Reflective Essay Assignment Sample

Reflective Essay

Introduction

Communication is very important for the business organisation in order to achieve the goals and targets. It is important for the business to involve each and every employee in the achievement of the aims. Through effective communication process, the goals can be conveyed to the employees and they can understand them. In this report, some basic concepts and aspects of business communication in organisations are explained and my understanding from the ten weeks course has been reflected. Furthermore, the first section covers concepts from each week. The second section talks about the literature review of the topic of week 8 i.e., organisational communication. In the next section, I am going to talk about the application of the concepts from week 9 and week 7 in my future aspirations and how they will help me.

Section 1

Week 1

This week lecture gave the introduction of communication and its importance in business. It helped me in gaining insight into the use of communication and the barriers to effective communication. I still remember the lecture explained the concepts of the intentional and unintentional communication process. In addition to this, the knowledge that I gained about the Shannon and Weaver model of communication could be helpful for me to understand how information flows within an organisation and where the noise or interruptions can be added. This could help me in discarding those sources of noise.

Week 2

The concept that I found interesting was the ‘Kinesics.’ Even though I am familiar with the word ‘non-verbal communication’, I did not know it is also called kinesics. The knowledge of positive and negative kinesics helped me understanding the leader-follower relationship. This can be very useful for business professionals. In addition to this, the paralanguage was something new to me. I realised thatvoice intensity, sighs, gasps, etc., are also some modes of communication (Callahan, 2014).In addition to this, a brief of ways of internal communication can turn out to be very useful for me after I join any organisation.

Week 3

This week talked about those aspects that are crucial for a student to get a good job. This is important for me to direct my way and grab a good opportunity in life. I learned about writing CVs, business letters, and other formal documents like a cover letter. In addition to this, I really appreciate this week lecture as it discussed the golden rules for the selection criteria. Rule number 8 is something I applied in my personal life. It says one should choose his/her words wisely. This has helped me in proofreading my work again and again. Those 9 rules surely are helping me in grabbing a good job of my choice.

Week 4

The week four taught me some great things about academic writing and structuring academic works. It started with the basics of academic writing that mainly comprises writing formal reports, survey report, research articles, and research papers. The learning of this week can be incorporated in my current academic life and the future professional life. With the knowledge of referencing styles and plagiarism, I can develop my academic document with great authenticity from scratch. I have written many research documents in my previous semester that had some percentage of plagiarised content. But, now I can write a top-notch research work with a proper referencing.

Week 5

The main concept of week 5 is the TOMAC that stands for topic, objectives, methodology, analytics, and conclusion. I learned about writing a literature review of a journal article. By making use of TOMAC, I can bifurcate the whole research article accordingly and this way I can get the basic understanding of the concepts covered in the literature. With this knowledge, I can complete my other assessments effectively and could grab good grades. In addition to this, if in case I pursue a career in the research field, then with this method, I can review a lot of literature paper for my research easily.

Week 6

This week talked about professional presentation, wherein I am emphasising on the use of visual aids while giving a presentation. We all have used PowerPoint presentation to present information in a concise way. Models, diagrams, tables, pie charts, etc., are used in order to convey information. However, there are some demerits of this particular method (Roth, 2014). People understand information as per their own understandings. This might sometimes result in misinterpretation of information and cause confusion. Hence, it is important for the sender to make the receiver understand the message correctly.

Week 7

This week covered the topic ‘intercultural communication’in business. The reason for emphasising the topic is that I could relate myself with such communication type and problems that I face being from a different country. The major portion of this lecture talked about the Face negotiation theory. The concepts of this theory can be brought into in managing interpersonal relationships and cross-cultural organisation (Jandt, 2017). The theory also emphasised on personal choice i.e., whether a person prioritise community or not.

Week 8

This week topic was the organisational structure and organisational communication. This lecture covered the formal and informal communication network and its types. The knowledge of informal communication network can help in linking between the employees and sections that dodge the formal organisational structure. Such network exists among friendship, proximity, extracurricular, activities, etc. I realised that such structure help in speeding up the delivery of formal messages but sometimes contradicts the formal messages as well. I would like to appreciate the lecture in making the students understand the concept by incorporating the real-life examples to which we students can easily relate.

Week 9

In the due course of this week’s lecture, the lecturer talked about the planning and process of meeting. Various rules were taught, such as temporal integrity rule, the rule of halves, the rule of three-quarters, the rule of the sixth, and a few more (Bovee& Courtland, 2012). I could only understand the rules of sixths as it was easy to understand. I learned that majority of the communication occurs within a context of a relationship. One needs to give at least six positive comments for each negative comment.

Week 10

In this week, the lecturer talked about how to make a communication process affirming. The concept of communication climate was explained. It took me some time to understand the definition that says, it is the overall feeling between two or more people indulges in communication. The knowledge is helpful as now I feel that words can have an impact on the person's mindset and behaviour. The knowledge of communication climate can help me in bettering the relationships in personal and professional life.

All these concepts have really helped me in improving my understanding of the concepts associated with business communication. Using the knowledge acquired from this course can help me move ahead in my career.  

Section 2: a literature review on Organisational Communication

According to Kramer (2014), effective communications is the basis for effective working in the organisation. The managers need to prioritise the establishment of the communication channel in order to discard the operational discrepancies and ineffectiveness. There are two components of organisational communication i.e., internal and external communication. The former one takes place within an organisation and can occur vertical or horizontal, informal and formal. Men(2014) talked about the importance of internal communication. The first and foremost is the drive for purpose. Every employee wants to understand the goals and plans of the organisation. Effective communication can help them in doing so. With well-defined communication channels, an organisation can convey the objectives, tasks, and operations to be completed within a stipulated time. In addition to this, the organisation can resolve the issues faced by them and address them as soon as possible. This helps in boosting employees' and organisation's performance.  

Onwuegbuzie, et.al (2012) highlighted the importance of communication in empowering and supporting middle management. There is a set organisational structure with defined hierarchies. The flow of information might get hindered and delayed. In addition to this, getting feedback is also affected. With an effective internal communication in the organisation, the middle management can be empowered. Pautasso(2013) mentioned some challenges to the effective organisational communication. The major challenge is the practice of ethics that individuals make use in assessing the right and wrong. Many a time employees do not convey the information as they see it as ethically wrong. This creates a communication gap in the channel of information flow. In addition to this, one-way communication is another challenge. For a communication to be called effective, it has to be two-way communication (Roth, 2014). The third challenge is mismatched goals. Miscommunication often occurs when personal goals of an individual and organisational goals contradict. In order to improve the efficiency of the organisation, these factors need to be considered. This would open up the new gates of opportunities for the company.

Section 3

Talking about the usefulness and applicability of the concepts in my career aspirations, I felt that concepts taught in week 7 and week 9 are important for me and can be helpful in career prospects. In week 7, I gained knowledge about the ways of communication in the diverse team. I can make use of the learning from the lecture on improving my intercultural communication. Since I am aspiring to join an international organisation, I need to have a better knowledge of intercultural communication concepts as this would help me in communicating with the teammates from different countries.

Before this lecture, I was using the two terms interchangeably but this lecture helped me learn the basic difference between them. The group is an agglomeration of individual coordinating and contributing their efforts. On the other hand, a team is a group of people who are working on a common objective and challenges. These definitions were enough for me to grab the real meaning of the two terms. I contemplate that the former term has individual focus, whereas a team’s focus is on the whole group. With this knowledge, I can be a part of a team in which I could contribute my efforts along with my teammates and share my views effectively.

Conclusion

The process of communication is quintessential for business organisation and for individuals working in them. In this report, I had presented my understanding of business communications and the factors affecting it. In addition to this, other forms of communication, such as verbal and non-verbal had also covered by me. Furthermore, my understanding of formal and informal communication had been presented here. Moreover, in the first section, I had covered concepts from each week. The second section talked about the literature review of the topic of week 8 i.e., organisational communication. In the next section, I elaborated on the application of the concepts from week 9 and week 7 in my future aspirations and how they will help me.

References

• Bargiela-Chiappini, F., & Nickerson, C. R. (2014).  Writing business: Genres, media, and discourses. Routledge.
• Callahan, J. L. (2014). Writing literature reviews: A reprise and update.
• Emmert, P., &Emmert, V. J. L. (2014).  Interpersonal communication. Wm. C. Brown.
• Jandt, F. E. (2017).  An introduction to intercultural communication: Identities in a global community. Sage Publications.
• Kramer, M. W. (2014).  Managing uncertainty in organizational communication. Routledge.
• Men, L. R. (2014). Strategic internal communication: Transformational leadership, communication channels, and employee satisfaction.  Management Communication Quarterly,  28(2), 264-284.
• Onwuegbuzie, A. J., Leech, N. L., & Collins, K. M. (2012). Qualitative analysis techniques for the review of the literature.  The qualitative report,  17(28), 1-28.
• Pautasso, M. (2013). Ten simple rules for writing a literature review.  PLoS computational biology,  9(7), e1003149.
• Roth, S. (2014). The things that go without saying: performative differences between business value communication and communication on business values. International Journal of Business Performance Management,  15(3), 175-191.
• Roth, S. (2014). The things that go without saying: performative differences between business value communication and communication on business values. International Journal of Business Performance Management,  15(3), 175-191.