Exam 13: Communication

Which of the following statements about perception and perceptual filters is true?

____ is the withholding of information about organizational problems or issues by employees.

Someone experiencing a(n)____ would be likely to take any negative criticism of his or her department personally.

Call-center training institutes are springing up all over in bigger cities in India, helping young people, for a fee, to de-Indianize themselves. During one lesson at one of the Indian institutes, the instructor was overheard saying, "Americans and the British are very specific with their times. When they say one minute, they mean one minute. When they say two minutes, they mean two minutes." The instructor was referring to the fact that the Americans and the British do not have _____ cultures.

A company decided to solicit ____ from the company's best customers. From the information gathered, the company learned that it needed to modify its invoice form and that the sales staff needed to engage in more follow up.

What is the conduit metaphor? What is its significance to managers?

In the ____ type of grapevine communication network, numerous people simply tell a few of their friends.

Due to perceptual filters, people exposed to the same information will often disagree about what they saw or heard.

In China, you may have an appointment with a client at noon. It is almost customary for you to show up after the appointment time. If you show up at 1 o'clock, or after, they probably will not think twice about your absence. If this same practice were to happen in the United States, you would probably have little chance of doing business because of it. This reflects the Chinese culture's view of ____ time.

The retired founder of L. L. Bean spent much of his time sitting on a set of stairs where he could watch customers coming and going to his store. He typically dressed in old pants, well-worn flannel shirts, and a pair of muddy boots. Customers assumed he was a derelict. Those who recognized him thought of him as a real character. He was seen differently by different people due to ____.

JetBlue JetBlue Airways has had tremendous success by offering direct flights, low fares, wider leather seats, satellite TV in every seat and great customer service. Modeled after Southwest Airlines, JetBlue has the lowest costs in the industry at 6.4 cents per passenger mile. But as its new planes age, its costs will rise, as will the wages it pays its pilots, flight attendants, and mechanics. With only two successful new airlines in the last 25 years, the challenge for JetBlue will be to continue its success as it ambitiously grows from 73 planes and 6,500 employees to 290 planes and 25,000 employees over the next five years. Key to meeting those goals is solid communication. As companies like JetBlue grow, managers must be good one-on-one communicators but must also learn how to communicate effectively with a larger number of people throughout an organization. This is why JetBlue's senior managers speak with every new class of employees as they come through JetBlue's structured orientation process. On the first day of orientation, they teach the new hires about JetBlue's brand and show them how JetBlue earns its money and the role each employee plays in the process. Another part of JetBlue's strategy to communicate and reinforce its organizational culture is a program called Principles of Leadership (POL). POL is a five-day training program completely taught by JetBlue's managers from all levels of the company from the very top to the very bottom. As they teach, JetBlue's managers share real world stories that illustrate ways in which company managers and employees have practiced or violated the five principles of JetBlue's culture. In general, these stories demonstrate when it is proper and improper to break company rules to serve customers. For example, a JetBlue pilot once bought several dozen McDonald's Happy Meals for the kids on his plane. While this was a violation of company spending guidelines, buying those Happy Meals adhered to JetBlue's cultural principle of "Doing the right thing," because the plane was stuck on the ground without food, and the kids on board were hungry. But effective leaders don't just communicate to others; they also make themselves accessible so that they can hear what others, particularly customers and employees, are feeling and thinking about their organization. At JetBlue, the senior managers uses frequent informal meetings and surprise visits to listen to customers and employees. On an almost daily basis, senior management can be found on a JetBlue flight talking to customers. Senior management will typically use the plane's public address system to introduce themselves and say that they want to hear any feedback, good or bad, that passengers have about the airline. Passengers frequently offer advice on where JetBlue should offer new routes and service, but they also complain about the food, meaning the lack of it (just cookies, snacks, and biscotti). Most importantly, the culture of senior management is to listen, write down thoughts and customer comments and turn this information into the organizational to-do's once the flight is over. Refer to JetBlue. JetBlue Airline's senior management officials speak with every new class of employees as they come through JetBlue's structured orientation process. The orientation course is an example of ____ communication.

Urban Legends The concept of "urban legends" (a story that appears mysteriously and spreads spontaneously in various forms and is usually false posted on the Internet)and Internet scams are a real problem for some businesses. Gerber Baby Foods was flooded with 1 million letters and 80,000 phone calls from parents responding to an e-mail about a phony class-action lawsuit. Another urban legend about Costa Rican flesh-eating bacteria that affected banana shipments cost that industry more than $30 million. Procter & Gamble had to deal with claims that its Febreeze product contained Agent Orange, a dangerous chemical. Many companies choose to ignore these myths created by angry customers or rabble-rousers, but experts believe this is the worst possible action to take. Companies should instead do everything possible to reassure its customers. Refer to Urban Legends. The angry P&G consumer who started the rumor about Febreeze would have used ____ to create the initial e-mail message.

____ is the tendency to overestimate our value by attributing successes to ourselves (internal causes)and attributing failures to others or the environment (external causes).

When one of Canada's largest financial service providers wanted to develop a customer-focused sales and service culture, an executive team developed the plan through the use of ____ communication.

Define constructive and destructive feedback. Briefly describe the impact when a manager uses each of these to communicate with a work group.

____ is the tendency to fill in gaps of missing information by assuming that what we don't know is consistent with what we already know.

According to attribution theory, we use two general reasons or attributions to explain people's behavior. They are ____.

WWYD Google Founded in 1998, Google just had its most dominant year ever, with its search market share rising and revenues jumping 25 percent. Still, Microsoft's Bing search engine and Facebook, which passed Google as the most popular website in the world, pose threats as people desire more personalized and social media-related search information. Searches for local information, such as restaurant reviews or directions, are 20 percent of all Google searches and half of all mobile or smartphone searches. Google trails Apple and Amazon in the number of publishers that use its software, devices, and online stores to sell electronic versions of newspapers, magazines, books, music, TV shows, and movies. Finally, Google's Chrome Web browser (13 percent market share)competes with Microsoft's Internet Explorer (55 percent), Mozilla's Firefox (22 percent), and Apple's Safari (7 percent). In this environment, cofounder Larry Page, who had been Google's CEO for three years at startup, returned to the CEO position. An admitted introvert, Page is taking steps to combat paralyzing bureaucracy and change how Google communicates as it begins to diversify and face intense competition. As Google grew, CEO Larry Page became frustrated with the difficulty that product managers and engineers had trying to launch new products and services. Page would give mid-level engineers approval to make changes to improve Google's search engine, but Google's internal processes took weeks before the changes were even considered or approved by other parts of the management structure. One of the ways in which Page hopes to jump-start decision making at Google is through a commitment to improving communications. When Google was a start-up, access to founders and top managers was easy to come by because Google was small. Furthermore, until it reached 10,000 employees, Google relied heavily on self-designing and self-managing teams that would coalesce around interesting product ideas and then develop them on their own. While chaotic, this worked well until Google tripled in size. Today, Google's top management suffers from the same communication problems found at similar sized companies, namely, that it infrequently interacts with lower level managers. As the number of managers and levels increase, it becomes difficult to communicate directly with those in the lower and middle ranks. To overcome this problem, and to unfreeze Google's paralyzed decision making, CEO Larry Page e-mailed Google's engineering and product managers asking them to write to him, in 60 words or less, about the projects they're working on. The idea, according to Page, was for them to "pitch" their project ideas to him. This doesn't mean, however, that Page will support every project idea sent his way. In fact, he's likely to eliminate or reduce resources for projects that he considers less important, such as Google Health, which lets people securely store medical records online. Page has also established a "bullpen" session every afternoon during which he and Google's other top executives sit in a public area outside the board room in Building 43. The idea is that employees know they'll be there at the same time every day and that they can approach them directly to discuss any issue. Page also expects the bullpen sessions to improve communication among Google's top executives. Finally, Page has begun an internal "tour" at Google in which he visits with people and departments throughout the company to hear directly about the problems they face. Page is also trying to push more effective communication practices down to lower levels at Google, advising managers and employees to better manage their meetings by designating who is responsible for carrying out decisions. He's also encouraging them to communicate more effectively together during meetings by not working on their laptops or reading their smart phones. Refer to WWYD Google. With so many projects happening at Google, Larry Page requested managers to send him a brief written description of their ideas. This is likely because:

The steps in the basic perception process include all of the following EXCEPT ____.

Managers generally like and use____ but are less receptive to using ____.