Bus 600 Assignment 3

Introduction

Through this course I have learned how important is to have effective communication skills to succeed in the workplace. Using “The Communication Quiz” on Mindtools- Management Training, Leadership Training and Career Training, I have learned my personal communication skills are not up to par. The communication process Mindtools describes is as follows “The person who is the source of the communication encodes it into a message, and transmits it through a channel. The receiver decodes the message, and, in one way or another, feeds back understanding or a lack of understanding to the source (How Good are Your Communication Skills?, 2012).”

The quiz lists a series of statements and asks you to choose the word that best describes you for each statement. An example statement would be as follows, “When I write a memo, email, or other document, I give all of the background information and detail I can to make sure that my message is understood,” and I would choose between not at all, rarely, sometimes, often, and very often. Overall I scored a 55 out of 75 making me a capable communicator but not an excellent communicator meaning I have problem areas. The article breaks down each step in the communication process and shows me exactly where I need to improve.

The Four Steps to Being an Effective Communicator

The first step of the process is called “The Source-Planning Your message.” In this step one should know what exactly they want to say in their message and why they need to say it. Before you start communicating you should take a minute to figure out what exactly you need to say. Many times people just start talking and writing without even thinking about what they need to get across and their message is not received clearly (How Good are Your Communication Skills?, 2012). In his article “Creating clear message is critical to successful communication,” Cornell Wright says “We need to be clear because our customers, vendors and employees need to...