Business Communication Management E-Book

Dr. Anna Rostomyan

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 182

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

In diesem Buch geht es um Geschäftskommunikationsmanagement, das durch emotionale Intelligenz und Emotionsmanagement erheblich verbessert werden kann, um erfolgreiche Beziehungen zu stärken.

Leseprobe

Dr. Anna Rostomyan is an Assistant Professor of English, Corporate Communications Consultant, Researcher, Author, Coach and Reviewer at Sage Publishing. Her PhD work, which she defended back in 2013 in tight collaboration with the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, Department of Philosophy and Interfaculty Institute for Central and Eastern Europe, being awarded an ASCN PhD research grant, and Yerevan State University, English Philology Department and Chair of English for Cross-cultural communication, was devoted to the linguo-cognitive, pragmatic, neurolinguistic, and psycholinguistic analysis of the verbal and nonverbal expression of emotions in English fiction and films.

While interested in a whole range of disciplines as Pragmatics, Psycholinguistics, Sociolinguistics, Neurolinguistics, Cognitive Linguistics, Communication Studies, and Discourse Analysis, her current research and studies are mainly focused on Emotional Intelligence, Neuroeconomics, Neuroleadership, Personal Branding, Emotional Marketing, Business Communication Management, etc.

Apart from academia, she also consults companies with successful communication and recruitment strategies, among which “Porsche Center Yerevan”, “ArmenOil”, and “Armeconombank” OJSC.

This book is particularly meant for the Business world professionals, leaders and for the Communication Science specialists to have a better understanding of communication management issues, self-awareness, self-management, social competence and especially emotional intelligence. The present book is the result of about 10 years’ research work, elucidating the main findings of the author in the field of Communication Science.

Author contact: [email protected]

Dr. Anna Rostomyan

Business Communication Management

The Key to Emotional Intelligence

© 2020 Dr. Anna Rostomyan

Verlag und Druck:

tredition GmbH, Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg

ISBN

Paperback:

978-3-347-20842-1

Hardcover:

978-3-347-19711-4

e-Book:

978-3-347-20843-8

Das Werk, einschließlich seiner Teile, ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages und des Autors unzulässig. Dies gilt insbesondere für die elektronische oder sonstige Vervielfältigung, Übersetzung, Verbreitung und öffentliche Zugänglichmachung.

CONTENT

Preface

Section One

Communication and Emotions:

1.1. The Ways of Business Communication

1.2. The Vitality of Trust and Emotion Expressions in Business Communication

1.3. Communication Strategies in Leading People

1.4. The Nature and Psychological Aspect of Emotions

1.5. Pragmatics and Speech Acts

Section Two

Passion and Reason:

2.1. The Role of Emotions in Business Management

2.2. The Urgency of Emotion Expression Management

2.3. The Role of Background Knowledge in Communication

2.4. The Iceberg Theory

2.5. The Emotional/Rational Dichotomy

2.6. Manifestation of Emotions in Business

2.7. The Nature of Emotion Expression Management Techniques in Speech

2.8. The Importance of Anger Management at Work Place

Conclusion

Bibliography

COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY

Business environment progressively grows multifaceted where human capital becomes the only sustainable source of competitive advantage for any organization, especially in these times of digitalization in terms of New Leadership and New Work.

In today’s globalized and capitalized world, it has become an urgent issue to seek for ways of healthy and efficient emotional communication management and communicative conflict minimization for the benefit of healthy interactions and effective labour output.

The present book, composed of two correlated sections, gives an overall presentation on communication issues, as well as a minute depiction of the vitality of emotions at workplace and in everyday life. It suggests different ways both for professionals and beginners to reach peaceful interpersonal relations, which will consequently greatly contribute to successful business development, as well as to strong, effective and peaceful interrelations.

This is a step-by-step guide, which gives you deep knowledge on communication management issues and emotional intelligence.

Preface

Business environment increasingly grows multifaceted and multicultural, where human capital becomes the only sustainable source of competitive advantage for any organization. Communication mainly consists in coding and decoding information on diverse issues with the people whom we encounter on various occasions. It is the mutual exchange of understanding with the receiver of the information.

When talking about Business Management, we first of all have to speak about effective communication, which is the essence of productive management as we deal with human beings. The basic functions of management, such as Decision Making, Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing and Controlling, cannot be performed efficiently and thoroughly without effective communication.

Business Communication actually involves instant and constant flow of information. Communication indeed plays a very important role in the process of directing and controlling the people in each and every organization. Hence, there should be effective communication between superiors and subordinated employees in any organization by means of flat hierarchical operation systems, as well as between an organization and the society at large, since it is also very essential for the development of success and the growth of an organization (Ternès & Rostomyan, 2011b).

Although it might sound trivial or even irrelevant to bring up such basic matters as language, meaning, interpretation and communication, these are the most fundamental components of arguments — even more fundamental than propositions, inferences, and conclusions. We cannot make sense of an argument without being able to make sense of the language, meaning, and purpose of what is being communicated in the first place. Hence, the present book will give a glimpse into diverse relevant components of communication so that to have a better understanding of it, as in case you have an idea of the processes going beyond communication, you will become better communicators.

In fact, language is a subtle and complex instrument used to communicate an incredible number of different things, but for our purposes here we can reduce the universe of communication to four basic categories: information, direction, emotion, and ceremony. The first two are often treated together because they express cognitive meaning while the latter two commonly express emotional meaning. Language, indeed, is the basic means of communication between human beings. And just as it is the basic form, it is also the most developed one. We cannot communicate in any real sense without language, other than through gestures, facial expressions, bodily movements, and some other non-linguistic means; we also do communicate through some other non-verbal forms like the visual arts, e.g.: painting and sculpture, through dance, architecture, engineering, fashion, design, and the like, yet the culmination of true, articulate, communication is undoubtedly being realized via language. Actually, language has an irreplaceable role in our life, since it is very crucial in building successful and peaceful relations in our society, and business is not an exception.

As far as the relation of logic and emotion is concerned, Cicero tended to place a greater emphasis upon the emotive language rather than the logical. He points out to the fact that very often the decisions of those who decide greatly depend on the level of emotionality of the speaker. He does not claim that it is a disadvantage and should thus be avoided. Just on the contrary, he even advises that:

“Men take a decision oftener through feeling than through fact or law. They are moved by evidences of character in the speaker and in his client. The only way to rebut feeling is by feeling.” (Cicero, 1895: 178)

Thus, the communication of information may be the most frequently viewed as thought-of use of language, where emotions play a vital and sometimes even a dominant role and place of which should not be underestimated. Though undeniably the basic means of conveying information is through statements or propositions, namely the building blocks of arguments, some of the “information” here might not be true because not all arguments and felicity conditions are always valid; however, for the purposes of studying logic, information being conveyed in a statement may be either false or true depending on the extralinguistic features, and, thus, the decoding process of emotional information can be really very challenging. Yet, in case credibility, trust, loyalty, unique style and individual identity are intermingled, every business is sure to flourish.

The present book studies the role of emotion in speech, their essence, as well as the expression and management of outward displays of emotions across cultures and situations, studying diverse emotion expression management techniques for the benefit of communicative conflict reduction and interpersonal peaceful relations, especially in the business environment.

This work outlines the importance of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) as an addition to your IQ (rational quotient) in the business cluster and other spheres of human activity. In fact, your emotional intelligence lies in your ability in efficiently handling your very own emotions, understanding your own and the emotions of the others, communicating your emotions effectually, empathizing with others, overcoming challenges, stress and communicative conflict; thus, helping you in building peaceful and harmonious, successful and effective relationships.

Having conducted a thorough interdisciplinary linguo-cognitive, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, sociolinguistic, phonetic, and pragmalinguistic analyses, we mainly take into consideration the supreme and subtle role of emotions in our lives, which are not here viewed as mere sensations, but rather special phenomena containing rational elements, which interplaying with one another altogether build our higher cognitive processes.

The next section gives you an idea about communication and emotion management techniques, which help you raise your EQ.

Section One

Communication and Emotions

1.1. The Ways of Business Communication

The rules, regulations and policies of a company have to be communicated to the people within and outside the organization. Business Communication is regulated by certain rules and norms. In early times, business communication was limited to paper-work, telephone calls, etc. Yet nowadays, with the advent of high technology, all the employers and employees have cell phones, organize video conferences, especially in terms of globalization and digitalization, make constant exchange business news via emails, etc.

Nowadays, Business Communication is generally realized via the below mentioned two types of communication, i.e.:

1. Oral Communication – an oral communication can be formal or informal. Generally business communication is a formal means of communication, like: meetings, interviews, calls, group discussion, debates, speeches, presentations, etc.

2. Written Communication – written means of business communication includes: agenda, reports, minutes, manuals, emails, letters, etc.

Today, within each and every company communication is not only made in real life, but also on the web. As a matter of fact, there is a common assumption that face-to-face communication is more persuasive, much clearer which makes a relationship much stronger as during face-to-face communication is much more calculable than during on-line communication, since while vis-à-vis conversing with your social partners one stands a better chance of having the desired emotive impact on the listeners via using non-verbal means of communication as well, that is body language which fits to the words used by the speaker supplying the counterpart with extra information about the latters emotional states and eventually having an emotive impact on the listener, whereas in the process of network communication there is a potential lack of showing one’s emotions on the vocal and non-verbal level, namely voice modulations, facial expressions, bodily gestures, etc. Of course, one can make use of diverse emoticons for email, instant messages, social blogs and mobile phones to express positive or negative emotions, but there is always the problem on the part of the receiver to decode whether a particular smiley was meant to be sincere and to show the exact emotion that the sender of the message was fostering at the moment of displaying it, or whether it was used just as a means of emotion management for the sake of preserving harmonious social interpersonal relations (Rostomyan, Ternès, 2011a,b). Indeed, it is a very difficult task for each and every one of us to grasp the real speaker meaning – whether while face-to-face or on-line communication, as we are always being influenced by our previous emotional experience, which is embodied in our mental world as emotional background knowledge (Rostomyan, 2012).

The linguistic expression of emotions has to do with pragmalinguistic approach to language phenomena. It is also noteworthy that emotions reflect the speaker’s state as well as his/her intention, emotions, feelings, or the communicative goal. As we know, for communication people have different emotion management techniques which help them to build successful social relationships. Emotions may be expressed in gross bodily movements and facial expressions; however, one’s emotional state is basically expressed in speech (Rostomyan, 2009).

It should be stated that communication is composed of three interrelated phases:

• Verbal Communication;

• Non-verbal communication;

• Visual Communication.

In terms of Business Communication, as compared with Social Communication, Visual Communication comes to the fore as here a number of important issues are being communicated via visual gadgets such as various ads, blanks, costumes, etc., especially in Marketing Communication, which may vary across cultures and situations. As a matter of fact, by means of Visual Communication the producers may slightly suggest which kind of emotions should be revealed in the minds of the decoders of the provided information.

It is a well-known strategy when wanting to have an emotional influence on the audience the producers and content makers adhere to different famous story-tellings with a happy ending, which, when reminded, evoke in the minds of the spectators positive emotions.

For instance, the very well-known French footwear designer Christian Louboutin, whose footwear has incorporated shiny, red-lacquered soles that have truly become his signature managed to attract the attention of and have a positive emotive impact on the ladies worldwide by his new collection, which embodies laced shoes that resemble to those of Cinderella. To attract much wider space of consumers and to raise the demand in the markets of his product, he referred to the story of Cinderella, her image and the following slogan: “Cinderella is proof that a new pair of shoes may change your life”.

Picture source: http://styleyourselfprincess.blogspot.com/2012/09/christian-louboutin-cinderella-shoes.html

As a matter of fact, bringing examples of fiction and films enhances the emotional effect on the audience and ensures better results, which bring opulence to the company. But one has to be careful not to create illusions and to present your brand in a novel and positive view for the customers not to get disappointed after purchasing the product. Hence, Louboutin, still to protect himself of misinterpretation, he also used the following design sketch of the shoes to defend himself from criticism of those, whose lives would not improve as a cause of the purchase. The red colour embodies pain and blood. This suggests that the inner beauty of the “princess” wearing the shoes has to match the beauty of the shoes to ensure wealth, well-being, fortune and luck. Also subtly suggesting that beauty sometimes needs sacrifice and that luxury may sometimes also be gained painfully.

Picture source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/170996117072455350/

Truly many fashion industry moguls try to depict the story of Cinderella in their marketing ads to ensure better sales.

In fact, designers nowadays very often apply the prototype of fairy tales in their marketing strategies as people believe in miracles and, thus, the producers may reach their desired positive effect on the consumers. Such an instance can also be viewed on the ads of the mogul fashion company “Hermès”, the chief designers of which have also adhered to the “brand” notion of Cinderella as can be shown in this present shoe advertisement. Moreover, it should be noted that as a slogan for this line of advertisement they have chosen the following French slogan: “La Vie comme un Conte/Life as a Fairy Tale”.

Picture source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/402438916671890281/

The following ads is also another example of the Hermes vogue line “La vie comme un Conte/Life as a Fairy Tale”, which well-illustrates a picture from the well-known Cinderella fairy tale, when the Prince tries to find the lady, who had lost her fairy shoe after the ball on the staircase. By means of testing all the ladies in town he tries to find the right one. So, the designers of Hermes, when advertising the present shoe, subtly on the emotional subconscious level suggest that by means of buying this shoe you will also find your prince charming.

Picture source: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/312226186650606675/

In this respect, the context of situation in which a communicative act takes place gains a very outstanding role. It was Malinowski who coined the term “context of situation” in 1923. He claimed that: “Exactly as in the reality of spoken or written languages, a word without linguistic context is a mere figment and stands for nothing by itself, so in the reality of a spoken living tongue, the utterance has no meaning except in the context of situation”. (Malinowski, 1923: 307).

Indeed, language is always being applied in a multifaceted environment, which includes a great variety of items in itself and bears a very complex background, which has to be taken into consideration in the process of information interpretation and cognitive analysis.

Actually, when we code and decode any piece of information, we are simultaneously performing a number of activities connected with 3 main aspects which are presented in the Figure 1 drawn below:

Figure 1: Contextual correlates of adaptability (Verschueren, 1999: 76)

This figure well-illustrates that in the process of communication it is not only the language channel that bears the responsibility of producing and evaluating the intended messages, but there are also some other important processes that partake in this process. As we see, the communicative context involves several ingredients which are: the mental world, the social world and the physical world. First of all, the information is being processed in the brain of the speaker. Secondly, he/she by means of language expresses those very thoughts explicitly or implicitly. But it is very important to note that there are a lot of other factors that have an impact on the individual while processing this or that information in the brain, which are respectively presented in the above designed figure. In fact, humans do not exist apart from each other, in other words we are not devoid of any social connection, and thus our social world is always participating in the process of communication. Here, culture is of paramount importance since a lot of factors connected with the social world are governed by means of a number of culturally bound rules and conventions.

If we go back to the interpretation of the marketing ads, we will see that all the aforementioned fields get fully activated in the complex process of information digestion.

As we know, in order to interpret what is being conveyed in an act of communication, we have to look at various factors, such as: social distance and closeness, especially in terms of Business Communication, and, thus, adhere to this or that “rule of politeness” not to sound rude, inconsiderate or impolite. For instance, to show the social distance between two people an English speaker who considers himself/herself as lower in status, uses forms of address that include a title and a last name, but never the first name, unless they are associates or friends (e.g., Mrs. Brown, Dr. Johnson, Pr. Bush, but not John or Steven). This greatly depends on cultural habits which are passed from generation to generation. Thus, we may conclude that each nation has its own “principles of politeness”. The above-mentioned examples illustrate the rules in English-speaking communities, whereas in Japanese there are much more forms of addressing which exactly reflect the distance between the interlocutors. Armenian, which, unlike English, has the “luxury” of singular and plural personal pronouns (դու – Դուք), reflects acts of politeness with the help of grammatical meaning of plurality. As Verschueren states: “[…] many linguistic choices depend on relationships of dependence and authority, or power and solidarity, not only between utterer and interpreter but also between utterer and/or interpreter and any third party which either figures in the topic of the discourse or is otherwise involved.” (Verschueren 1999: 91, Rostomyan, 2013b)

Moreover, for some languages, the concept of “social relationships” may be extended to the extent that it can be applied to indicate relationships not only between human beings, but also between people and animals, people and plants, and even people and things. Thus, those very animals, plants and things become an indispensable part of our daily activities. This phenomenon can truly explain the sailor’s choice of “she” as the pronoun, which is used to refer to a ship, or the choice of a driver to refer to the car by means of the same pronoun in the English language, a language which normally tends to make all lifeless things grammatically neuter. In fact, it should be kept in mind that all those community-specific communicative roles are strongly culturally-dependent and may vary across cultures. Thus, when being in a new cultural environment one should be able to learn at least the most basic communicative norms so that not to get in a ridiculous or confusing situation.

It is of utmost importance to note that we firmly believe human feelings and emotions to have an impact on our mental world and are very often being manifested in speech when we do not manage to suppress a particular emotion or when we want to have an emotive impact on the interlocutors, as mentioned in our earlier discussions, we display this or that emotion in an exaggerated manner. We will come back to the mental world a bit later and will give a much more detailed discussion on it.

Last but not least, our physical world is of utmost importance as well, since the relativity of temporal and spatial reference is primarily a function of positioning of language users in the world. As known, a lot of choice-making is dependent in these phenomena. In a number of cases the interlocutors’ position in the physical world is important in determining a lot of linguistic choices and their meanings. The time during which an act of communication takes place is also very important, e.g.: from a variety of ways to greet each other in morning we choose to say “Good morning!” in English, “Guten Tag!” in German, “Bonjour!” in French, “Доброе утро!” in Russian, «Բարիառավոտ» in Armenian instead of saying “Good evening!”, “Guten Abend!”, “Bonsoir”, “Добрый вечер!”, or «Բարիերեկո