Business Communication Reflection
For any business, communication plays an important role in creating, communicating, and interpreting facts, ideas, and opinions about individual and organizational effectiveness and performance to achieve organizational goals (Raman & Singh, 2012). Usually, the focus is on the communication efficiency of the management as ineffective communication may result in mismanagement, however, the middle level and junior level employees must also be proficient in communicating as while management is involved in developing strategies, middle and junior level employees are involved in executing strategies. Based on the success of execution, the management must adapt its strategy (Knaflic, 2015). While I understood the significance of business communication course to an extent before taking this course, however undertaking this course enhanced my knowledge drastically as I learnt different topics during this course.
While the first week established an understanding of this course and significance of business and communication systems, theoretical learnings started from the second week onwards. In the second week, I learnt about ethical business communication, and how to conduct oneself ethically in the workplace. While it is important to be ethical at the workplace, a more relevant topic for us is how to maintain academic integrity and we also learned about what is academic misconduct and understand the consequences of academic misconduct. In the third week, I learnt about interpersonal and intercultural communication. We learnt how to communicate verbally and non-verbally. I also learnt that it is equally important to actively listen and not just speak. I also learnt how to account for cultural factors while communicating with a person from a different culture. In the fourth week, I learnt about the importance of critical thinking in arriving at a conclusion. This was an important learning as in my personal life, I have made decisions based on instincts and emotions and I realised that if I had applied critical thinking in those situations, the results would have been better. I also learnt how to logically develop an argument and also logically oppose an argument. I realized that in a professional setting, persuading others to agree to my perspective, will require me to think critically and present my arguments logically. In the fifth week, I learnt about conducting a research in terms of data sources to be used and the process that needs to be followed while conducting a research. I feel that this will be beneficial for me in future when I am required to undertake an academic research project. In the sixth week, I learnt about academic writing- different forms, how to structure different academic projects, and the kind of language to be used. In the seventh week, I learnt about why plagiarism is wrong, and the importance of referencing insights from others’ work and how to paraphrase as, despite our best attempts, similarity can be identified with some other work. In the eighth week, I learnt about how an effective meeting can be conducted by setting up the agenda beforehand, setting up the physical and virtual environment, defining the roles and responsibilities of all members, making minutes of the meeting, and overcoming communication barriers to achieve the objectives of the meeting. In the ninth week, I learnt about the importance of teamwork and how teamwork can be promoted. I also learnt about the importance and role played by an effective leader for a team and the difference between a manager and a leader. In the tenth week, I learnt about business writing- different forms, how to structure, and the kind of language to be used. In the eleventh week, how to enhance my oral presentation skills. I have a stage freight to a certain extent as I often forget a few points. Also, I realized the importance of non-verbal communication which I have overlooked until now. In the twelfth week, I learnt about aspects that I feel will be beneficial to me in my career post my studies- how to search for a job, how to network, how to write a resume, and how to conduct oneself during an interview.
Overall I can say that taking this course has proved to be really beneficial to me as I believe this course has created a strong foundation for my professional life. There are four aspects where I am looking to enhance my skills- critical thinking, academic writing, oral communication, and business writing. Among these four aspects, I feel that I need to work the most on is critical thinking as I understand that improving my critical thinking skill will enhance the manner in which I approach anything in my life and I should be able to get improved results (Hitchcock, 2018). I would also be working on the other three aspects: academic writing, oral communication, and business writing and I am looking forward to opportunities to work on these aspects. I also feel that increased focus on application-based learning can increase the learning quality.
References
Hitchcock, D. (2018). Critical Thinking. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. [Online]. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-thinking/. [10th October 2020].
Knaflic, C. N. (2015). Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Raman, M. & Singh, P. (2012). Business Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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