Face-to-Face Wins the Case

 Face-to-Face Wins the Case

A critical soft skill for project managers to master is communicating effectively. According to Jena and Satpathy (2017), soft skill reflects a person’s relationship with other people through his character traits and interpersonal skills. A project manager has the sole responsibility to manage a project effectively. Therefore, managing people is one of the requirements a project manager must attend to for a project to be successful. 

This week's assignment taught us to view the multimedia program “The Art of Effective Communication.” In the program, I observed a piece of communication in three different modalities: written text, audio, and video to represent face-to-face communication (Walden, n.d). Here is a brief synopsis of each modality. 

Written Text /Email

In most businesses, day-to-day communication happens often enough by the use of email. The purpose of an email message for business use should be to express an individual’s needs, requirements, and intentions (Chhaya et al., 2018). When I read the email message, gaining insight into the sender's mood and tone was difficult. Some linguistic features in the email classified the correspondence as urgent. However, the sender seemed empathic to the idea that the receiver may be too busy to comply with the urgent request. 

Audio

According to McDowell Marinchak et al. (2017), listening to others is an active communication skill that requires discernment and attention. When I listened to the message, the first few words sounded like an excuse in inflections of her voice that she was giving the recipient as to why she did not have what she needed from them, which was presumptuous in tone. Instead of sounding empathic in a professional way, she should have stated what she needed upfront.  

Video

Face-to-face communication is often more effective than written or audio-only conversations. When watching the employee say the correspondence, I saw her facial expressions match the tone of her message. The speaker adjusted her pitch and pace to emphasize her urgency to get what she needed and stress the importance of such. 

Conclusion 

Jena and Satpathy (2017) articulate that communication in soft skills doesn’t focus on the syllables or speeches rather it gives importance to the tone and style in which the communicators speak to their audience. The email message stated that the information Jane needed was crucial for her to complete a task but urgently needed to stick to a deadline. To send this request through email means that Mark may or may not have access to the message because he is in an all-day meeting. Although email can be helpful to quickly get a piece of news to someone with access to a device and data, the language and style must be clear and concise. The voicemail would have been effective had Jane stated assertively at the beginning precisely what she needed, when she needed it, and ended the message by thanking Marking for attending to the matter of importance. As we all have heard, the cliche ‘it is not what you say, but how you say it’ could have helped Jane in this case. With more professionalism in her tone and less emotion, Mark may be more receptive to the message’s choice of words and style if he listens to it on time. Jane disempowered herself in the voicemail. Moving on to the video, the personal interaction between Jane and Mark was fascinating to watch from Mark’s perspective. The video confirmed that technology (email and voicemail) should enhance interaction but certainly cannot replace it. The video conveyed the message's true meaning and intent because Jane immediately connected with Mark with business-friendly body language and tone while respectfully asking for her needs (Walden, n.d). The in-person meeting was an invaluable means of communication. Soft skills are considered critical traits for one’s career growth, and conducting face-to-face interactions with your colleagues effectively will get you the desired result from the conversation. 

To gain insight into the words and phrases you should avoid in the workplace, as well as some useful expressions that will help you to sound more professional, please watch this video:

 

 

References

Chhaya, N., Chawla, K., Goyal, T., Chanda, P., & Singh, J. (2018, June). Frustrated, polite, or formal: Quantifying feelings and tone in email. In Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Computational Modeling of People’s Opinions, Personality, and Emotions in Social Media (pp. 76-86).

Jena, Anupama, and Swasti Suvasweta Satpathy. "Importance of soft skills in project management." International Journal of Scientific Research and Management 5, no. 7 (2017): 6173-6180.

McDowell Marinchak, C. L., DeIuliis, D., & Flinko, S. (2017). Finding Clarity: Professional Civility and the Art of Listening in Effective Business Communication. Listening, 52(2), 66-84.

mmmEnglish (2019a). YouTube. Be Professional! Never say this at work! Retrieved September 20, 2023, from https://youtu.be/0_6B6tlpIdM?si=Ufl-dxsuh_aKQ4re. 

Walden University (N.d.). EDUC6145_AOC. Retrieved September 21, 2023, from https://cdn-media.waldenu.edu/2dett4d/Walden/EDUC/6145/03/mm/aoc/index.html#.  

Walden University, LLC. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Communicating with stakeholders [Video file]. Retrieved from https://waldenu.instructure.com