Interpersonal Communications Summary

In an organization, it is important that the leader/ boss communicates to the employees what and how needs to be done (having it be a project, figures, results, or forecasts, etc.) in order to get the right results. Therefor, professor Zank showed us the Capital Sins of Communication. These are 7 common mistakes that leaders make when communicating to manage performance in their organization. The first communication sin is lack of specificity. This is when details are left out or if the details are very vague. This causes the people on the receiving end of a communication to have to guess what is being requested of them. Usually, the receiver of the message will not ask for the details, so both sides will become incredibly frustrated and annoyed; playing a trial and error games when completing projects. The second communication sin is lack of focus on desirable behavior. Due to our upbringing and always having people say to us constantly not to do certain things; when explain what we want others to do we often only tell them what we don't want them to do. This is a communication sin, however, because we should not focus on what we don't want others to do. Instead, we should focus on what we do want others to do. The communication style should be focused on positive and desired behavior instead of negative unwanted behavior. The 3rd sin is Lack of Directness. This describes events when people in organizations go behind the back of their coworkers, peers, bosses and subordinates; gossiping about them instead of being honest and correct. Another example is when a boss makes a team meeting about a problem that should only be directed at one person, or when employees tell a boss something that another employee has done wrong in order to look better than him or her. The communication sin is Lack of Immediacy. This describes the situation when communication is avoided or set back because the conversations are difficult and leaders do not know how to react and approach to...