Today’s Multicommunicating Employees Commonly Have Multiple Conversations At Once

Managers used to want total and undivided attention when communicating with employees. Today’s best managers know that employees are increasingly multicommunicating, rather than having one communication at a time. Multicommunicating means to have multiple overlapping and competing communications at the same time. Employees today may be talking, texting, and emailing, or more, all at once. Today’s goals for productivity and efficiency encourage employees to multicommunicate. Today’s best managers expect employees to multicommunicate, and know that employees may have divided attention and delayed responses during communications. However, managers may want to limit some multicommunications, such as when communicating with customers.

Source: Reinsch, N. L., Jr., Turner, J. W., & Tinsley, C. H. 2008. Multicommunicating: A practice whose time has come? Academy of Management Review, 33, 391-403.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

This book examines how people come together in an organized way without being in an organization. A trend of the age is for communication tools to bring people together and help determine who we are and what we do. Social tools allow many people to come together and communicate at a faster and faster rate, such as through “flash mobs” that occur, perform, and disband within minutes. Everyone can be a media outlet of information. Technology has lowered the cost of failure, so many people will try things that only a few people used to try.

Source: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. By Clay Shirky, 2008, Penguin Press, NY, ISBN: 978-1-59420-153-0.

Tribes: Why You Need To Lead Us.

This book examines tribes and how they need leaders. A tribe is a group of people who are connected to each other, who are connected to a leader, and who are connected to an idea. Tribes are all about faith, and belief about an idea and about a community. Lots of tribes now exist because of communication technology that connects the members. Tribes need leaders, so why don’t you lead one? Leaders of tribes help move shared interest to passion, provide tools for communication, and leverage the tribe to help it grow and gain new members.

Source: Tribes: Why You Need To Lead Us. By Seth Godin, 2008, Portfolio, NY, ISBN: 978-1-59184-233-0.

Employees Process Positive Information Faster Than Negative Information

Today’s best managers know that employees can process information at varying speeds. For example, employees will process, or think through and make conclusions about, information that is positive faster than they will process negative information. This happens because employees have much more positive information about themselves stored in their brains than they do negative information. When employees hear positive information, then this new positive information quickly matches up with the positive information that is already there. This employee tendency helps explain why employees rapidly absorb positive feedback, but then take more time to process negative feedback.

Source: Unkelbach, C., Fiedler, K., Bayer, M., Stegmueller, M., & Danner, D. 2008. Why positive information is processed faster: The density hypotheis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 36-49.

Sharing Expectations About Communication Can Improve Employee Satisfaction

Today’s best managers know that effective communication is important for employee satisfaction. When employees have similar expectations about the communication process, then they tend to have higher levels of satisfaction. For example, when employees understand how polite and how efficient communication should be, then they tend to be more satisfied on the job. Polite communication refers to being considerate and respectful of one’s co-workers. Efficient communication refers to how truthful, clear, and relevant someone is when they communicate.

Source: Park, H. S. 2008, February. Communication Research, 35, 88-108.

Presentations: Proven Techniques For Creating Presentations That Get Results

This book offers a wealth of information for improving your presentation skills. The book builds upon the foundation of purpose, audience, and topic when developing an effective presentation. The main challenges to overcome when presenting are: keeping your sense of humor, dealing with late arrivers, handling early departures, audience interruptions, inattentive and argumentative audience members, saboteuring attendees, and audience members who steal the show from your presentation. Listen to yourself speak, such as by recording yourself, and you’ll get a wealth of useful feedback to help you improve.

Source: Presentations: Proven Techniques For Creating Presentations That Get Results. By Gary McClain, 2007, Adams Media, Avon, MA, ISBN: 978-1598691535.

Specifically State Your Feelings In Electronic Messages To Improve Message Accuracy

Employees are increasingly communicating to each other via email or text messages. Today’s best managers know that email and text messages typically don’t accurately portray the emotions of the person sending the message. Because of the lack of cues (facial expressions, eye contact, etc.) in electronic messages, receivers tend to believe that the message is more negative and/or more neutral in tone than was intended. To help message receivers accurately understand your emotions in electronic messages, specifically state your feelings in writing. For example, write that you are happy that the employee liked your idea.

Source: Byron, K. 2008. Carrying too heavy a load? The communication and miscommunication of email. Academy of Management Review, 33, 309-327.