Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mary Munter
Managerial communication is different from other kinds of communication because a brilliant message alone is not sufficient: you are successful only if your message results in your desired response from your audience.
Communicators strategies
Communication objectives: Define the general objective and the expected action to follow: the audience will learn something, sign, give me info, engage in defining a strategy, approve a plan Style: (content control vs. audience involvement)
Tell/Sell Consult/join
Offering balanced evaluations; acknowledging conflicts of interest Sharing your expert understanding Explaining how you gained your expertise Emphasizing attributes audience finds attractive Associating yourself with or citing authoritative sources
Image
Attractiveness, audience desire to be like you Common values, ideas, problems, or needs
Building your image by identifying yourself with your audiences benefits; using nonverbals and language your audience considers dynamic
Common Ground
Establishing your shared values or ideas Acknowledging similarities with audience Tying the message to your common ground
Audience strategy
Who are they? What do they know? What do they feel? How can you persuade them?
Using audience benefits Using credibility (check table previous page) Using message structure
Message strategy
THOUGHT PROCESS (drafting) ends with conclusion
Bad ideas
Organized ideas
Facts
Organized ideas
TIME
Message strategy
How can you emphasize?
Do not bury things in the middle Direct approach: front loading or bottomlining. Using the indirect approach: back loading or mystery story approach (by enlarge not appropriate in business writing and thus not appropriate in your assignments)
Macrowriting
Design document for high skim value Goal: To increase readability, show organization Signposts to show connection To show logical progression Effective paragraphs or sections To organize paragraphs or sections
Macrowriting
Introduction: What exists, why write, how organized. Closing: closure
Ineffective:
Introducing new topic or information Apologizing Ending abruptly.
Paragraphs:
(1) heading and when no heading topic sentence (2) Signposts to clearly connect ideas within each paragraph or section.
Microwriting
Editing for brevity Choosing a style
Goal:
Businesslike or bureaucratic? Active or passive? Jargon or no jargon? Jargon only as short hand not to show that you know the word
Microwriting
Avoid wordiness: See table Munters book p. 73 Overlong sentences Clues:
(1) Too many main ideas in a sentence, usually signaled by using the word and more than once. (2) Hard to find main idea, usually signaled by using too many piled-up phrases, parenthetical ideas, and qualifiers.
Audience: Chair of the Board of Directors (me). Introduction: A couple of lines which state your progression in the practice rounds and outlines the arguments you are going to use in the rest of the document. Body of the document: 2 or 3 headings (titles for sections you do not need to write the sections). These headings are stand alone sentences that in a nutshell summarize the message the section would discuss if written (see Munters book). They must summarize the content of the section that you might have written if you had the time. Remember the document should follow a logical structure so use headings that present parallel structures (headings that look alike in terms of writing) Closing: A couple of sentences that summarize the reasons for your progression during the CAPSIM practice rounds. The whole memo should use white space and indentation to make it pleasing to the eye and easy to read. The purpose of this exercise is to review and practice how to write the assignments due on Friday (meaning easy to skim assignments). It can also serve as outline for your group presentation to the board of directors.