Category Archives: Professionalism

Encourage Your Students to Put Their New Skills to Work Right Away

The business communication course offers unusual value for students because the insights they gain and the skills they develop can be applied in so many aspects of their personal and professional lives. In the upcoming Thirteenth Edition of Excellence in Business Communication, we’ve added a highlight box theme called Apply Your Skills Now. These boxes […]

Free Video for Classroom Use: Communication Ethics: How to Make Good Choices When Your Choices Aren’t Clear

Here is the sixth video in our new series that addresses a variety of specific communication challenges and offers practical advice that students can apply now in their coursework and take with them on the job. This video gives students a four-step decision model to guide them in making ethical communication choices. Instructor version (concludes […]

Free Video for Classroom Use: The Five Zones of Professional Etiquette

Here is the fifth video in our new series that addresses a variety of specific communication challenges and offers practical advice that students can apply now in their coursework and take with them on the job. This video helps students adapt their behavior to the five zones of professional etiquette: in the workplace, online, on the […]

Using the Business Communication Course to Teach Professionalism

One of the major benefits of the business communication course is that it helps students practice so many valuable skills, from research and analysis to organization and document design. The course also creates an opportunity to incorporate these communication-focused skills into the larger context of being a business professional. We define professionalism as the quality […]

Putting Organizational Culture on Display: Good, Bad, or Just Inevitable?

One of the more intriguing effects of social media is the way these tools have put organizational culture on public display. Companies that might have once been known mostly by products, headquarters architecture, and advertising campaigns are now also represented (officially and unofficially) by legions of bloggers, YouTube producers, and Twitter users. Professionals and managers […]

Teaching Students to Keep Their Cool After a Public Insult

Consumer-review websites such as Yelp can be a boon or a bane to local businesses. They can help businesses with little or no advertising budget get exposure through positive word-of-mouth, but they can damage businesses when unhappy customers use the Internet to vent their frustrations. When a bad review is justified, it can alert potential […]

Résumé Writing: Using a Partner to Get Unstuck

Many people find it difficult to write about themselves when preparing a resume, and the importance of having a compelling resume in today’s tough employment market isn’t making the task any easier. Teaming up with a partner to work on each other’s resume can help, particularly on the qualifications summary or other introductory statement, which […]