Jan 27: Oral Presentation Basics

Oral Presentations

Your presentation will have these main parts:

1. Opener
2. Introduction w/ Overview
3. 3-4 Key Points (Signposts)
4. Summary
5. Conclusion

1. Plan A Strong Opening & Closing

• Points of emphasis
• Interest audience and emphasize key points
• Talk from notes
• Write out opener and closer

Four Strong Openers

1. Startling statement
2. Narration or anecdote
3. Question
4. Quotation

2. Introduction w/ Overview

Don’t forget to introduce yourself…
Give an overview of the presentation…

• Tell what you’ll cover first, second, and third
• Helps audience know what to expect
• Prepares audience for tracking and remembering your points
• Offers clear signpost as you end each point

3. Signposts

Give your presentation using clear signposts:

Match what you told your audience in your introduction (remember above: "Tell what you’ll cover first, second, and third")

• Key point #1
  - Supporting information
  - Supporting information
• Key point #2
  - Supporting information
  - Supporting information
• Key point #3
  - Supporting information
  - Supporting information

4. Summary

Summarize your presentation… give a fast review of what you just talked about (repeat what you told above: "Tell what you’ll cover first, second, and third")

• Key point #1
• Key point #2
• Key point #3

5. Conclusion

• Thank your audience for their participation
• Offer to answer any questions they might have

Overcoming Fear

• MOST IMPORTANT!! Be prepared
• Use only normal amount of caffeine
• Avoid alcoholic beverages
• Re-label your nerves

Effective Delivery: Notes

• Put notes on cards or sturdy paper
• Jot down details, examples you’ll use
• Indicate where you’ll refer to visual
• Look at notes rarely
• Hold notes high

PowerPoint Design Tips*

• The goal is improved learning
• Be conservative – keep it simple
• Use lots of white space
• Use contrast (dark-on-light or light-on-dark)
• Design from top left to bottom right
• People see graphics first, then text
• Use large font size – min 18 or 24 pts
• Limit use of boldface, italics, and underlining
• Don’t write in all upper case letters
• Use common fonts (Verdana, Arial, etc,)
• No more than two fonts on a screen
• Be concise with text
• One concept per slide
• Plan on spending about 2 minutes per slide
• Limit use of special effects
• Use background patterns wisely
• Use high quality original media
• Edit files to a meaningful length

*Teaching Well with PowerPoint, University of Notre Dame, 2/6/2004, http://www.nd.edu/~learning/powerpoint/designtips.pdf

Things to work on…

• Speak clearly… articulate
• Don’t rush… slow down…
• Speak up…

More things to work on…

• Don’t lean on the podium…
• Don’t read off the slides or cards…
• Present TO your audience (not the screen)

A few more things to work on…

• Maintain eye contact…
• PowerPoint must be readable…
• Be confident…

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Presentation Basics**

1. Informative presentations inform or teach the audience.
2. Persuasive presentations motivate the audience to act or to believe.
3. Goodwill presentations entertain and validate the audience.
4. Most oral presentations have more than one purpose.

A written message makes it easier to present extensive or complex information and to minimize undesirable emotions.

• Oral messages make it easier to…
  - use emotion,
  - to focus the audience's attention,
  - to answer questions and resolve conflicts quickly,
  - to modify a proposal that may not be acceptable in its original form,
  - and to get immediate action or response.

In both oral and written messages, you should

• Adapt the message to the specific audience.
• Show the audience how they benefit from the idea, policy, service, or product.
• Overcome any objections the audience may have.
• Use you-attitude and positive emphasis.
• Use visuals to clarify or emphasize material.
• Specify exactly what the audience should do.

An oral presentation needs to be simpler than a written message to the same audience.

• In a monologue presentation, the speaker plans the presentation in advance and delivers it without deviation.
• In a guided discussion, the speaker presents the questions or issues that both speaker and audience have agreed on in advance. Rather than functioning as an expert with all the answers, the speaker serves as a facilitator to help the audience tap its own knowledge.
• An interactive presentation is a conversation using questions to determine the buyer's needs, probe objections, and gain provisional and then final commitment to the purchase.

Adapt your message to your audience's beliefs, experiences, and interests.

• Use the beginning and end of the presentation to interest the audience and emphasize your key point.
• Use visuals to seem more prepared, more interesting, and more persuasive.
• Use a direct pattern of organization. Put your strongest reason first.
• Limit your talk to three main points. Early in your talk-perhaps immediately after your opener-provide an overview of the main points you will make.
• Offer a clear signpost as you come to each new point. A signpost is an explicit statement of the point you have reached.

To calm your nerves as you prepare to give an oral presentation,

• Be prepared. Analyze your audience, organize your thoughts, prepare visual aids, practice your opener and close, check out the arrangements.
• Use only the amount of caffeine you normally use.
• Avoid alcoholic beverages.
• Relabel your nerves. Instead of saying, "I'm scared," try saying, "My adrenaline is up."
• Adrenaline sharpens our reflexes and helps us do our best.

Just before your presentation…

• Consciously contract and then relax your muscles, starting with your feet and calves and going up to your shoulders, arms, and hands.
• Take several deep breaths from your diaphragm.

During your presentation,

• Pause and look at the audience before you begin speaking.
• Concentrate on communicating well.
• Use body energy in strong gestures and movement.
• Convey a sense of caring to your audience by making direct eye contact with them and by using a conversational style.
• Treat questions as opportunities to give more detailed information than you had time to give in your presentation.
• Link your answers to the points you made in your presentation.

Repeat the question before you answer it if the audience may not have heard it or if you want more time to think. Rephrase hostile or biased questions before you answer them.

The best group presentations result when the group writes a very detailed outline, chooses points and examples, and creates visuals together. Then, within each point, voices trade off.

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**Content attributed to Locker, Kitty O. and Donna Kienzler. Business and Administrative Communication, 8/e. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. 2008.

Jan 20 (ch 14): Informative and Positive Messages

• Informative message - receiver’s reaction neutral
• Positive message - receiver’s reaction positive
• Neither message immediately asks receiver to do anything

Purposes

Primary

• To give information or good news
• To have receiver view information positively

Secondary

• To build good image of sender
• To build good image of sender’s organization
• To build good relationship between sender and receiver
• To deemphasize any negative elements
• To eliminate future messages on same subject

Common Media: Instant Messages and Text Messages

• Use IMs and TMs to
  - Be less intrusive (than visit or phone call)
  - Ask questions on tasks that fellow colleagues are working on
  - Leave a communication trail

Common Media: Letters/Memos

• Use letters to send messages to people outside your organization
• Use memos to send messages to people within your organization

Common Media: E-mail

• Use e-mail to accomplish routine business activities
• Save time
• Save money
• Allow readers to deal with messages at their convenience
• Communicate accurately
• Provide details for reference
• Create a paper trail

Organizing

• Start with good news or the most important information
• Clarify with details, background
• Present any negative points positively
• Explain any benefits
• Use a goodwill ending
  - Positive
  - Personal
  - Forward-looking

Subject Lines

• Serves three purposes
  1. Aids in filing, retrieving
  2. Tells readers why they should read
  3. Sets up message
• Specific, Concise, Appropriate for Message
  - Differentiate from others on same topic
  - Usually less than 35 characters
  - Must meet situation and purpose

Subject Lines—E-mail

• Specific, concise, and catchy
• Include important information/good news
• Name drop to make connection
• Make e-mail sound easy to deal with
• Create new subject line for reply when
  - Original becomes irrelevant
  - Re: Re: Re: Re: appears

Managing Information

• Give audience information they need
• Consider your purpose
• Develop a system that lets people know what is new if you send out regular messages
• Put the most vital information in e-mails, even if you send an attachment
• Check message for accuracy and completeness
• Remember e-mails are public documents

Audience Benefits

• Use audience benefits when
  - Presenting policies
  - Shaping audience’s attitudes
  - Stressing benefits presents the motives positively
  - Introducing benefits that may not be obvious
• Omit benefits when
  - Presenting factual information ONLY
  - Considering audience’s attitude does not matter
  - Stressing benefits makes audience seem selfish
  - Restating them may insult audience’s intelligence

Ending

• Not all messages end same way
• Goodwill ending–focuses on bond between reader, writer
  - Treats reader as individual
  - Contains you-attitude, positive emphasis
  Omits standard invitation
  - Ex: If you have questions, please do not hesitate to call.

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Content attributed to Locker, Kitty O. and Donna Kienzler. Business and Administrative Communication, 9/e. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. 2010.

Jan 20: Letters, Memos and Clear Messages

Business Letter Basics (OWL at Purdue University)
Business Memo Basics (OWL at Purdue University)


Making Your Writing Easy to Read

Good style in business and administrative writing is less formal, more friendly, and more personal than the style usually used for term papers.

To improve your style,

• Get a clean page or screen so that you aren't locked into old sentence structures.
• Try WIRMI: What I Really Mean Is. Then write the words.
• Try reading your draft out loud to someone sitting about three feet away. If the words sound stiff, they'll seem stiff to a reader, too.
• Ask someone else to read your draft out loud. Readers stumble because the words on the page aren't what they expect to see. The places where that person stumbles are places where your writing can be better.
• Write a lot.

Use the following techniques to make your writing easier to read:

As you choose words

1. Use words that are accurate, appropriate, and familiar. Denotation is a word's literal meaning; connotation is the emotional coloring that a word conveys.
2. Use technical jargon only when it is essential and known to the reader. Eliminate business jargon.
   As you write and revise sentences,
3. Use active verbs most of the time. Active verbs are better because they are shorter, clearer, and more interesting.
4. Use verbs-not nouns-to carry the weight of your sentence.
   Don't make an adjustment - adjust
   Don't make a pament - pay
   Don't make a decision - decide
5. Tighten your writing. Writing is wordy if the same idea can be expressed in fewer words.
   a. Eliminate words that say nothing.
   b. Use gerunds and infinitives to make sentences shorter and smoother.
   c. Combine sentences to eliminate unnecessary words.
   d. Put the meaning of your sentence into the subject and verb to cut the number of words.
6. Vary sentence length and sentence structure.
7. Use parallel structure. Use the same grammatical form for ideas that have the same logical function.
8. Put your readers in your sentences.
   As you write and revise paragraphs,
9. Begin most paragraphs with topic sentences so that readers know what to expect in the paragraph.
10. Use transitions to link ideas.

• Readability formulas are not a sufficient guide to style. They imply that all short words and all short sentences are equally easy to read; they ignore other factors that make a document easy or hard to read: the complexity of the ideas, the organization of the ideas, and the layout and design of the document.
• Different organizations and bosses may legitimately have different ideas about what constitutes good writing.

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Content attributed to Locker, Kitty O. and Donna Kienzler. Business and Administrative Communication, 8/e. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. 2008.

Jan 20: Reader benefits, You-attitude, Positive emphasis, Audience

Assignments:

• Assignment 2: Informative and Positive Messages
• (FYI: the grading criteria attached to the end of this assignment follows the outline presented in the "Aspects..." handout.)
• Assignment 3: "Self" Analysis
• Blog topic: Describe (in general) that you believe to be the single most important communication success factor (business or otherwise).

Reader benefits

• Reader benefits are benefits or advantages that the reader gets by
  - using the writer's services,
  - buying the writer's products,
  - following the writer's policies,
  - or adopting the writer's ideas.
• Reader benefits can exist for policies and ideas as well as for goods and services.
• Reader benefits tell readers that they can do the job and that success will be rewarded.

Reader benefits

• Good reader benefits are adapted to the audience, based on intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivators, supported by clear logic and explained in adequate detail, and phrased in you-attitude.
• Extrinsic benefits simply aren't available to reward every desired behavior; further, they reduce the satisfaction in doing something for its own sake.

Create Reader benefits

• Identify the feelings, fears, and needs that may motivate your reader.
  Identify the features of your product or policy that could meet the needs you've identified.
• Show how the reader can meet his or her needs with the features of the policy or product.
• When you write to multiple audiences, use the primary audience to determine level of detail, organization, level of formality, and use of technical terms and theory.

You-attitude

• You-attitude is a style of writing that…
  — looks at things from the reader's point of view,
  —emphasizing what the reader wants to know,
  —respecting the reader's intelligence, and
  —protecting the reader's ego.

Talk About Audience, Not Yourself

• Tell how message affects the audience
• Don’t mention communicator’s work or generosity
• Stress what audience wants to know

Refer to Reader’s Request or Order

• Make specific references, not generic
• Name content of order for person or small business
• Cite purchase order numbers for customers that order often

Don’t Talk About Feelings

• Express your feelings to
  —Offer sympathy to audience
  —Congratulate audience
• Don’t talk about audience’s feelings
• Don’t predict audience’s response
• Give audience good news

In Positive Situations…

• Use 'you' in positive situations
• Avoid 'I' in printed text
• Avoid 'we' if it excludes the audience

Avoid 'You' in Negative Situations

• Protect audience’s ego
• Avoid assigning blame
• Use passive verbs
• Use impersonal style
• Talk about things, not people
• Apply you-attitude beyond the sentence level by using organization and content as well as style to build goodwill.

Positive Emphasis

• Positive emphasis means focusing on the positive rather than the negative aspects of a situation.
• Avoid negative words and words with negative connotations.
• Focus on what the reader can do rather than on limitations.
• Justify negative information by giving a reason or linking it to a reader benefit.
• If the negative is truly unimportant, omit it.
• Put the negative information in the middle and present it compactly.

The desirable tone for business writing is…

• businesslike but not stiff,
• friendly but not phony,
• confident but not arrogant,
• polite but not groveling.

The following guidelines will help you achieve the tone you want:

• Use courtesy titles for people outside your organization whom you don't know well.
• Be aware of the power implications of the words you use.
• When the stakes are low, be straightforward.
• When you must give bad news, consider hedging your statement.
• Writing should be free from sexism in four areas: words and phrases, job titles, courtesy titles, and pronouns.

Positive emphasis

• Ms. is the nonsexist courtesy title for women. Whether or not you know a woman's marital status…
  —Use Ms. unless the woman has a professional title or …
  —unless you know that she prefers a traditional title.
• Traditional pronouns are sexist when they refer to a class of people, not to specific individuals...

Four ways to make the sentence nonsexist are to

1. use plurals (“people go…, “managers talk…”)
2. use ‘you’ (“you may consider…”)
3. to revise the sentence to omit the pronoun
4. to use pronoun pairs (“men and women…, “she and her team…”)

Bias-free language

• is fair and friendly;
• it complies with the law.
• It includes all readers;
• it helps to sustain goodwill.

Check to be sure that your language is nonsexist, nonracist, and nonagist.

• When you talk about people with disabilities or diseases, use the term they prefer.
• When you produce newsletters or other documents with photos and illustrations, picture a sampling of the whole population, not just part of it.

Audience

• The primary audience will make a decision or act on the basis of your message.
• The secondary audience may be asked by the primary audience to comment on your message or to implement your ideas after they've been approved.
• The initial audience routes the message to other audiences and may assign the message.
• A gatekeeper controls whether the message gets to the primary audience.
• A watchdog audience has political, social, or economic power and may base future actions on its evaluation of your message.

Common sense and empathy are crucial to good audience analysis.

The following questions provide a framework for audience analysis:

Six Questions to Analyze Audiences

1. How will audience react at first?
   —Will they see message as important?
   —What is their experience with you?
2. How much information do they need?
   —What do they already know?
   —Does their knowledge need to be updated?
   —What do they need to know to appreciate your points?
   —Six Questions to Analyze Audiences
3. What obstacles must you overcome?
   —Is audience opposed to your message?
   —Will it be easy to do as you ask?
4. What positives can you emphasize?
   —What are benefits for audience?
   —What do you have in common with them?
   —Experiences – Interests – Goals – Values
   —Six Questions to Analyze Audiences
5. What does audience expect?
   —What writing style do they prefer?
   —Are there red flag words?
   —How much detail does audience want?
   —Do they want direct or indirect structure?
   —Do they have expectations about length, visuals, or footnotes?
   —Six Questions to Analyze Audiences
6. How will audience use document?
   —Under what physical conditions will they use it?
   —What purpose will document serve?
   —Reference
   —Guide
   —Basis of lawsuit

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Content attributed to Locker, Kitty O. and Donna Kienzler. Business and Administrative Communication, 8/e. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. 2008.

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Jan 13 (assignment): Creating Your Blog

Follow these instructions and set up your own Blogger account. (Blogger and Google are free accounts - creating them will not affect the amount of spam you receive, you will NOT be required to sign up for unwanted services, and you will NOT be required to buy anything. (Consult with your instructor if you have any other questions or concerns.)

TASK: Set up your blog and email your blog URL (web address) to your instructor.

Here's a video that describes the process - be sure to follow the title convention as indicated in the instructions - your URL should look something like this: (http://bus3700-yourname.blogspot.com)

Once your blog has been created, add at least one post for each class session telling of one item that you found interesting, informative, helpful - or - an example from your own experience that goes along with the discussion topic (unless instructed otherwise).

First topic: "Describe what you hope to gain from BUS 3700"

Posts may be simple and brief - or as detailed as you wish.

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Jan 13 (Ch 1): Succeeding in Business Communication

Effective Communication

• Communication helps organizations and the people in them achieve their goals.
• The ability to write and speak well becomes increasingly important as you rise in an organization.
• People put things in writing to
  ◦create a record
  ◦to convey complex data
  ◦to make things convenient for the reader
  ◦to save money
  ◦to convey their own messages more effectively

Types of Communication

• Verbal
  ◦Face-to-face
  ◦Phone conversations
  ◦Informal meetings
  ◦Presentations
  ◦E-mail messages
  ◦Letters
  
• Nonverbal
  •Computer graphics
  •Company logos
  •Smiles
  •Size of an office
  •Location of people at meetings

Communication Purposes

• All business communication has three basic purposes
  ◦To inform (explain)
  ◦To request or persuade (urge action)
  ◦To build goodwill (make good image)
• Most messages have more than one purpose

Audiences

• Internal
  ◦Go to people inside organization
  ◦Memo to subordinates, superiors, peers
• External
  ◦Go to people outside organization
  ◦Letter to customers, suppliers, others

Benefits & Costs

• Effective writing
  ◦Saves time
  ◦Increases one’s productivity
  ◦Communicates points more clearly
  ◦Builds goodwill
  
• Poor writing
  ◦Wastes time
  ◦Wastes effort
  ◦Loses goodwill

Criteria for Effective Messages

• Good business writing meets five basic criteria:
  1.Clear,
  2.Complete
  3.Correct
  4.It saves the reader's time
  5.It builds goodwill
  
• To evaluate a specific document…
  ◦we must know the interactions among…
  1.the writer
  2.the reader(s)
  3.the purposes of the message
  4.and the situation.
• No single set of words will work for all readers in all situations.

10 Business Trends

1. Technology
2. Focus on quality, customers’ needs
3. Entrepreneurship
4. Teamwork
5. Diversity
6. Globalization and outsourcing
7. Legal and ethical concerns
8. Balancing work and family
9. Job Flexibility
10. Rapid rate of change

Conventions

• Conventions - widely accepted practices you routinely encounter
  ◦Vary by organizational setting
  ◦Help people…
  –recognize, produce, and interpret communications
  ◦Need to fit rhetorical situation:
  –audience, context, and purpose

Analyze Situations: Ask Questions

• What’s at stake?
• To whom should you send a message?
• What channel should you use?
• What should you say?
• How should you say it?

Solving Business Communication Problems

• A solution to a business communication problem
  ...must solve the organizational problem
  …meet the needs of the writer or speaker, the organization, and the audience.
• Revise draft for tone
  ◦Friendly
  ◦Businesslike
  ◦Positive
• Edit draft for standard English
  Check Names
  Check Numbers
• Use replies to plan future messages

Create Effective Messages

The following process helps create effective messages:

1. Answer the six numbered questions for analysis
2. Organize your information to fit your audiences, your purposes, and the situation.
3. Make your document visually inviting.
4. Revise your draft to create a friendly, businesslike, positive style.
5. Edit your draft for standard English; double-check names and numbers.
6. Use the response you get to plan future messages.

1. Six Analysis Questions

1. Who are your audiences?
2. What are your purposes?
3. What information must you include?
4. How can you support your position?
5. What audience objections do you expect?
6. What part of context may affect audience reaction?

2. Organize to Fit Audience, Purpose, Situation

1. Put good news first
2. Put the main point/question first
3. Persuade a reluctant audience by delaying the main point/question

3. Make Message Look Inviting

• Use subject line to orient reader
• Use headings to group related ideas
• Use lists for emphasis
• Number items if order matters
• Use short paragraphs—six lines max.

4. Create Positive Style

• Emphasize positive information
  ◦Give it more space
  ◦Use indented list to set it off
• Omit negative words, if you can
• Focus on possibilities, not limitations

5. Edit Your Draft

• Check…
  ◦ Spelling,
  ◦ Grammar,
  ◦ Punctuation
• Double-check…
  ◦ Reader’s name
  ◦Any numbers
  ◦First and last paragraphs
• Always proofread before sending

6. Use Response to Plan Next Message

• Evaluate feedback you get
  ◦ If message fails, find out why
  ◦ If message succeeds, find out why
• Success =
  ◦ results you want,
  ◦ when you want them

Eight Aspects of Business Communication

• All of these aspects are present in any business communication
  …but some might be more emphasized or obvious in certain typed of communication.
• These aspects are also highly interdependent,
  …but we separate them for clarification, discussion, and grading.

1. Task/Context:

• “Context” can be defined as…
  the “time, place, and situation” or
  the “big picture” for communication.
  
• Successful business communicators know that messages never occur in vacuums…
  but are viewed within the larger situations that surround them.

2. Audience:

• the recipient(s) of the message…
  whether that be an individual,
  a group,
  a market,
  or a public.
• “Audience” discussions include…
  analysis (what’s important about the audience)
  adaptation (how that affects the message)
  approaches to particular types of audiences

3. Channel Choice:

• A key consideration, given the proliferation of media and how different they are.
  ◦Effective communicators make wise choices, recognizing the need for…
  documentation,
  speed,
  direct contact,
  opportunities for interaction, etc.

4. Organization:

• Smart communicators ask themselves…
  “What goes where?”
  and the related question “What follows what?”
• When they do, they worry about…
  the order of elements they are working with
  the relationships among those elements (e.g. visual coherence or transitions).

5. Content:

• In business, “content” covers
  what is said…
  what is omitted
  how much of it to include about each point
• Many business communicators forget to consider the importance of amount for small and large areas.

6. Self-expression:

• awareness of the “self” you’re presenting is critical for any business student.
  The presenter’s
  credibility,
  confidence,
  reputation,
  appearance,
  attention to details
• …are all parts of self expression.
• “Selves” here are not just individuals,
  departments
  Organizations
  (A communicator often represents the “face” of an organization.)

7. Visual Impression/Format:

• “Organization” refers to the ordering of content,
• “Visual Impression/Format” treat its
  placement,
  depiction,
  proportions on a page (paper, PowerPoint slide, Web page, etc.).
• These considerations include conventions for formats like where the date is placed on a page (often specific to organizations), as well as aesthetic and functional design decisions.

8. Mechanics/Language use:

• Two discrete (though often blurred) aspects are at work here… conventions & style.
• “Conventions” (spelling, punctuation, grammar)
  are matters of “right and wrong” which can be corrected.
• “Style” (word choice and sentence structure)
  treats matters of effectiveness and
  is often more difficult to define.
  

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Content attributed to:

Locker, Kitty O. and Donna Kienzler. Business and Administrative Communication, 8/e. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. 2008.

Walker, Robyn. Strategic Business Communication: An Integrated, Ethical Approach. Thomson, South-Western, 2006, adapted from Dr. Beth Hoger.

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