1. Guide to managerial communication
Mary Munter

2. 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.

3. 1. Objective
“As a result of this communication, my audience will ”

4. 2. 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
What is your credibility?

5. 3. Credibility (persuasiveness): stress pre-existing; increased acquired
Factor
Based on . . .
Stress initial credibility
Increased acquired credibility
Rank
Hierarchical power
Emphasizing your title or rank
Associating yourself with or citing a high-ranking person
Goodwill
Personal relationship or “track record”
Referring to relationship or “track record”
Building your goodwill by emphasizing audience benefits “what’s in it for them”
Trustworthiness
Offering balanced evaluations; acknowledging conflicts of interest
Expertise
Knowledge, competence
Sharing your expert understanding
Explaining how you gained your expertise
Associating yourself with or citing authoritative sources
Image
Attractiveness, audience desire to be like you
Emphasizing attributes audience finds attractive
Building your image by identifying yourself with your audience’s benefits; using nonverbals and language your audience considers dynamic
Common Ground
Common values, ideas, problems, or needs
Establishing your shared values or ideas
Acknowledging similarities with audience
Tying the message to your common ground

6. 4. Audience 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

7. Using message structure
Opening and closing: emphasize benefits
Problem/solution structure: First convince them that there is a problem so you can then convince them that there is a solution
One-sided or two-sided: Two-sided for controversial topics. Helps establishing common ground
Pro/con or con/pro. Pro/con for noncontroversial
Ascending or descending order. Informed audience ascending, uninformed descending
Foot in the door technique: break down your request
Door in the face technique: Follow an outregous request with a reasonable one.
Wrong structure for your papers: Answering questions like if the paper was an exam

8. 5. Message THOUGHT PROCESS (drafting) ends with conclusion
STRATEGIC PROCESS (writing)
emphasizes the conclusion
Bad ideas
Organized ideas
Organized ideas
Assumptions
Reach conclusion last
State conclusion first (usually)
Data
Good ideas
Organized ideas
Facts
Organized ideas
TIME

9. Message strategy How can you emphasize?
Do not bury things in the middle
Direct approach: front loading or bottom-lining.
Using the indirect approach: back loading or mystery story approach (by enlarge not appropriate in business writing and thus not appropriate in your assignments)

10. Macrowriting Design document for “high skim value”
Signposts to show connection
Effective paragraphs or sections
Goal:
To increase readability, show organization
To show logical progression
To organize paragraphs or sections
Methods:
“Headings”
White space
Typography
Throughout the document
Openings
closings
Generalization and support
Paragraph signposts

11. 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.

12. Microwriting Editing for brevity Choosing a style Goal:
To make writing concise
To make tone appropriate
Methods:
Avoiding wordiness
Avoiding overlong sentences and paragraphs
Businesslike or bureaucratic?
Active or passive?
Jargon or no jargon? Jargon only as short hand not to show that you know the word

13. Microwriting Avoid wordiness: See table Munter’s 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.
Business like or bureaucratic (see p. 77)
Active or passive?
Active
Passive
to avoid wordiness
to avoid formality
to place responsibility
to save readers time
to de-emphasize writer
To avoid responsibility
For transition

14. Writing Exercise: Present and defend the vision statement that you have been writing for CAPSIM. Use the back of this page. I will put them in the overhead projector so… write “pretty”. The goal is to convince me that it is a good vision.
Audience: Chair of the Board of Directors (me).
Introduction: Write just a couple of lines which states your vision. Remember what we have discussed in the lecture. You are advocating, defending, championing a particular vision.
Body of the document: Write about 3 headings or the titles for the sections that you would write to convince the board of directors that the vision you have defined is good. See tables 2.1 and 2.2 in textbook as to what is a good vision. See Munter’s writing guide as to what is a good heading and a good way of organize a paper to create a convincing argument.
Closing: A couple of sentences (see Munter’s guide for what is a good closing)
The whole paper 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 effective business documents. We will follow this model for all your written assignments.