Communicating at Work: Strategies for Success in Business and the Professions 11th Edition by Ronald Adler,Jeanne Marquardt Elmhorst,Kristen Lucas

Exercise 1

Faking Your Feelings
Every speaker wants to appear confident and enthusiastic. But sometime during the course of your speaking career, you are likely to face an audience when you do not feel self-assured or enthusiastic about your topic. How can you reconcile the ethical demand to be honest with the pragmatic reality that business communicators are sometimes asked to present ideas they do not personally like?
Suppose, for instance, you have been asked to introduce a colleague you dislike and believe is unqualified for his or her job to a group of new employees or customers. How would you handle this challenge? Or imagine your supervisor created a proposal for your department to share certain equipment with another department. You do not favor the proposal because you foresee conflicts in completing work on time. Because you are enthusiastic and well liked in all departments, your supervisor asks you to present the proposal to the other department "with your usual enthusiasm and persuasion." What do you do?
You may choose to use the interviewing skills described in Chapter 6 to ask experienced communicators how they face these challenges. On the basis of their answers and your own thoughts, develop a policy on how accurately your public demeanor should reflect your private misgivings.