Communication can have different manifestations – from directions as for the duties to relational communication between employees or employees and leaders, as well as defensive communication, and employers and managers have to do their best not only to communicate well with employees but to offer them proper training to be ready for stressful situations to be able to cope with them and avoid misunderstanding and conflicts. Cultural differences affect communication style and interaction patterns between co-workers.
The vocal tone makes people more likely to listen to us. Usually, Asian people use a conversational voice which is more attractive for listeners and allows me to establish a contact with a listener at once. In contrast to women, many men prefer to keep silent while another person is speaking, and use gestures or eye contact to express their approval or disapproval of his/her words. People are seen as more attractive by listeners if the sender speaks at a more rapid rate. Thus, non-verbal communication depends on context, situations and conversation topics. Space, colors, decorative style, and furniture reflect personality of the owner and his unique vision of the world. In this case work causes a lot of stress for there is a necessity to get on the right side of every person an employee works with. The same may be said about school counselors whose burnout at work may result in poor services, psychological exhaustion and even depression. Mangers have to manage a lot during their workdays, their duties are multiple and they cannot make mistakes – they decide to be right. Multi-skilled teamwork involves teams made up of individuals with multiple and overlapping skills that are deployed around the performance of a whole task, which represents a significant part of a larger workflow. Members are multi-skilled so that work can be flexibly allocated among them. In organizing workaround processes, organizational boundaries must often be renegotiated. Increasingly, work teams include external customers and suppliers (Miller, 2004).
In their research the authors (Littlejohn and Foss 2007) contemplated three factors, to which communication differences are important. Among them were demographic variables (setting, gender, division level), intrapersonal variables (relationship between the personality of a manager and his or her job satisfaction, as well as ego development to name a few), and organizational variables (role conflict and role ambiguity). While we are interested in organizational factors, they can be viewed in more detail. Consequently, this is the sign of poor communication of counselors’ duties of the office. And it is known that when duties are not well-defined, this problem is entitled to unclear demands, and may cause serious stress for an employee who is unable to perform well because of a lack of knowledge as for what is required. But the most significant influence was a result of emotional work – when counselors deal with problems on the basis and with the help of their feelings – in such cases the level of stress is higher, and burnout is almost inevitable.
In the workplace, Americans pay a special attention to dress and furnishing. Clothing is highly symbolic, which is why many organizations are so concerned with it. Modesty is an expectation in my organization and the unwritten dress codes set the standards. Women follow the dress code and avoid bright colors and high heels. In the workplace, the chairs are arranged so the desks become a barrier between the employees. Open spaces do leave people vulnerable to numerous distractions because of competing stimuli. In my workplace I pay special attention to disposal of files and other instrumentations on my desk. In contrast to some employees, Women do not talk loud but try to speak clearly and accurately to avoid ambiguity and mispronunciation of words (Miller, 2004).
An additional distinction is worth making here, between what women may say about themselves, and what women’s use of language may reveal about themselves. An example of the first is the speaker who tells an audience that she has thoroughly examined the issues and has weighed matters carefully. In the case of patients, families and caregivers, editing for conciseness is thus sensibly done before turning to word choice because it will help to avoid changing words that would only be deleted later. Once this is completed, the writer can turn full attention to selecting the best words to convey a particular message to a particular reader. Although word choice is not as dangerous as the cartoon would suggest, it is still not easy. Particularly in business, where increasing diversity and multiple readers simply increase the chances that one will be misunderstood, word choice is a matter that must be managed with great care. However, these changes can be reduced if writers become familiar with four kinds of problems that are prevalent in the writing of working professionals: jargon, cliché, abstraction, and euphemism (Miller, 2004).
In sum, differences in communication are evident in the verbal and non-verbal processes. Despite organizational strategies that call for a flexible, diverse, and situational workforce, many benefit, compensation, and status systems remain grounded in tenure and conformity, with an internal focus. Effective communication is a core of teamwork and performance management bonding together all the elements of organizational success into a single, aligned process that channels employee performance toward the same organizational goals and reinforces and maintains that alignment through reward and recognition programs. If the power of this tool can be harnessed and used to the fullest, then organizations can better their chances of success in a highly competitive business world.
References
Littlejohn, S.W., Foss, K. A. (2007). Theories of Human Communication. Wadsworth Publishing; 9 edition.
Miller, K. (2004). Communication Theories: Perspectives, Processes, and Contexts. McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; 2 edition.