Caldwell - Spring 2023 - Business Communications - Chapter 11 Video Lecture - Selected Topics - Part 2

Audio Transcript Auto-generated

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  So we were talking about issues relating to mastering your voice,

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  how to use your voice to communicate better and

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  to increase your professionalism increase and build your credibility,

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  both as a business professional and as a business communicator.

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  So we talked about working on pronunciation,

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  we talked about working on vocal quality,

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  trying to maintain high vocal quality through the length of a sentence and not

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  allowing your voice to sort of disintegrate at the end of a sentence,

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  we talked about controlling the pitch,

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  the rising and falling of your voice so that you build some degree of

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  interest in your presentation so that you're not presenting in a dull monotone

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  that begins to get very boring for your audience and then

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  they don't follow what it is that you're trying to say.

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  We also talked about adjusting your volume and adjusting the rate of vocal speed.

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  Remember with vocal speed, if you talk too quickly,

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  people will miss what you're saying because you're just you're

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  just presenting too much information to them too quickly.

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  People here at about 125 words a minute, and if you're talking too quickly,

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  you're not going to be able to get the entirety of your point across.

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  If you talk too slowly, you're going to lose your audience through boredom,

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  your audience

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  will stop paying attention, their their attention span will end their wander,

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  their thoughts will wander and you won't get the entirety of

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  your message across because your audience has somehow tuned you out.

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  Now you can build some interest,

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  some appeal into your vocal presentation when you vary

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  your volume and vary the rate of vocal speed.

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  You can speed up through certain points not to the point, not to,

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  to the extent that your audience misses what you're trying to say, but to the

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  point that you're trying to make some contrast at this point,

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  maybe isn't as important.

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  You're able to talk a little bit more quickly and then you talk really

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  with a little bit of degree of of slowness of attention to detail,

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  where you want to get an important point across

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  same thing with volume,

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  you can

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  lower your volume if you really want to capture your audience's attention,

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  make them listen to you.

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  Or if you really want to get a point across, if you want to uh you know,

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  really grab their attention, maybe you talk a little bit loudly,

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  You want to use variations in volume and rate of vocal speed

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  and you want to make sure that you have mastered

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  emphasis in your pronunciation, emphasis in the way that you speak.

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  You want to make sure that your

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  receivers understand what you believe to be important

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  and you want to make sure that you have eliminated

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  as much as possible verbal tics like ums and likes and

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  any type of verbal repeated verbal behavior that might break

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  down your audience's attention and that might antagonize your audience.

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  Remember there is a correlation between voice and authority and if you

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  can make workplace conversation a positive element of your professional persona,

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  then you have advanced your personal position and you have advanced

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  your credibility and you have advanced your image for professionalism,

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  You want to listen, you want to remember,

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  we're back to that important point of listening when

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  you are engaged in face to face communication,

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  which is what we are really focused on in this particular part of Chapter 11.

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  When you're engaged in face to face communication,

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  listening is important, listening is essential. You want to be sincere.

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  You want to have sincerity in your attitude

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  and sincerity in the way that you communicate

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  sincerity in the words that you use in the way that you use those words.

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  You want to avoid negativity speakers.

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  I'm sorry receivers are going to be turned off by excessive negativity.

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  Now that doesn't mean that you can't deliver a negative message.

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  Sometimes you have to and sometimes you have to draw a contrast,

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  but you can draw that contrast without

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  being excessively negative without being personally negative.

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  You want to avoid negativity because

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  negativity antagonizes and alienate your audience

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  and you want to be professional in social situations,

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  You want to be able to effectively

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  communicate and effectively evidence your professionalism,

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  your credibility by how you behave in social situations.

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  Social situations are an important part of business communication, how you behave

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  at a meal that you might share with a client or a meal

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  that you might share with your managers or with your other supervisors,

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  you need to be able to be

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  as professional as possible, be as controlled in your behavior as possible.

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  This is another time when you want to be able to act with a certain degree of

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  etiquette and you want to behave with a certain degree of manners and

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  if you are unsure of what might be the appropriate business etiquette,

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  in a situation there are plenty of resources both in books and online that would

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  help you determine what is the appropriate way

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  to behave in a certain social situation,

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  mastering business etiquette,

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  mastering being professional even in social situations,

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  even when you might otherwise not be thinking that you're going to be judged.

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  One of the reasons why many businesses include a meal as part of a,

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  as part of a hiring interview is because the

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  employers want to see how you handle yourself in a social situation.

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  Well, that's the same thing.

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  It's the same concept here in, in these types of face to face communications,

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  how you behave

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  in a social situation with a prospective client or with a current client,

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  with a current customer.

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  All of that is going to have an important impact on your professionalism,

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  how you are viewed as a professional and how effective you will be as a communicator,

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  how credible you will be as a communicator.

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  Now, as we've talked about these techniques to improve your voice,

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  these are really just trying to help you develop good

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  work habits and that's the third part of this,

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  it's the third element in this part of our discussion.

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  We want to talk about how you can develop good work habits

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  and one of the first things that you need to do

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  is to learn how to deliver and accept criticism graciously,

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  how to build connectivity through this process of

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  delivering and accepting criticism.

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  We need to be able to learn from criticism,

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  we need to be able to take in criticism that that we might receive and

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  figure out if we agree with it, if we disagree with it,

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  if we disagree with it then we should disagree respectfully and graciously

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  so that we do not antagonize the person who delivered the criticism.

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  We should learn how to take that criticism and then build upon it, learn from it, what

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  can we find in that criticism that speaks truth to us and

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  then we can learn to make ourselves better because of that criticism.

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  It's happened to me,

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  I'm sure that any of you who's had a review by a supervisor on a job

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  that you might have had anybody who's received

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  criticism from a supervisor from a manager.

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  If you listen with careful attention to the criticism and if you

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  are able to distill that criticism down to its essential core,

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  you probably will learn something from that criticism

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  and you'll be able to be better,

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  more effective and uh

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  you'll be able to behave in a manner that avoids future criticism.

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  Use this criticism,

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  this opportunity of delivering and accepting criticism to build connectivity.

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  When you are delivering criticism, you must be gracious, you must be

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  aware of the feelings of the person to whom you

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  are delivering the criticism and you should try to use that

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  opportunity to build a connection so that the person can learn

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  from the criticism and can be better from the criticism.

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  An important part of developing good work habits

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  is learning how to use the telephone,

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  telephone and and voice mail are essential parts of business communication and we

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  need to learn how to develop appropriate

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  telephone skills and appropriate voicemail skills.

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  When you are making a telephone call,

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  you need to make that call in a professional manner.

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  So you need to have a plan.

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  First of all, you need to have a plan,

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  you need to know what it is that you want to accomplish in that call,

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  particularly if this is a fairly important business call that you're about to have,

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  you need to prepare an agenda,

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  you need to make sure that you have in an introduction that introduces yourself,

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  especially if you are making this as something of a cold call.

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  If you're not calling someone um with whom you deal regularly,

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  you need to be able to have an appropriate way to end the call.

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  Always you want to be professional and courteous in the telephone call.

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  When you are receiving calls,

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  you also have to remember that these are business

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  calls and you have to receive these calls professionally.

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  One of the most important things for you to remember

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  when you are receiving business calls is to preserve confidentiality.

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  Don't

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  share confidential information that you receive in a telephone call. If you are

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  trying to need to contact the person again,

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  make sure that you have written down all relevant contact information,

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  make sure that you take notes during the call.

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  Especially if there is going to be some necessary follow up.

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  You need to know what it is and be confident and capable in

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  doing whatever it is that you need to be able to do.

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  When you pick up a business phone call, always identify yourself.

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  I

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  don't like when I call someone on a business call and they just pick up and say hello.

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  I don't know if I've reached the right person.

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  I mean if it's if it's a client that I talked to

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  three or four times a day and I know their voice and I know their number,

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  that's one thing.

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  But if if

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  someone is calling you and they might not know who you are,

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  they might not be completely familiar with who you are.

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  Make sure you identify yourself because they don't

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  know that they've called the right number.

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  They don't know if there's any if for some reason they've reached the

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  wrong person always just pick up your phone and politely give your name.

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  You may not want to do that with your friends, but in business communication,

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  in business telephone calls.

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  That's really important.

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  And if you have to know how to use,

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  if you need to know how to transfer calls or or send calls to voicemail,

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  you need to learn the technology of your phone system.

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  Always make sure that when you are working in an office with

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  a telephone system that you know how to use the technology,

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  we have a new phone system in my office and I'm still learning the technology.

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  I'm still learning how to transfer calls,

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  but I need to know that even though I'm a senior partner,

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  I may need to transfer a call to one of my other partners or one of my associates.

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  So it's important always to know how to use the telephone technology that you have.

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  That's an important part of developing proper telephone skills.