Guide to Interpersonal Communication (Guide to Business Communication Series)

Brief, practical, and reader-friendly, this is a handy guide for improving your business interactions and relationships. It offers clear, straightforward tools useful in a professional context, with an "easy-to-skim" format and a direct, matter-of-fact tone. This book gives practical advice on how to improve the foundational interpersonal communication skills of listening, feedback, asking and responding to questions, and adjusting to others' styles. It offers step-by-step recommendations for approaching such common interactions as interviewing, negotiating, and conducting performance appraisals. This direct, step-by-step guide for interpersonal communication skills is a necessary read for people who communicate in professional contexts, such as managers, supervisors, and executives in any business or professional arena.

HOW THIS BOOK CAN HELP YOU This book can help you if you are looking to improve your interpersonal interactions in any business relationship. For example: You have been told you don''t listen to people, but you don''t know why they have that impression. What can you do differently? You need to deliver difficult feedback to a valued colleague. How can you do that without damaging the relationship? Although you spend significant amounts of time on the phone with clients, you never seem to gather the information you need. How can you ask questions differently to achieve better results? You want to improve your relationship with your boss but have a hard time feeling at ease. How can you adjust your behavior to create more comfortable interactions? You need to hire several new people to build your department. How can you approach the interviewing process to increase your chances of choosing the people with the best skills for the jobs, as opposed to the most comfortable conversationalists? You have to negotiate a new contract with a challenging vendor and feel intimidated by the idea. How can you prepare for the negotiation? You feel uncomfortable about conducting performance appraisals for your staff and are unsure about how to approach the interactions. How can you plan the sessions? You want to improve your business relationships and want ideas on how to manage your behavior to facilitate interactions. You want to evaluate your interpersonal skills in anticipation of professional advancement: how can you hit the ground running for more challenging interactions like interviews, negotiations, or conducting performance appraisals? Read this book on its own, or use it as a reference when taking a professional course, college course, workshop, or seminar. WHO CAN USE THIS BOOK This book is written for you if you want a guide for improving your business interactions and relationships. Specifically, the book will... Give practical advice on how to improve the foundational, interpersonal communication skills of listening, feedback, asking and responding to questions, and adjusting to another''s style. Offer step-by-step recommendations for approaching common interactions like interviewing--from the perspective of both the interviewer and the interviewee--negotiating, and conducting performance appraisals. WHY THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN The thousands of participants in various management communication workshops and courses we have taught at universities and corporations in the United States and abroad have expressed interest in direct, step-by-step guidelines for interpersonal communication skills. They have found other texts in these areas too long, too theoretical, or too anecdotal for their needs. That''s why Prentice Hall is publishing the Prentice Hall Series in Advanced Business Communication--brief, practical, reader-friendly guides for people who communicate in professional contexts. (See the inside front cover of this book for more information on the series.) Brief.This book summarizes key ideas only. Culling from thousands of pages of text and research, we have omitted bulky examples, cases, footnotes, exercises, and discussion questions. Practical:This book offers clear, straightforward tools you can use. It includes only information that you will find useful in a professional context. Reader friendly:We have tried to provide an easy-to-skim format using a direct, matter-of-fact, and nontheoretical tone. HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED The book is divided into two parts. Part I: Building Blocks Effective interpersonal communication is based on the building block skills of listening, feedback, questioning and responding, and awareness of others'' styles. I. Listening:The cornerstone for building an interpersonal relationship is to listen effectively: using attending, following, and reflecting skills, and avoiding barriers to listening. II. Feedback:Delivering feedback can be a challenge. This chapter explains how to do it in a way that will help you to deliver feedback directly while maintaining your relationship with the other person. The chapter also gives tips on how to receive feedback from others. III. Questioning and Responding:How you ask questions can either encourage conversation or discourage longwindedness. This chapter reviews techniques for wording questions to elicit the kind of response you want, as well as how to respond effectively to questions. IV Social Styles:Understanding how to identify and interact with people of different styles will help to improve your relationships. This chapter describes how to identify your own and others'' styles, and gives tips on adjusting your behavior to facilitate interactions. Part II: Application Opportunities This section applies the building block skills covered in Part I to three specific interactions in the business world: interviewing, negotiating, and conducting performance appraisals. V Interviewing:This chapter covers the steps you follow in preparing for an interview, engaging in an interview, and following up after an interview-from the perspective of both the interviewer and the interviewee. VI. Negotiating:How to determine your strategy for a negotiation and how to conduct yourself during the negotiation for best results are covered in this chapter. VII. Performance Appraisals:Performance appraisals should be used as coaching opportunities whenever possible. This chapter covers how to prepare for a performance appraisal, and how to structure a session.