Organizational Communication

                Organizational communication, according to Tubbs and Moss, is human communication that occurs within the context of organizations. Within these organizations, which can be a work setting, or an organized club or group, there are different culture and leadership styles. One of these different cultures is the Tough-Guy-Macho culture where there are a lot of high-risk situations involved such as a police man. The next type of culture is the Work-Hard-Play-Hard culture, which focuses on sales and meeting customers’ needs. Then there is also the Bet-Your-Company organizational culture where the people of the organization endure high-risks but receive slow feedback. And finally there is the process culture, where the people within this type of organization endure low-risk and receive slow feedback. The text also informs us that even though an organization relates itself with one type of culture that the culture of many organizations is changing as well as the type of employees in those organizations (Tubbs). Therefore, organizations come up with certain criteria for the people that they employ certain attributes that they consider valuable in order to make that organization more productive. According to our textbook (Tubbs), the top four attributes for potential employees are: (1) communication and interpersonal skills, (2) ability to work well in teams, (3) analytical and problem-solving skills, (4) leadership potential. These are some positive things about organizational communication.

                There are also many things that make organizational communication more difficult. Those are called barriers. The book talks about several barriers of organizational communication and those are gossip and rumors, chaos within an organization and the nuances within the organization. These are also types of informal communication. Another barrier of communication could be cliques and groups within the organization. Even though the informal communication comes off as a barrier to the overall function of the organization, they are also the most used and quickest way that information gets around to people.

                In my opinion I think that a family – especially one that is as big as mine, could be considered an organization. In my family I have four sisters and two brothers plus my parents and a dog. To keep things under control, my mom usually, no, not usually, ALWAYS assumes the role of manager/supervisor. She makes sure that we don’t fight and attempts to diffuse volatile situations. I think that to make a larger family work, all four of the highly valued attributes need to be had by all.

                Being the head-honcho of the family gives my mom a great power. Our book talks about five different types of power within an organization. Two of these types of power are personal and three of the powers are supervisory powers (these would be the type of power that my mom had over our family). The first of the powers is legitimate power where the authority of a person is defined by the virtue of his or her position. My mom had legitimate power because of her age and status as the leader in the family. The next power is the reward power, which is the ability to use rewards to influence other people. I like that power but my mom enjoyed the coercive power the best. Coercive power is the ability to influence individuals by withholding rewards. For example, if we had chores to do, or homework to do, she wouldn’t let us hang out with our friends until our homework was done, or she wouldn’t let us eat dessert after dinner until we had all taken a shower and gotten ready for bed.

                One of the most important things a supervisor or manager can do is develop a form of trust with his or her employees. According to the textbook (Tubbs), trust is the level of comfort with the other person; the individuals confidence in another person’s intentions and motives, and the security of that person’s word. Another important thing that our book talks about concerning trust is that it must first be initiated by the supervisor or manage.

                There are two components of trust, cognitive (rational) and affective trust (emotional), (Tubbs). Equally important are the five qualities that the book gives that help the supervisors establish trusting relationships. One is the behavioral consistency or reliability of the supervisor. This is important if a person is able to count on his or her supervisor. Michael Scott is a great example at failing to communicate some sort of trust with his employees. Steve Carell’s character also jokes about many things and does not always even tell his employees the truth, such as when corporate informs them (downward communication) that there may be some cut-backs and downsizing. Through some sort of gossip, the employees find out about it and he denies any form of downsizing, therefore making it difficult to trust him. The second quality is behavioral integrity or walking the talk. An example of this would be keeping a promise – another thing that Michael fails at. The third quality is the sharing and delegation of control which conveys to the employee a level of respect and trust in his or her ability. Actually, this is one thing that Michael doesn’t fail at because he gives Dwight Schrute the position of “assistant to the regional manager” which allows Michael to give Dwight some control when Michael asks Dwight to choose a health care plan. The fourth quality is communication itself and that is the ability to communicate accurate information, explain decisions, and openness. And finally, the fifth quality is the demonstration of concern because employees prefer supervisors who show consideration and sensitivity to their needs and interests (Tubbs).

Tubbs, S. L., & Moss, S. (2006). Human communication: Principles and contexts (11^th Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill

Nonverbal Communication

In our book this week (Tubbs), we read about nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication is constant. We are constantly see other people’s actions and therefore must constantly be responding. These nonlinguistic messages do three things. They replace, reinforce, and contradict verbal messages (Tubbs). One interesting fact that the book tells us is that 65% of our messages are conveyed through nonverbal cues. Cues are hints. Therefore, what we say is qualified and modified by how we say it – our tone of voice, facial expressions, and eye contact – nonverbal cues. I found this part particularly interesting because these cues can cause what we call kinetic slips – contradictory verbal and nonverbal messages. So, our eyes or tone of voice my contradict something that we have just said.
Speaking of facial expressions, did you know that facial expressions are the single most important nonverbal communication? We use information about the face in five different ways. It is used to identify a person’s social category, to identify personality traits, to identify a person’s direction of attention, and to understand the sincerity of verbal behavior as well as to understand a person’s thoughts and mind. The second most important form of nonverbal communication is eye contact. Oculesics is the study of the role of the eye behaviors such as eye contact, eye movements, and pupil dilation in communication. Tubbs explains an interesting fact that 30-60% of our time is eye contact with others. There are four functions of eye contact. They are: regulating the flow of communication, monitoring feedback, expressing emotions, and communicating the nature of the interpersonal relationship. But I think the main thing with the nonverbal communication is that whether we realize it or not, we are ALWAYS seeing, and ALWAYS responding.

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Hand gestures rank second in importance to facial cues according to our text. I thought that this was extremely interesting because the majority of the time, most of us don’t even realize what we are doing with our hands while we talk.
When I think of hand gestures, I first think of my mom. Whenever she is talking, she is always moving her hands this way and that. Sometimes she doesn’t even realize what she’s doing and I know this because she accidentally hit someone while making large gestures with her arms while she was talking. It was hilarious.
The second thing that comes to mind when I think about nonverbal communication and hand gestures is sign language. I mean, think about it. How would people that are deaf or unable to speak, be able to effectively communicate without these hand gestures, or signs. My sister, Mollie, who is an ASL (American Sign Language) major at Augustana College in my home town of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. So, when she talks – even to me, she signs. Because of that, I have come to understand sign language quite well. I don’t know how to make the signs but I can sure understand what they mean. So, that just goes to show what an impact hand gestures have on the lives of many people.
Another interesting thing that the book (Tubbs) talked about was the effect of vocal cues in the messages we send. Paralinguistics refers to something beyond or in addition to language itself. Tubbs explains that there are two components to paralinguistics. One is our voice quality, which includes the tone of our voice, the pitch of our voice, and the range of our voice. The second is vocalizations which are noises without linguistic structure such as groaning or crying. This was always something that bothered my mother when I was younger. She would always get mad at us for using the wrong tone of voice when my siblings and I would talk to her. The slightest change in our tone during a conversation would just completely throw her – especially when we would say something sarcastic. But, according to Tubbs and moss, the misunderstanding of sarcasm is a common problem in interpreting vocal cues.

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Ha ha! It’s causal day in The Office! So, guess what? You can wear whatever you would wear on a normal day if you weren’t going to work. – Just make sure you aren’t distracting anyone! Sounds like fun right? Well, yeah, it was…until some people realized some new things about the people they work with every day by what they wore to casual day in the office. Our text tells us that what we wear often communicates our compliance with traditional values, that how formally we dress can be another sensitive indication as well as the color of clothing that we wear.

Angela, becomes frustrated when one of her colleagues comes to work not wearing closed-toed shoes. All of the office members become angry at the style of clothing that Meredith wears to work on Casual day because they consider it to be too revealing. Just as well, the clothing that you wear can be used to communicate your self-esteem and how much confidence you have. Kelly is a clear example of this. She comes to work in this very modern and “hip” looking outfit and reveals to the camera man that she thinks she looks like Jennifer Lopez. You can also tell by her vocal cues and work performance that she has more confidence.

Tubbs, S. L., & Moss, S. (2006). Human communication: Principles and contexts (11th Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill