 Lecture 41, As-Salaamu Alaikum. Welcome to the virtual university's course on business and technical communication. Now that we've looked at the mechanics and the language of written communication, let's have a look at oral communication. In this lecture, we're going to look at listening and interviewing. You will learn how to apply the communication process to oral communication and summarize the skills involved in being an effective listener. You will also identify nine common types of business interviews. Let's think of the most common communication situations orally in a business situation. Where are you more likely to communicate verbally and where are you more likely to communicate in a written fashion? We have also talked about written communication. We have told you about reports, letters, emails, emails. You communicate through written communication in business and technical situations. Now, what is oral communication in your context? Obviously, one oral communication is when you are talking casually to people in your company. Then there are oral communication presentations when you are giving a formal presentation. Oral communication is when you are giving interviews or taking interviews. That is also included in oral communication. Oral communication is usually included in meetings. The notes that you are taking are secondary. The main communication mode is oral. Calling a meeting in an office or in a company isn't unusual. Most executives do it every day. Most executives call meetings every day. Either they are meeting with the whole department or they are meeting with one or two people or within the organization or people outside the organization, but they are meeting. So, any kind of formal situation where you have people in your office or you are going to somebody's office for a formal or semi-formal talk related to business would be a meeting. So, even though meetings are very commonplace, very few executives shut down an entire company to bring everyone to a meeting. It is very rare that a meeting like this is called a meeting in which the company works and everyone comes to a meeting. But sometimes it happens. And we are going to look at an example of the president of a company called Rockport and see what they did. The president's name is John Thorbeck. He is the president of Rockport, which is a footwear subsidiary of Reebok. Thorbeck called a meeting in which he called everybody in the company except for a handful of people who were left behind to cover telephones in the company's headquarters. So, all 350 managers and employees were asked to get together for a meeting that lasted two days. Now, many of Thorbeck's top managers questioned the need for stopping daily functions and they complained that a company as large as Rockport could not afford to lose two whole days where everybody was cooped up in a room for a meeting. But Thorbeck believed that this meeting was very, very necessary and it was important enough to involve every employee at every level. Most of the meetings take place at one level. There are meetings between top managers or top management supervisors. There are meetings at one or two levels. But sometimes it happens that people at every level sit in one meeting like this company in Rockport. Now, Thorbeck's objective was nothing less than to increase the company's potential. He believed that by involving all 350 employees in the meeting, in the two-day meeting, he would be increasing the company's potential. Now, if you were John Thorbeck, how would you use a two-day meeting to elicit input from the employees? Obviously, there are two days to complete. There are working days of 8 hours a day. If there is a meeting of 16 hours a day, then if you are John Thorbeck, then you will be able to take full advantage of the situation so that all your employees can give their input and tell the top management in this way so that they can use it better. Obviously, if there are 300 employees sitting in one room, then there will be a structure of that meeting and an agenda of that meeting. Obviously, there is an agenda of every meeting. We have already discussed this in a lecture. But how will you effectively use that meeting? What would be your purpose? If there are 300 employees from the top to the bottom in your company, then what kind of benefits will be there in that meeting? What are the factors of oral communication that you would like to keep in mind that all of you should talk. Everyone should listen, understand and get a chance to talk. Also, what good listening skills would be valuable in such a situation? And what would you do to make sure that the meeting was productive? It is not like everyone is speaking in the meeting, there is no structure, no system, no one is listening to anything, they are talking about each other, there is no productivity generated from that meeting, but there is a sure-shareba. Obviously, such meetings will be ineffective. So, if you are John Thorbeck, then what would you do that your meeting will be effective, productive and everyone can express their own thoughts and everyone can listen to each other. Now, Rockport's John Thorbeck knows that speaking and listening are the most important communication skills that we use and they are the most common communication skills that we use. And he also knows that given a choice, people would rather talk to each other than write to each other and that is why he called all the people to a meeting together so that they could discuss company policies, they could discuss all the company procedures instead of getting people to write about them. Also, talking takes less time and needs no composing, typing, rewriting, retyping, duplicating or distributing. You don't have to do any of these things in talking. When you are speaking, you don't have to type, retype, compose, edit, distribute, or photocopy. You don't have to waste any time in all these things. You have to speak directly and the person who reaches there is sitting in front of you and they are listening to you directly. The most important thing is that oral communication provides an opportunity for feedback. You can talk about all these things but in written communication, you don't get immediate feedback. You have to wait for the answer when you write something and send it to someone who will read it and then answer it. Maybe it will be the same day or a few days later. You don't know. But in oral communication, when you did something on someone's phone face to face, then at the same time you get some or the other feedback. Also, when people communicate orally, they can ask questions. They can test their understanding of the message through those questions. If you don't understand anything, then at the same time you can ask questions and clarify your understanding. Or if the person who speaks can understand the feedback, then at the same time you can ask for clarification. Also, through oral communication, people can share ideas and work together to solve problems instead of sitting in isolation and working at their own desks. They can also convey and absorb non-verbal information which reveals far more than words alone. Non-verbal information, non-verbal communication is done without the help of words. But without the communication of words, like our body language, our facial expressions, come into non-verbal communication because they are not using any words. But the listeners and viewers are getting some or the other message. By communicating with facial expressions, eye contact, tone of voice, gestures and posture, people can send subtle messages that add another dimension to the spoken words. These are all the elements of non-verbal communication. And all these elements convey to the listeners and viewers another dimension of communication. And they enhance the words. Many times, they can convey a stronger and more effective message than words. You must have seen many times that the speakers are saying something but because their tone is like this, you feel that what they are saying does not mean anything, or they are being sarcastic, or they are being sarcastic, or they are being sarcastic, or they are being sarcastic, or they are being sarcastic, or they are being sarcastic, they are staunch to hear what they are saying. If someone is being sarcastic, they say they are happy to meet you, but their expression is really annoyed, really frowning, and they are being sarcastic, and they are being sarcastic, and they are being sarcastic. So obviously, you know that the non-verbal communication that the company is doing to these words, Oral communication, all kinds of oral communication, whether it is verbal or non verbal satisfies people's need to be part of the human community and it makes them feel good. By interacting with other people, we feel that we are part of a group and that is always a good feeling. Doing things over helps people and organizations build morale and establish a group identity. Nonetheless, oral communication also has its dangers, which are very beneficial for oral communication. Group identity is established, you can share it, you get immediate feedback, along with non-verbal gestures, which you do not get in written communication, but still oral communication has some dangers and some problems. And the most major problem is that under most circumstances, oral communication occurs spontaneously. You cannot cross out what you just said and start over. When one thing comes out of your mouth, you cannot start it again by cutting it. Even if your comment is foolish, it will be etched in the other person's memory. The other person will remember it, regardless of how much you try to explain that you really meant something else entirely. Moreover, if you let your attention wander while someone else is speaking, you miss the point. In oral communication, if you have lost the thread, then you either have to muddle along without knowing what the other person said, or you have to admit to the speaker that you were daydreaming and ask the person to repeat the comment. One other problem is that oral communication is too personal. People tend to confuse your message with you as an individual because they are likely to judge the content of what you say by your appearance and delivery style. Also, intercultural barriers can be as much a problem in oral communication as they can be in written communication. In oral communication, non-verbal communication and non-verbal gestures also vary from culture to culture. As always, it is best to know your audience, including any cultural differences that they might have. Your message should be communicated in the tone, manner and situation that your audience feels most comfortable with, whether you are using the telephone, engaging in a quick conversation with a colleague, participating in a formal interview or attending a meeting. Oral communication is the vehicle you use to get your message across. When you are communicating orally, try to take advantage of the positive characteristics while minimizing the dangers. We have also talked about positive characteristics in oral communication and some dangers in oral communication. You should also take care of these things. You should try to avoid the positive characteristics of oral communication, but try to stay away from the dangers that may occur in your communication. And to achieve this goal, you need to work on improving your listening skills and your speaking skills. Let us talk first of speaking. Because speaking is such an ingrained activity, it is such an unconscious activity, we tend to do it without much thought. And that casual approach can be a problem in business. We do not think while speaking, because we are used to speaking, but in a common situation, it is very difficult to do it, but in business, we have to think and speak more consciously in a business situation. You need to be more aware of using speech as a tool for accomplishing your objectives in a business situation. To do this, you need to break the habit of talking spontaneously without planning what you are going to say and how you are going to say it. So you need to learn to manage the impression that you create by consciously tailoring your remarks and delivery style to suit the situation. You also need to become aware of the consequences of what you say and how you are going to do it. With a little effort, you can learn to apply the composition process to your speech. of what you say as you are aware of the consequences of what you write. With a little effort, you can learn to apply the composition process to oral communication. You need to think about your purpose, your main idea and your audience before you speak. You need to organize your thoughts in a logical way. You need to decide on a style that suits the occasion and edit your remarks mentally. Also as you speak, watch the other person judging from verbal and non-verbal feedback whether your message is making the desired impression or not. Just as various writing situations or various writing assignments call for different writing styles, various speaking situations or call for various speaking styles, your speaking style depends on the level of intimacy between you and the listener and on the nature of your conversation. When you are talking with a friend, naturally you speak more casually, more frankly. When you are talking with your boss or a stranger, you are more formal, you are slightly more removed from that person. When you are talking about a serious subject, you use a serious tone. When you are talking about something casual even in office, your tone is also more casual. So depending on the person and the topic, your speaking style will vary. As you think about which speaking style is appropriate, think too about the non-verbal message you want to convey because people derive less meaning from your words than they do from your facial expressions, your vocal characteristics and your body language. So while you are composing your verbal message, think about how you want to convey your non-verbal message to the people and match your verbal and non-verbal messages. The non-verbal message should reinforce your words. This is very important and perhaps the most important thing you can do to project yourself more effectively is to remember the you attitude. We have already talked about the you attitude where you keep an eye on your reader. Now here the you attitude means that you will keep an eye on your listener. You will try to earn other people's attention and goodwill by focusing on them and their needs. For example, professionals like Rockport's John Thorbick, who I mentioned from the start, professionals like those, illicit opinions from others, not only by asking them pointed questions but also by paying attention to their responses. I asked you a question from the start that if you are in John Thorbick's place, how will you try to connect all your people to your meetings and make them effective? Now the answer to that is what I just told you that if you want to be effective as a meeting coordinator, as an executive, then you need to illicit opinion not only from people by asking them questions but also then you need to pay attention to what the people say. Not only that you have asked people questions and they have not answered them because they will be demotivated and they will not be interested in talking further. So if you want to get a valuable opinion, first of all you should ask them a pointed question, a focused question so that they know what they want to say and then you should pay attention to their responses. An important tool of oral communication is the telephone and this telephone can extend your reach across town and around the world. However, if your telephone skills are lacking, you may waste valuable time and appear rude. So when you are thinking of non-verbal communication, oral communication, then you also need to think about how you can communicate effectively on the telephone. There are many times when we are talking face-to-face, then we talk in a way that we know that if we have said something abruptly or we have not completed the sentence completely, then we can use our body language or facial expressions to convey the message of the other. But we cannot do this on the telephone. There are some etiquettes and criteria to talk on the telephone because the essential element of an oral communication is non-verbal communication that is not reaching the listener. They can only hear your voice and cannot see you. Also sometimes talking on the telephone can waste more time than talking face-to-face. You can minimize your time on the telephone while raising phone productivity by delivering one-way information by fax. There are many such information that you can only send to someone and you do not need any response from them. Then you can send fax. It is very easy. You can write any message. It is better to send fax when you are on the desk. There are other ways of increasing your telephone productivity and these include jotting down an agenda before making a call. You can also increase your phone productivity by saving social chit-chat for the end of a call. Wait till you have talked about all the important points and then talk about other social things and then indulge in chit-chat. There are many times when we call someone and we waste so much time on the phone that we lose our mind when it comes to work. The time is running out. If someone comes to the office and you call someone, they get a urgent work done. The telephone conversation ends there. After the phone is off, you think, oh, I had to talk about this as well. It is important that if you are in a business situation, you can talk about the previous work. And then you can ask about the current situation later. Because if there is no time left, or if you have a call on another phone, you can cut down that. There will be no loss. Also, try to save all short calls that you need to make to one person during a given day and collect them and make one longer call at a later time. Because you waste your time on the phone again and again, because you waste your time on the phone again and again. So, it is better that you talk to anyone. Unless it is urgent, then it is another matter. But if it is not urgent, then you can note down and collect them and then make one longer call and deal with all the things. Also, if you can't reach the person, then instead of wasting your time again and again by calling them and holding and waiting for them to come on the phone, just send a message by fax, especially if it is a one-way message. Also, make sure that your assistant has a list of people whose calls you will accept even if you are in a meeting. It is very common that you are in a meeting and your assistant is a telephone operator. He knows that you are in a meeting and you will not receive a call from anyone because obviously you are doing important work. But if there are people like you who want to talk to them, or at any time their phone comes, you want to talk to them, then you give your assistant your telephone operator's name so that when they call you, they don't waste their time waiting for you. Now, this was all the things that you needed to do to be an effective speaker and to communicate effectively from the speaking end. What about listening? So in a business situation, listening is the other key element. If you are typical, you spend half your communication time listening. So listening supports effective relationships within the organization. It enhances the organization's delivery of products. It alerts the organization to the innovation growing from both internal and external forces and allows the organization to manage the growing diversity both in the work phase and in the customers it serves. Until you listen to everyone, you won't know what is happening inside your company, what is happening outside your company, what new developments have come, what your employees or colleagues are thinking, what orders are coming, what relationships you have with people, you won't strengthen them by listening to them. Until then, you can't be effective in a business situation. An individual with good listening ability is more likely to succeed. Good listening enhances performance. It leads to raises, promotions, status and more power. However, no one is born with the ability to listen. The skill of listening is learned and employed through practice. Of course, effectively, khasi practice chhasa tahammul bhi chahiye. Most of us like to think of ourselves as being good listeners, but the average person remembers only about half of what's said in a 10-minute conversation and forgets the other half within 48 hours. Now, what happens when you listen? What are the different steps during listening? What are the different elements involved during listening? Sensing is physically hearing the message and taking note of it. This sensory reception can be blocked by interfering noises, impaired hearing or inattention. These are the three things, because of which you can't sense something right. Either you may not be able to hear or you may have a problem with hearing or you are not paying attention. So, try to tune out distractions by focusing on the message. Obviously, if there are noises, they can be treated as well. If there is any physical problem in listening, if there is no physical problem, then there is bad luck. There are other ways to understand what people are saying. But if you can't hear anything because of inattention, or if you are not listening properly, then it is very unfortunate, especially in a business situation, even in personal situations. So, if you are not able to focus, if you are not able to pay attention because you are distracted by something else, then try to tune out those distractions and try to focus on the message. Try to have no distractions in your communication or context. The second thing you do in listening is interpreting. Interpreting is decoding and absorbing what you hear. One is to physically sense. After that, when the message goes in your mind, then you interpret it. You decode it and absorb it. As you listen, you assign meanings to the words according to your own values, beliefs, ideas, expectations, roles, needs and personal history. The speaker's frame of reference may be quite different. So, the listener may need to determine what the speaker really means. The second thing is that the speaker has said something and you understood it in some other way. The speaker is talking to another point of reference and you are talking to another point of reference. You are giving the meaning to those words according to your values, beliefs, ideas, expectations, roles, needs and according to your personal history. Whereas, they are speaking according to their personal history and values. And you will increase the accuracy of your interpretation by paying attention to non-verbal cues. You can increase the accuracy of your interpretation if you notice the non-verbal communication. Then comes the step of evaluation. Evaluating is forming an opinion about the message. When you interpret and absorb a message, now you form an opinion about it. Sorting through the speaker's remarks, separating fact from opinion and evaluating the quality of the evidence require a good deal of effort, particularly if the subject is complex and emotionally charged. Avoid the temptation to dismiss ideas offered by people who are unattractive or abrasive and embrace instead ideas offered by people who are charismatic speakers. This does not make for good listening because you cannot judge the content of spoken oral communication by the impression that you have of people. So you need to listen to what people are saying to actually interpret and evaluate their message effectively. After you have evaluated, there are some things which remain in your mind and some things which you forget. As I said, an average person forgets half of what they hear within 48 hours. Remembering is storing a message for future reference. When you remember something, then you can use it for future reference. As you listen, retain what you hear by taking notes or making a mental outline of the speaker's key points. This will help you to remember better. And when you remember things, then you are able to respond to people better. That is the other step in listening. Responding is acknowledging the message by reacting to the speaker in some fashion. You should respond with silence. If you do not like what you hear, you may be thinking that you may have a verbal communication but your silence is also a response. If you are communicating one-on-one or in a small group, the initial response generally takes the form of verbal feedback. If you are one of many in an audience, you may act upon what you have heard, even that is a response. Actively provide feedback to help the speaker refine the message. That is the best response that you can give your speaker. Whatever message you are listening to, actively provide feedback so that your speakers can refine the message if you do not understand it. Do not be passive if you have not understood a message. Listening basically requires a mix of physical and mental activities, as we just saw, and it is subject to a mix of physical and mental barriers as well. So you need to work at overcoming those barriers to make your listening effective. There are three types of listening based on the various situations which call for different listening scales. The three types of listening differ not only in purpose but also in the amount of feedback or interaction that occurs. The first type is content listening. The goal of content listening is to understand and retain information imparted by a speaker. You may ask questions but basically information flows from the speaker to you. Your job is to identify the key points for the message. So be sure to listen for clues to its structure and these clues would be previews, transitions, summaries and enumerated points. In your mind, create an outline of the speaker's remarks and afterwards silently review what you have learnt. You may take notes but do this sparingly so that you can concentrate on the key points. Do not waste all your concentration on making notes because if you concentrate too much on writing then you will not be able to listen effectively. If you agree or disagree or approve or disapprove of what the speaker is saying what is important is that you understand. The second type of listening is critical listening. The goal of critical listening is to evaluate the message at several levels. These levels are the logic of the argument. You evaluate the message according to the strength of the evidence, the validity of the conclusions. The implementation of the message for you or your organization, the speaker's intentions and motives and you also evaluate it for the omission of any important or relevant points. Because absorbing information and evaluating information at the same time is hard, try to reserve judgment until the speaker has finished. First you absorb the information and then evaluate it and then judge it when the speaker has finished speaking. Now the third type of listening is active or emphatic listening. The goal of active or emphatic listening is to understand the speaker's feelings, needs and wants so that you can appreciate his or her point of view regardless of whether you share that perspective or not. By listening in an active or emphatic way you help the individual vent the emotions that prevent a dispassionate approach to the subject. Try not to judge the individual's feelings and just let the other person talk. All three types of listening can be useful in work related situations so it pays to learn how to apply them. You need to learn how to be a better listener regardless of whether the situation calls for content, critical or active listening. You can improve your listening ability by becoming more aware of the habits that distinguish good listeners from bad. In addition, put non-verbal skills to work as you listen which means that you should maintain eye contact, react positively or responsibly with head nods or spoken signals and pay attention to the speaker's body signals. You might even test yourself from time to time. When someone is talking, ask yourself whether you are actually listening to the speaker or mentally rehearsing how you will respond. Many times when we are speaking we think about what we have to answer and that does not make for good listening. In a while, try to be open to the information that will lead to higher quality discussions and try to accept the feeling that will build understanding and mutual respect. If you do this, you will be on the way to becoming a good listener. This is an important quality in any business situation specifically when conducting business interviews and we are going to be looking at business interviews in a while. Let us have a look at a grid which shows the difference between good and bad listening. Now coming to conducting interviews. As I said, you need to be a good listener to conduct interviews and your speaking and listening skills will serve you throughout your career. From the day you apply for your job until the day you retire, you will be involved in a wide variety of business interviews. There are actually planned conversations with a predetermined purpose that involve asking and answering questions. In a typical interview, the action is controlled by the interviewer the person who schedules the session. This individual poses a series of questions which are designed to elicit information from the interviewee. Interviews sometimes involve several interviewers or several interviewees but most often there are only two people involved. The conversation bounces back and forth from the interviewee to the interviewee the person who is being interviewed. Although the interviewee guides the conversation the interviewee may also seek to accomplish a purpose and the interviewee might want perhaps to obtain or provide information or to solve a problem or to create goodwill or to persuade the other person to take some action. If the participants within an interview establish rapport and stick to the subject at hand then both parties have a good chance of achieving their objective. To help you understand interviews on the job we will discuss how interviews are categorized how you can plan for them what sorts of questions you can use and how you can structure them. Let's first categorize interviews. The interviewer establishes the style and structure of the session depending on the purpose of the interview and relationship between the parties much as a writer writes the style varies the style and structure of the written message to suit the situation. Each situation calls for a slightly different approach as you can imagine when you try to picture yourself doing some of these common business interviews. There are job interviews where the job candidate wants to learn about the position and the organization the employer wants to learn about the applicant's abilities and experience and they both wish to make a good impression. Initial job interviews are fairly formal and structured but later interviews may be relatively spontaneous. Then there are information interviews. In this the interviewer seeks facts that bear on a decision or contribute to basic understanding. Information flows mainly in one direction. One person asks a list of questions that must be covered and listens to the answers. Then there are persuasive interviews. One person tells another about a new idea product or service and explains why the other should act on the recommendation. Their persuasive interviews are usually associated with selling. The persuader asks about the other person's needs and shows how the product or concept is able to meet those needs. Persuasive interviews require skills in drawing out and listening to others as well as the ability to impart information. Exit interviews are those where the interviewer tries to understand why the interviewee is leaving the organization or transferring to another department or division department employee can provide insight into whether the business is being handled effectively or not at an exit interview by saying why they want to leave. The interviewer tends to ask all the questions and the interviewee provides the answers. It's more one way in that sense. And encouraging the employee to focus on events and processes rather than on personal gripes will elicit more useful information for the organization. Evaluation interviews are those where a supervisor is giving an employee feedback on their performance. The supervisor and the employee discuss progress towards predetermined standards or goals and evaluate areas that need improvement. They may also discuss goals for the coming year as well as the employee's long-term aspirations and general concerns. Counseling interviews are those where a supervisor meets with an employee and discusses their personal problems that are interfering with the job performance. The interviewer is concerned with the welfare of both the individual and the organization. The goal is to establish the facts convey the company's concerns and steer the other person towards a source of help. Only a trained professional should offer counseling or advice on such problems as drug abuse, substance abuse, medical tension and financial trouble. Conflict resolution interviews are those where two competing people or groups of people or parties explore their problems and attitudes. For example, they could be Smith versus Jones or one person versus another person Day shift versus night shift groups, companies General Motors versus United Auto Workers etc. and where they sit together to resolve conflicts. The goal is to bring two parties together cause adjustments in perceptions and attitudes and create a more productive climate. Then there are disciplinary interviews. A supervisor or senior tries to correct the behavior of an employee who has violated the organization's rules and regulations. The interviewer tries to get the employee to see the reason for the rules and to agree to comply. The interviewer also reviews the facts and explores the person's attitude because of the emotional reaction that is likely. Mental observations are more effective than critical comments in disciplinary interviews. In a business situation, there are termination interviews where the supervisor informs an employee of the reason of the termination if an employee used to be terminated. The interviewer tries to avoid involving the company in legal action and tries to maintain as positive a relationship as possible with the interviewee. To accomplish these goals the interviewer gives reasons that are specific, accurate and verifiable. In this lecture, we learned to apply the communication process and to summarize the skills involved in being an effective listener and an effective speaker. We also learned to identify the nine common types of business interviews. With this, we come to the end of this lecture. Until next time, Allah Hafiz.