Professional and Strategic Communications - Essay Example

?Professional and Strategic Communication Introduction Professional communication is the communication at the workplace that encompasses oral, written and visual and is aimed at promoting services and products in organizations. Professional communication can be either verbal or non-verbal in nature whereby verbal is defined as the interaction between people involving the listener and the speaker while the non-verbal communication consists of the message other than the words used in the communication. Successful communication skills are important to every organization as all the businesses must utilize some aspects such as reading, writing, speaking or listening amongst other forms of communication. Strategic communication simply refers to the infusion of efforts aimed at communicating with the strategy and a master plan that involves the promotion of the brand of an organization through the imploring of persons concerned in the performance of specific actions or tasks. It therefore fuses the pushing and the delivering through the communication of the best message through the right channels as measured against a well-considered communication-specific and organizational goals. Strategic communication always involves different professional disciplines that may include management, technical communication, advertising and media relations amongst other relevant disciplines. Successful strategic communication must endeavour to communicate in order to influence a target audience or group of individuals and must be rational and authentic. Therefore, strategic communication concerns itself with planning for the future, implementation of specific tactics and taking into consideration the dynamism of the environment. This paper explores both professional and strategic communication through the exploration of the important role that behaviour change plays in successful communication and the challenges in the management of communication. For effective professional and tactful communication, it is important that the person or the organization observes certain factors. The person communicating must be able to determine his objective before embarking on the communication in that you should understand the message before expressing it to others as establishing the goal will make the communication is concise and appropriate. It is important to consider your relationship to the audience or the persons to whom the communication is intended to by keeping and adhering to your professional status in mind as you communicate to the audience in anticipation of their reaction to the message being conveyed. The person communicating must use the appropriate terminology to demonstrate his professionalism and competence in passing the message across. Professional communication dictate that the person stays in control of his body language as the audience normally evaluates the message and its intention based on the posturing and the choice or words as even the most tactful message can repel an audience. Azjen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) as espoused by Icek Ajzen is important as it helps us in the understanding the transformation in behaviour of a person as it predicts deliberate behaviour or that behaviour that has been planned. It was developed after the discovery of the fact that behaviour is not always fully voluntary and under control which was later taken as perceived behavioural control. Therefore, the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) states that the actions by human beings are guided by three considerations which include the behavioural beliefs which are those that are due to the consequences of behaviour and normative beliefs that are those beliefs about the normative expectations of others. Another consideration is the control beliefs that are the belief about the presence of factors that may expedite or impede the performance of behaviour. These considerations argued by Ajzen are important in the changing of the behaviour of human beings. It is important to note that in their respective combinations, the behavioural beliefs can have a favourable or unfavourable impact towards the behaviour of a person, while his normative beliefs can result into a perception social pressure and the control beliefs rise into perceived behavioural control in the individual. This lends credence to the fact that a more favourable attitude and subjective norm added to greater perceived control will result into a stronger desire by a person to transform into the behaviour in question (Ajzen 2002, pp.665-683). From the foregoing argument, one can decipher that according to the TRB, the behaviour by a person is greatly determined by his intention to perform the behaviour in question and that the intention comes from his attitude towards the behaviour and the subjective norm. Therefore the best predictor of behaviour is the intention which is the cognitive representation of the readiness of the person to perform a given behaviour and there must be some form of change from a previous behaviour to a new one as dictated by the predictors previously discussed (Ajzen 1985, p.11). Although Ajzen suggests that the link between behaviour and behavioural control as outlined in the TRB should be between behaviour and actual behavioural control rather than the perceived behavioural control, perceived control is normally used as opposed to the use of actual control. Challenges that might arise within management communications Management communication usually involves the managerial and administrative personnel within the organization and it is therefore important that information is supplied to aid in the day to day operations of the organization. Effective communication usually occurs when the intended meaning or message is accurately and successfully passed to the person to whom it is intended. However, obstacles may come about at many points from the point of inception of what is to be communicated and the point it is received by the person to whom the communication is intended. These challenges may arise at several levels, from the individual or the professional organization and along the communication channel. Managers continually grapple with challenges in the management of communication due to problems that can be attributed to different mind-sets and the communication styles of those concerned, and this may be aggravated by new technology and workers’ behaviour. This calls for the needs by those concerned in managing technology to effectively address and take advantage of the diversity in values and expectations of those whom the communication is intended. The challenge may be due to the individual impediment in that people differ in both mental and emotional capacities that play a big role in how messages are filtered. When dealing with individuals, preconceived notions of a person can affect the outcome of the given communication, for example a person who fears or is vulnerable may suppress a particular message. Interpersonal complications brought about by the differences between two people may compound the success of professional communication as there is a difference in a sense of control by the persons concerned. Further, organizational hurdles is a major challenge in the management of communication in that internal policies and regulations set by the government will dictate the kind of communication that can be passed by the organization in its professional and strategic undertakings. Physical barriers such as the structure of the company can be a challenge to effective communication as effective communication can only be achieved through ease of access of information and its transmission to those it is intended for. Filtering is a key challenge to the effective management of communication according to the Azjen theory of planned behaviour in that the distortion or the withholding of information to manage the reaction of a person may be a serious obstacle (Downs, Adrian and Downs 2004, p.5). It hinders those to whom the communication is intended from getting a complete picture of the communication. In order to attain effective communication, it is important to deliver the message in multiple ways and from different sources as well as rewarding those persons that clearly convey the communication. A closely related phenomenon to the challenge of filtering in effective management of communication is selective perception that is an unconscious process of filtering only what we want to hear to suit our needs. Information overload which occurs when the information processing demands on the individual to perform interactions and internal calculations as compared to the available time is another major challenge to effective communication (Schick and Gordon 1990, pp.199-220). Emotional disconnect may be a barrier to effective professional communication and may be shown through upset over a certain incident or subject, which requires that the person applying the theory of planned behaviour to address for the success of professional communication. Also, the lack or absence of source of familiarity or credibility may derail communication or its misrepresentation and the management of communication must try to avoid work place gossip or grapevine that hinders effective communication (Kurland and Pelled 2000, p.238). The use of semantics in communication may be a big challenge for effective communication in that words may have different meanings depending on the context they have been used. It is important to know the receiver of the message and whether they can easily know what the communication is all about. In professional and strategic communication and the change in behaviour as argued by Azjen, communication is treated as an explicit factor that affects other variables in the communication to be made. This must consider the fact that the communication to be made is designed to affect intention and behaviour indirectly through its impact on the ideation, skills and the constraints brought about by the environment. In addressing the challenges that may arise in the management of communication with reference to the theory of planned behaviour, it is important to understand the idea of promotion as it is the factor that leads to ideational change or the change in which individuals perceive behaviours and practices. Promotion as a factor is designed to possess cognitive, emotional and social effects that have the effect of influencing how a person takes an idea and whether he will follow through in performance of the function. This leads to the desired result of the communication which is the actual behaviour of the persons to whom the professional organization was intended. Professional and strategic communication in the context of TRB is often designed to affect the ideational variables that are relevant to the behaviour of interest thus calling for the obtaining of additional data on the actual behaviour. The persons concerned with the professional communication can utilize the relationship between the ideational variables to track changes in terms of the impact of the communication over time and refine or reinforce the messages that have been communicated. This has been proven by research which suggests that ideational variables are core determinants and that communication can influence their use both directly or indirectly (Kincaid 2000, p.723). Moreover, a bigger challenge poses in the form of environmental constraints to the change in behaviour which may be politically based, limitations in resources, constraints brought about by legal challenges amongst other factors. When faced with these challenges, the person tasked with professional and strategic units must adopt advocacy to confront the constraints and the barriers to the communication. Conclusion From the foregoing argument and analysis, it is possible to conclude that the theory of planned behaviour (TRB) is important as it helps in the prediction of intentions and the behaviour of persons. It helps in the explanation of the variances in the measurement of the actual behaviour of a person which suggests that measures of intention, self-prediction and the desires of individuals affect the professionalism of communication. In order to surmount the challenges that may be encountered in the management of communication, the persons involved in the communication must have in consideration the dictates of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) also known as the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). There can only be effective professional and strategic communication if those concerned appreciate the role of intention as a predictor of behaviours, the attitudes of the persons being communicated to and the subjective norms. The intention that determines the mode of professional communication must be determined by the attitude, specific behaviours and perceived behavioural control so that the person can perform the desired behaviours as communicated to him. In summary, for any form of professional or strategic communication to be successful, the person making the communication must have full consideration of the combined effects of the theory of planned behaviours as a chief determinant of the success of the communication. References Ajzen, I. 1985. From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior. In J. Kuhl & J. Beckman (Eds.), Action-control: From cognition to behavior (pp. 11-39). Heidelberg: Springer. Ajzen, I. 2002. Perceived Behavioral Control, Self-Efficacy, Locus of Control, and the Theory of Planned Behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32, 665-683. Downs, C. W., Adrian, A. D., & Downs, C. W. 2004. Assessing organizational communication: strategic communication audits. New York, Guilford Press. Kincaid, D. L. 2000. "Mass Media, Ideation, and Behavior: A Longitudinal Analysis of Contraceptive Change in the Philippines." Communication Research 27, 6: 723-763. Kurland, N. B., & Pelled, L. H. 2000. Passing the word: Toward a model of gossip and power in the workplace. Academy of Management Review, 25, 428–438. Schick, A. G., Gordon, L. A., & Haka, S. 1990. Information overload: A temporal approach. Accounting, Organizations, and Society, 15, 199–220. Read More