Back to Basics: Avoiding Ethical Lapses in Business Communication

This is the fifth post in a new series in which we revisit the fundamentals of business communication, from what it means and why it matters to tips and techniques for success. We’ll present the information in ways that you can share directly with your students, and we hope this information will enhance your lectures and class discussions.

 

Ethical communication includes all the information an audience needs to make an informed decision or take an informed stance on an issue and is not deceptive in any way. Whenever you communicate in business, you ask audiences to trust that you will provide information that is complete and true.

If you intentionally violate that trust, you have engaged in unethical communication. Unethical communication can take several forms: withholding information, distorting information, and plagiarizing. Note that some of these choices can also be illegal in certain circumstances.

Withholding Information

Senders can be tempted to intentionally withhold information, such as avoiding taking responsibility for mistakes or presenting an incomplete set of facts when making a proposal. The widespread use of social media has increased the attention given to the issue of transparency, which in this context refers to a sense of openness, of giving all participants in a conversation access to the information they need to accurately process the messages they are receiving.

In addition to the information itself, audiences deserve to know when they are being marketed to and who is behind the messages they read or hear. Two important concerns in this regard are native advertising and stealth marketing. Native advertising, also known as sponsored content, is advertising material that is designed to look like regular news stories, articles, or social media posts. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires companies to label such material as sponsored content if it is likely to mislead consumers into thinking it is “anything other than an ad.” Industry groups such as the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and the Interactive Advertising Bureau give their members specific guidelines to help prevent consumer confusion.

Stealth marketing is the practice of promoting companies and products without making it clear to the audience that marketing activity is taking place. For example, “street team” marketing, in which team members promote goods and services to their friends and members of the public in exchange for prizes or other compensation, is unethical if team members don’t disclose the fact that they are affiliated with a company and are being rewarded for their efforts. Such practices also violate FTC advertising guidelines.

Distorting Information

Intentionally distorting information is also a form of unethical communication. This distortion can involve words, numbers, or images. For example, selectively misquoting someone in order to create a different impression than that person intended is unethical. Statistics and other numerical data can also be presented in ways that distort their implications.

Two examples are using averages to conceal extreme individual values and manipulating trend calculations to suggest future values that the underlying data might not support. For example, you might boast that sales increased 40 percent in April as evidence of a big upward trend, when in fact March sales had been a disaster and all that 40 percent increase did was bring sales back to their earlier level.

Images can be manipulated in unethical ways, such as altering photos or changing the scale of graphs and charts to exaggerate or conceal differences. Distortion and outright fabrication of information are becoming greater concerns as the tools for manipulating sound, images, and video become more sophisticated.

Convincingly “Photoshopping” images to fool audiences (using Adobe Photoshop or a similar program) has been possible for a while now, and the same potential for deception is becoming possible for sound and video files—a phenomenon known as deep fakes.

Business communicators must be more vigilant than ever as information consumers and more careful than ever as information creators.

Plagiarizing

Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s words or other creative product as your own. Note that plagiarism can also be illegal if it violates a copyright, which is a form of legal protection for the originators of creative content. Copyright law covers a wide range of creative expression, including writing, visual design, computer programming, and sound and video recording.

Note that plagiarism standards and copyright law don’t mean you can never use someone else’s work. However, you must use it ethically and legally, including properly documenting your sources, clearly labeling anyone else’s words and images as theirs, and using only minor portions, such as brief quotations. (Depending on the nature of the project and the material, you might need to get written permission to use material.) You can be sued for copyright infringement if you copy a significant part of a work, even if you don’t copy it word for word or profit from doing so.

The concept of fair use provides some flexibility in using others’ creative work without violating copyright, particularly for noncommercial use, but there are no precise guidelines on how much you can use. And as attorney Kerry O’Shea Gorgone explains, fair use can only be invoked as a legal defense after a copyright owner sues you for infringement. You can’t simply take someone else’s content and preemptively label it as “fair use.”

Get in the habit of double-checking yourself on these pitfalls, and you’ll be assured of earning respect as an ethical communicator.

 

Adapted from Courtland L. Bovée and John V. Thill, Business Communication Today, 15th Edition, 2021, p. 24–25. The basic communication process is also addressed in our titles Excellence in Business Communication, Chapter 1, and Business Communication Essentials, Chapter 1.

 

Media Skills: Writing Promotional Messages for Social Media

This is the fourth post in a new series in which we explore a variety of essential skills for using digital, social, and visual media. We’ll present the information in ways that you can share directly with your students, and we hope this information will enhance your lectures and class discussions.

The AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and similar approaches have been successful with marketing and sales messages for decades, but in the social media landscape, consumers are more apt to look for product information from other consumers, not the companies marketing those products. Consequently, your emphasis should shift to encouraging and participating in online conversations. Follow these guidelines:

  • Facilitate community building. Give customers and other audiences an opportunity to connect with you and one another, such as on your Facebook page or through members-only online forums.
  • Listen at least as much as you talk. Listening is just as essential for online conversations as it is for in-person conversations.
  • Initiate and respond to conversations within the community. Through content on your website, blog posts, social network profiles and messages, newsletters, and other tools, make sure you provide the information customers need to evaluate your products and services. Use an objective, conversational style; people in social networks want useful information, not “advertising speak.”
  • Provide information people want. This information can include industry-insider news, in-depth technical guides to using your products, answers to questions posted on community Q&A sites, and general advice on product selection and usage. This strategy of content marketing is a great way to build customer relationships by providing value-added information.
  • Identify and support your champions. In marketing, champions are enthusiastic fans of your company and its products. Champions are so enthusiastic they help spread your message through their social media accounts and other outlets, defend you against detractors, and help other customers use your products.
  • Be real. Social media audiences respond positively to companies that are open and conversational about themselves, their products, and subjects of shared interest. In contrast, if a company is serving its stakeholders poorly with shoddy products, bad customer service, or unethical behavior, an attempt to improve its reputation by adopting social media without fixing the underlying problems is likely to fail as soon as audiences see through the superficial attempt to “be social.”
  • Integrate conventional marketing and sales strategies at the right time and in the right places. AIDA and similar approaches are still valid for specific communication tasks, such as conventional advertising and the product promotion pages on your website.

 

Adapted from Courtland L. Bovée and John V. Thill, Business Communication Today, 15th Edition, 2021, pp. 358–359. Social media communication is also addressed in our titles Excellence in Business Communication, Chapter 8, and Business Communication Essentials, Chapter 6.

Back to Basics: Crafting Messages to Cut Through the Clutter

This is the fourth post in a new series in which we revisit the fundamentals of business communication, from what it means and why it matters to tips and techniques for success. We’ll present the information in ways that you can share directly with your students, and we hope this information will enhance your lectures and class discussions.

For an audience member to receive a message, three events need to occur: The receiver must sense the presence of a message, select it from all the other messages clamoring for attention, and perceive it as an actual message (as opposed to random, pointless noise).

You can appreciate the magnitude of this challenge by walking down any busy street in a commercial section of your town or city. You will encounter hundreds of messages—billboards, posters, store window displays, car stereos, people talking, car horns, street signs, traffic lights, and so on. However, you will sense, select, and perceive only a fraction of these messages.

Today’s business audiences are much like pedestrians on busy streets. They are inundated with so many messages and so much noise that they can miss or ignore many of the messages intended for them. One of the mind’s defenses against this barrage is selective attention, which is focusing on a subset of the incoming stimuli or information sources and ignoring others. Not surprisingly, this focused attention can be helpful at times and harmful at others. If you are on your mobile phone trying hard to hear the other party, your mind will try to block out all the noise sources—one of which might be a car horn warning you to get out of the way.

The business course teaches a variety of techniques to craft messages that get noticed. In general, follow these five principles to increase your chances of success:

  • Consider audience expectations. Deliver messages using the media and channels that the audience expects. If colleagues expect meeting notices to be delivered by email, don’t suddenly switch gears and start delivering the notices via blog posts or group messaging without telling anyone. Of course, sometimes going against expectations can stimulate audience attention, which is why advertisers sometimes do wacky and creative things to get noticed. For most business communication efforts, though, following the expectations of your audience is the most efficient way to get your message across.
  • Make messages user-friendly. Even if audiences are actively looking for your messages, they may not get the messages if you make them hard to find, hard to navigate, or hard to read.
  • Emphasize familiarity. Use words, images, and designs that are familiar to your audience. For example, company websites usually put information about the company on a page called “About” or “About Us,” so today’s audiences expect to see such information on a page with this title.
  • Practice empathy. Make sure your messages speak to the audience by clearly addressing their wants and needs—not just yours. This is the essence of the “you” attitude.
  • Design for compatibility. Make sure your messages are compatible with the devices your audiences will use to read, listen to, or view them. For example, websites designed for full-size computer screens can be difficult to view on mobile devices, so contemporary web design emphasizes the need to support a wide variety of screen sizes and modes of interaction.

 

Adapted from Courtland L. Bovée and John V. Thill, Business Communication Today, 15th Edition, 2021, p. 13. The basic communication process is also addressed in our titles Excellence in Business Communication, Chapter 1, and Business Communication Essentials, Chapter 1.

 

Media Skills: The Email Subject Line: Persuading People to Open Your Messages

This is the third post in a new series in which we explore a variety of essential skills for using digital, social, and visual media. We’ll present the information in ways that you can share directly with your students, and we hope this information will enhance your lectures and class discussions.

The email subject line may seem like a small detail, but it is one of the most important parts of an email message because recipients use it to choose which messages to read and when to read them. Many businesspeople receive dozens or hundreds of email messages a day, and subject lines help them decide where to focus their attention. In addition, the subject line often serves as a “browsing label” when people scan their inboxes to find a message they’ve already read but need to find again.

The optimum wording for a subject line depends on the message, the situation, your relationship with the recipient(s), and whether you are using the direct or indirect approach in the message. For routine, direct messages among close colleagues or subordinates who are likely to read all your messages, a straightforward description of the message’s content is often sufficient. However, if there is a chance that recipients might ignore your message or delay opening it, the subject line requires some creative thought.

To write a compelling headline when you need to persuade someone to open your message, put yourself in the recipient’s shoes. How can you relate the content of your message to this person’s immediate needs and interests, and how can you catch his or her attention in just a few seconds?

Start by identifying issues that are important to the recipient and how he or she is likely to feel about them. What can you do to add positives and remove negatives? For example, someone working in sales wants to close as many deals as possible as quickly as possible, so anything you can offer that relates to that desire could make good material for a subject line. Similarly, a department manager cares about such things as hitting budgets, keeping employees motivated, and avoiding expensive mistakes. If your message relates to any of those goals, use that in the subject line. Whenever you can, give recipients a “selfish” reason to open your message by conveying that it relates to them and their needs.

Next, if a response is needed by a specific date, indicate that in the subject line (such as “Marketing plan draft for your review; please respond by Dec. 14”). Conversely, if a message doesn’t require immediate action, recipients will appreciate knowing this so they can focus on other messages. If you are forwarding information that someone wants to have on file but doesn’t need to attend to right now, for instance, you can add “(no action needed)” to the subject line.

Finally, look for ways to add intrigue to your subject lines, when appropriate. For example, “July sales results” may accurately describe the content of a message, but “July sales results: good news and bad news” is more intriguing. Readers will want to know why some news is good and some is bad.

For every message, keep these general tips in mind for effective subject lines:

  • Make sure you clearly convey the subject of the message. Vague subjects, such as “Interesting idea” or “Update,” don’t give the reader much motivation to open a message.
  • Shorter is better. Assume that recipients will see your messages on mobile devices, which often display fewer characters than full-size screens.
  • In addition to the subject line, the inbox listing in many email systems and mobile email apps displays the first line or two of the message content. You can use the first few words of the message body to continue or expand on the subject line. Alternatively, if you are replying to a message, you can include the opening line of the original message to remind the recipient which message you are replying to.
  • Revise the subject line if an ongoing thread has altered the focus of the conversation or to distinguish newer messages from older messages with the same subject.

 

Adapted from Courtland L. Bovée and John V. Thill, Business Communication Today, 15th Edition, 2021, pp. 197–198. Email skills are also addressed in our titles Excellence in Business Communication, Chapter 8, and Business Communication Essentials, Chapter 6.

Back to Basics: Understanding What Employers Expect from You

This is the third post in a new series in which we revisit the fundamentals of business communication, from what it means and why it matters to tips and techniques for success. We’ll present the information in ways that you can share directly with your students, and we hope this information will enhance your lectures and class discussions.

Today’s employers expect you to be competent at a range of communication tasks that reflect the value of effective business communication. These capabilities can be grouped into four general categories:

  • Acquiring, processing, and sharing information. Employers expect you to be able to recognize information needs, locate and evaluate reliable sources of information, organize information into cohesive messages, and use information ethically. This collection of skills is often referred to as digital information fluency. Information fluency includes critical thinking, which is the ability to evaluate evidence completely and objectively in order to form logical conclusions and make sound recommendations.
  • Using communication to foster positive working relationships. This capability includes listening, practicing good etiquette, resolving conflicts respectfully, and communicating with people from diverse backgrounds.
  • Representing your employer in the public arena. Employers expect you to act responsibly and professionally on social media and in other venues and to follow accepted standards of grammar, spelling, and other aspects of quality writing and speaking.
  • Efficiently using the tools that your employer provides. Aside from in-person conversations and meetings, every instance of business communication involves some level of technological assistance, so employers expect a level of proficiency with the tools they provide you to use.

As you advance in your career, either by moving up in an organization or perhaps by starting your own company, the first three groups of competencies become increasingly important. When top executives are looking for the next generation of leaders for their organizations, they will observe how their employees use information, develop relationships, and represent the company to the public. Shortcomings or poor habits in any one of these areas could stall your career prospects, so keep all these skills in mind as you find your footing early in your career and map out how you would like to progress over time.

Adapted from Courtland L. Bovée and John V. Thill, Business Communication Today, 15th Edition, 2021, pp. 6–7. This topic is also addressed in our titles Excellence in Business Communication, Chapter 1, and Business Communication Essentials, Chapter 1.

 

Media Skills: Four Content Strategies for Business Social Networking

This is the second post in a new series in which we explore a variety of essential skills for using digital, social, and visual media. We’ll present the information in ways that you can share directly with your students, and we hope this information will enhance your lectures and class discussions.

One of the most appealing aspects of social networking for both internal and external communication is the range of options you have for connecting with your communities and for creating and sharing content.

Developing and Sharing Original Content

For business social networking, much of the value you can provide will come from original insights and information you can offer. A good approach is to put yourself in the minds of your social connections and ask what information they could use to improve some aspect of their personal or professional lives. In many instances, the need or desire to share information will be triggered by some change or event, such as when you need to let your employees know about a new company policy. In others, your motivation will be a matter of enlightened self-interest, when you want to create some visibility for yourself or your company while helping others.

For example, you could share tips on using a product more effectively or ideas for saving money. If the information is useful to your readers, sharing it will solidify your reputation as a valuable social media partner.

Responding to Existing Content and Questions

Responding to questions can be a great way to encourage conversations, build your personal brand, demonstrate your company’s commitment to customer service, and clear up confusion or misinformation about your company and its products.

Keep in mind that when you respond to an individual query, whether on your own pages or on a forum or other community Q&A site, you are also “responding in advance” to every person who comes to the site with the same question in the future. In other words, you are writing a type of reference material in addition to corresponding with the original questioner, so keep the long time frame and wider audience in mind.

Curating and Sharing Existing Content

At its simplest, content curation can involve sharing links to useful articles or videos via your social media accounts. Companies can also set up dedicated websites that publish links to original content in a variety of topic categories.

As an alternative, several web services offer ready-made content curation solutions. Pinterest and Scoop.it, for example, make it easy to assemble attractive online portfolios or magazines on specific topics. Content curation is also a good solution for internal communication, if the employees in a firm need to stay up to date on developments in their professions or in the industries in which the company does business.

Curating content for a target audience can be a great way to add value and stand out as an expert in your field, but content curators need to be aware of two key ethical concerns:

  • Never copy anyone else’s posts to your site, even if you properly attribute the source. Instead, provide a link from your site back to the original so that you drive web traffic to the originator’s site. It is acceptable to copy a brief introductory segment, such as the first paragraph, to your site in order to give the link some context.
  • You are promoting yourself as an expert when you curate content, and people will expect you to do a competent job of finding and filtering materials. As with any communication task, make sure you understand the needs of your target audience so that you can provide the best material to meet their needs.

Facilitating User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) is any social media content about a company or its products that is created independently by customers or other outside stakeholders. As with other social media, one of the keys to effective UGC is making it easy for people to contribute content that others will find valuable. First, encourage content that people will want to see and share with colleagues, such as tips from experienced customers on various ways to use a product.

Second, make material easy to find, consume, and share. For example, a branded channel on YouTube lets a company organize all its videos in one place, making it easy for visitors to browse the selection or subscribe to get automatic updates of future videos. YouTube lets fans share videos through email or their accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms.

 

Adapted from Courtland L. Bovée and John V. Thill, Business Communication Today, 15th Edition, 2021, pp. 228–230. Social media communication is also addressed in our titles Excellence in Business Communication, Chapter 8, and Business Communication Essentials, Chapter 6.

Back to Basics: What Makes Business Communication Effective?

This is the second post in a new series in which we revisit the fundamentals of business communication, from what it means and why it matters to tips and techniques for success. We’ll present the information in ways that you can share directly with your students, and we hope this information will enhance your lectures and class discussions.

Communication efforts are successful when they transfer information, meaning, and understanding. In some instances, this is a simple matter of sharing basic facts about a topic, but it others it can be complex process of building understanding and negotiating meaning until both parties are satisfied with the exchange.

To make your communication efforts as effective as possible, focus on these five goals:

  • Provide practical information. Give recipients useful information that helps them solve problems, pursue opportunities, or take other action. Understanding your audiences and their needs is a key step to providing the right information.
  • Give facts rather than vague impressions. Use concrete language, specific detail, and information that is clear, accurate, and ethical. “We need to get better at this” isn’t terribly helpful because it doesn’t explain or quantify what “better” means. Depending on the situation, it might also be helpful to explain why the improvement is important.
  • Communicate efficiently. Concise, well-organized messages and documents show respect for people’s time, and they increase the chances of a positive response. Efficiency also means reducing the number of messages or conversational exchanges required to achieve your communication goals. Spending a little more time in the planning and writing stages often saves time in the long run by eliminating multiple rounds of explanations.
  • Clarify expectations and responsibilities. Craft messages to generate a specific response from readers. When appropriate, clearly state what you expect from audience members or what you can do for them. Always look for ways to make your communication efforts more precise. For example, instead of writing “we need to have a plan as soon as possible,” describe what kind of plan is needed and when it is needed.
  • Offer compelling arguments and recommendations. When you are offering an analysis or a recommendation, present compelling evidence to support your message. When a situation calls for persuasive communication, show your readers how they will benefit if they respond the way you would like them to respond.

These five points make a great quality-control checklist as you develop messages, documents, and presentations throughout your career.

Adapted from Courtland L. Bovée and John V. Thill, Business Communication Today, 15th Edition, 2021, p. 6. This topic is also addressed in our titles Excellence in Business Communication, Chapter 1, and Business Communication Essentials, Chapter 1.

 

Media Skills: Online Etiquette

This is the first post in a new series in which we will explore a variety of essential skills for using digital, social, and visual media. We’ll present the information in ways that you can share directly with your students, and we hope this information will enhance your lectures and class discussions.

Digital media seem to be a breeding ground for poor etiquette that can harm companies and careers. Whenever you represent your company online, in any medium, you must adhere to a high standard of etiquette and respect for others. Follow these guidelines:

  • Avoid personal attacks. The disconnected feel of online communication can cause even level-headed people to lose their tempers.
  • Stay focused on the original topic. If you want to change the subject of an online conversation, start a new message or thread.
  • Follow basic expectations of spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. Sending careless, acronym-filled messages undermines your credibility.
  • Use virus protection and keep it up to date. Sending or posting a file that contains a computer virus puts others at risk.
  • Watch your language and keep your emotions under control. A single indiscretion could haunt you forever.
  • Avoid multitasking while using messaging or other tools. You might think you’re saving time by doing a dozen things at once, but you’re probably making the other person wait while you bounce back and forth between tasks.
  • Don’t waste others’ time with sloppy, confusing, or incomplete messages. Doing so is disrespectful.
  • Never assume you have privacy. To be safe, assume that anything you type will be stored forever and that it might be forwarded to other people, analyzed by automated content-analysis tools, and read by your boss or the company’s security staff.
  • Be careful of online commenting mechanisms that aren’t related to work. For example, many blogs and websites let you use your Facebook login to comment on articles. If your Facebook profile includes your job title and company name, those could show up along with your comment.
  • Respect boundaries of time and virtual space. For instance, don’t use colleagues’ or employees’ personal social media accounts as a venue for business discussions, and don’t assume people are available to discuss work matters around the clock, even if you do find them online in the middle of the night.
  • When working from home, approach videoconferencing with the same professionalism you would exhibit in meetings in the office. Reasonable people appreciate the challenges of conducting business from the same location where you live, but do your best to create a business-appropriate background for video calls and to minimize disruptions and distractions.

With so much of business moving online these days, the need for thoughtful, audience-sensitive behavior is greater than ever. Being mindful of positive etiquette will be a definite boost to your career.

 

Adapted from Courtland L. Bovée and John V. Thill, Business Communication Today, 15th Edition, 2021, p. 63. This topic is also addressed in our titles Excellence in Business Communication, Chapter 3, and Business Communication Essentials, Chapter 2.

Nine Tips to Help Your Students Build Effective LinkedIn Profiles

LinkedIn is the most important website for students to incorporate in their job search efforts. Employment recruiters search LinkedIn for candidates far more than any other social network, many employers now want to see LinkedIn profiles rather than conventional résumés, and companies doing background checks are almost certain to look for candidates’ LinkedIn profiles.

Encourage students to think of LinkedIn as a “socially networked multimedia résumé.” An effective LinkedIn profile includes all the information from a conventional résumé plus some additional features that help candidates present themselves in compelling ways to potential employers.

Here are nine tips to share with your students for building an effective profile:

  1. Photo. Add a photo that says “professional” without being overly formal. You don’t need to hire a professional photographer, but the photo needs to be clear and lit well enough so that your face isn’t in shadow. Stand against a visually “quiet” background that won’t distract viewers, dress appropriately for the jobs you are pursuing, and remember to smile.
  2. Headline. Write a headline that expresses who you are or aspire to be as a professional, such as “Data science major ready to make data come alive through leading-edge techniques in data mining, visualization, and AI.” Include keywords that target employers are likely to be searching for. As with other text fields on LinkedIn, you have a limited number of characters to work with here, so focus on your most valuable attributes.
  3. Summary. Write a summary that captures where you are and where you are going. Imagine that you are talking to a hiring manager in a personal and conversational tone, telling the story of where you’ve been and where you would like to go—but expressed in terms of meeting an employer’s business needs. Highlight your job experience, education, skills, accomplishments, target industry, and career direction. Unlike the introductory statement on your conventional résumé, which you can fine-tune for every job opportunity, your LinkedIn summary offers a more general picture of who you are as a professional. Be sure to work in as many of the keywords from your research as you can, while keeping the style natural. Employers can use a variety of search tools to find candidates, and they’ll look for these keywords.
  4. Experience. Fill out the experience section using the material from your conventional résumé. Make sure the details of your employment match your résumé, as employers are likely to cross-check. However, you can expand beyond those basics, such as by including links to photos and videos of work-related accomplishments.
  5. Recommendations. Ask for recommendations from people you know on LinkedIn. You may have a limited number of connections as you start out, but as your network expands, you’ll have more people to ask. A great way to get recommendations is to give them to the people in your network.
  6. Featured skills. List your top skills and areas of expertise. As you expand your network, endorse the skills of people you know; many users will endorse your skills in return.
  7. Education. Make sure your educational listing is complete and matches the information on your conventional résumé.
  8. Accomplishments. LinkedIn offers a variety of categories that let you highlight academic achievements, special projects, publications, professional certifications, important coursework, honors, patents, and more. If you don’t have an extensive work history, use this section to feature academic projects and other accomplishments that demonstrate your skills.
  9. Volunteer experience and causes. Add volunteering activities and charitable organizations that you support.

For the most current instructions on performing these tasks, students can visit the LinkedIn Help center at www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin. Remind them that the more robust they make their profiles, the better their chances are of catching the eye of company recruiters.

All three titles in the Bovée-Thill Business Communication Series offer in-depth advice on the full range of job-search communication, from researching job opportunities to crafting effective LinkedIn profiles. This coverage includes unique perspectives on personal branding, writing "the story of you," and the Build Your Career activities that guide students through the entire process of developing employment-related messaging. (Build Your Career is available in Excellence in Business Communication 13th Edition and Business Communication Today 15th Edition.)

 

Adapted from Courtland L. Bovée and John V. Thill, Business Communication Today, 15th Edition, 2021, pp. 540–541.

Encouraging Students to Apply Their Skills Now: Make QA a Routine Part of the Writing Process

When manufacturers produce something, an essential step in the process is quality assurance (QA), a methodical evaluation of the product’s quality relative to its design goals. This is the last chance before the product ships out to customers to make sure it is something the company can be proud of.

Encourage students to make QA an essential part of their communication efforts, whether they’re writing reports, crafting presentations, or completing any other type of assignment. By practicing now on assignments in all their classes, QA will be second nature when they’re writing and presenting on the job.

Just as in manufacturing, QA in writing is more effective if it follows an explicit, step-by-step process, rather than randomly looking for mistakes. If you haven’t already given your students a proofreading checklist, they can use the following tools:

  • In Business Communication Essentials, 8th ed: Table 5.4: Proofreading Tips, page 126
  • In Excellence in Business Communication, 13th ed: Checklist: Proofing Business Messages, page 206, and Five-Minute Guide to Revising and Proofreading, page 215
  • In Business Communication Today, 14th ed: Checklist: Proofing Business Messages, page 170

With each assignment, remind students to give themselves enough time to evaluate their first drafts, revise to improve readability, edit for clarity and conciseness, and then produce professional-quality output. Once they get in the habit, producing high-quality documents and presentations won’t take much more time and energy than producing mediocre work.

Self-Coaching Ideas for Your Students

  1. Do you ever feel the temptation to say, “Eh, that’s good enough” on an assignment when you know you could do better? What can you do to reset your priorities so that quality work is a matter of habit?
  2. Do you need to examine your work methods to make sure you leave enough time to do an effective QA check on every assignment?

 

Image credit: Stuart Whitmore

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