is not deceptive (lừa dối) in any way

VI. BECOMING A BETTER COMMUNICATOR

1. Sharpening your persuasion skills
- Persuasion skills: Skills that enable a person to influence others to change their minds or behavior

2. Sharpening your speaking skills

- Speaking skills: Skills that refer to the ability to communicate information and ideas in talking so
others will understand

3. Sharpening your writing skills

- Writing skills: Skills that entail (kéo theo) communicating effectively in text as appropriate for the
needs of the audience

4. Sharpening your reading skills

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- Reading skills: Skills that entail an understanding of written sentences and paragraphs in work-related
documents.

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