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| "Jacked Up" by Bill Lane (Jack Welch's speechwriter) |
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| Jack Welch's autobiography |
My interest
in effective communication was generated some years back after reading two
books. One, the autobiography by Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric
and two, a book by Bill Lane, speechwriter for Jack Welch at General Electric. The two biggest lessons about communications
which I learnt from these two books were
1) The concept of “candour” in the
workplace where ideas and thoughts are exchanged honestly and candidly between
employees and superiors.
2) An effective presentation should be crafted
with the audience in mind. The presentation slides should be kept simple as the
focus of the presentation is how the presenter communicates his/her ideas and not
the slides.
These two
concepts are simple in theory but difficult to achieve. Looking back at the numerous
projects/presentations I have done over the years, there are times where these
two concepts were able to be put into practice and these were the few occasions
where the project concluded with good results. Through my experience, effective
communication in a group yields three desirable effects.
1) Reduces misunderstanding between
team members
2) Boost morale
3) Enables all to complete assigned
tasks more efficiently
However,
there is also countless times where the end result of a project work leaves
much to be desired. Upon reflections, the main reason is usually attributed to
poor communication within team members. The desire to eliminate such
disappointments is what compels me to join this course.
Therefore,
at the end of the course, I hope that I will emerge as a better all-round
communicator which will aid in me being a better team player.
Last of
all, Happy Lunar New Year to all and I shall take my leave to enjoy my reunion
dinner!
Hi Jun Yuan, I do agree with the points you bring up, but would like to share my two cents regarding candour in employee-employer communications.
ReplyDeleteWhile communications skills do play a part, I feel that that may also be attributed to the fact that we are an Asian society. Asian societies tend to have higher Power Distance Index. Basically that means that there is a distance between employer and employee and that employees tend to abide by hierarchies more. They do so for fear of repercussions in the event that they say something wrong or out of line. There's alot of elaboration on these by Hofstede, which I think will be pretty worth checking out if you've got the time!
Also, as project mates in this communications course, how apt it would be if we can get effective communications squared away and achieve synergy in our quest to produce the best term paper hahaha.
lets work towards that, and have a great lunar new year :)
Kaishing - A very interesting point regarding how being in an Asian society influences our way of communication and I do agree with you. I did some reading on Hofstede and discovered that Singapore surprisingly has a high Power Distance Index (PDI) of 74! However, I do feel candour can still be achieved as our society gradually becomes more appreciative of a 2 way communication working environment. This is especially evident as our political system moves towards a more consultative governance approach.
Deleteyes fully agree with you, I mean after all the indexes only represent an average and may not accurately represent everyone. Besides, with globalisation and a stronger influence of western cultures and behaviours, certain individuals/ groups can be very candid in their interactions. All these again very dependent on context. In any case, I do agree with your points on candour and targeted presentations.
DeleteYou raised the point about keeping presentation slides/aids brief during oral presentations. It struck me particularly, but not because I have not heard of this tip before. In fact, I believe many of us know about this but fail to practise it due to our over-zealousness in sharing our hard work with the audience! How many times have we groaned when lecturers sometimes bombard us with lengthy PowerPoint slides? It's definitely a important point to keep in mind.
ReplyDeleteIn tertiary education, we are exposed to a substantial amount of group project work as you rightly pointed out. In teams of any sort, effective communication plays an essential role in the dynamics of the group. Whatever lessons that we learn in project work during our student days will be put to good use as we progress to the working world. Hence, it is great to know that all of us here are working hard to hone our communication skills and improve ourselves :) After all, the world is getting increasingly interconnected and it is highly probable that the teams that we work in will be multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary. And thus effective communication will be ever-so-important!
Wee Pin - I have to disagree with you regarding our engineering Profs bombarding us with lengthy slides. As our Profs’ main objective is to equip us with as much knowledge of the subject as possible, I think lengthy PowerPoint slides in this context are acceptable.
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ReplyDeleteprofessional speech writer