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• Communication involves imparting or exchanging information through speaking, writing, or other mediums, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary.
• Communication channels increase with more participants, for example, 2 participants have 1 channel, while 4 participants have 6 channels.
• The communication process involves several steps:
• Encoding: Translating thoughts into a language others understand.
• Message: The encoded result.
• Medium: The method of message delivery.
• Noise: Interference with message transmission.
• Decoding: Translating the message back into meaningful content.
• Best practices for communication include using simple and clear language, adjusting to the receiver, encouraging feedback and questions, and actively listening with paraphrasing.
• There are several communication methods:
• Interactive: Multidirectional exchange (e.g., direct conversations).
• Push: Sending information without guaranteed acknowledgment (e.g., email).
• Pull: Making information available for large audiences (e.g., publishing in repositories).
• When choosing communication methods, take into account the number of participants, required feedback speed, volume of information, and need for confirmation.
• Different types of communication include:
• Formal (written): For critical cases and legal documents..
• Formal (verbal): For meetings and status updates.
• Informal (written): For emails and simple documents.
• Informal (verbal): For quick updates and basic cases.
• For best practices in remote meetings:
• Treat them like regular meetings by dressing appropriately, avoiding distractions, and using a proper workspace.
• Turn on the camera for face-to-face interaction.
• Ensure audio and video quality
• Engage participants with interactive elements such as polls and quizzes.
• Prepare an agenda and stick to it.
• Rotate facilitators when relevant.
• When working remotely, advice includes:
• Maintain a routine similar to office work, including dressing appropriately.
• Designate a specific workspace to create clear boundaries.
• Use dynamic lighting to distinguish work and non-work hours.
• Disconnect by changing environments and clothing after work.

Email Communication

• Emails are often perceived negatively and should not be the primary channel of communication, ideally serving as a secondary communication tool.
• In email communication, avoid:
• Sending unnecessary emails.
• Including irrelevant attachments..
• Overusing "CC" for everyone.
• Excessive back-and-forth communication.
• The best practices for email communication are:
• Using a "Social Sandwich" by starting and ending with friendly small talk.
• Clearly explaining the purpose of the email, your role in the matter, and shared goals.
• Following the KISSS Rule: Keep it Short, Simple, and Structured.
• Additional best practices also include:
• Clearly stating your intentions and, if necessary, what your intentions are not.
• Asking questions and gathering information before jumping to conclusions, and seek confirmation to ensure understanding.
• Expressing openness.
• Key advice for email usage:
• Encourage suggestions, avoid blaming others, and propose alternative communication channels when necessary.
• Always reread emails before sending, especially in emotional situations, to cool down.
• Confirm receipt of important emails.

Stakeholder Management

• Involves creating, collecting, distributing, storing, retrieving, and disposing of information, and ensures timely and appropriate communication.
• The dimensions of communication are:
• Internal vs. External: Communication within or outside the organization.
• Formal vs. Informal: Official vs. casual communication.
• Vertical vs. Horizontal: Communication across hierarchical levels or between peers.
• Official vs. Unofficial: Communication as part of policy or ad hoc.
• Written vs. Oral: Documented or verbal communication.
• Verbal vs. Non-Verbal: Spoken words vs. body language.
• Stakeholders are defined as people or organizations actively involved in a situation whose interests may be positively or negatively affected. Typical stakeholders include managers, team members, internal and external customers, cooperating organizations, plus suppliers, neighbors, and others.
• The stakeholder management process includes
• Identifying stakeholders by documenting their interests, involvement, and impact, and use a stakeholder registry for identification and classification.
• Planning communication by determining information needs and defining the communication approach.
• Distributing Information by making the information available as planned.
• Actively manage stakeholder expectations for active negotiation and address concerns before escalation, and solving existing issues.
• Key stakeholder management tactics:
• Stakeholder Qualification and Matrix are ways of evaluating Stakeholders
• The Qualification Dimensions are:
• Power/Interest.
• Power/Influence.
• Influence/Impact.
• Power/Urgency/Legitimacy.
• The Stakeholder Matrix provides ways to act, based on level of power and interest
• High Power, High Interest: Manage carefully.
• High Power, Low Interest: Keep satisfied.
• Low Power, High Interest: Keep informed.
• Low Power, Low Interest: Monitor with minimal effort.
• A Communication plan should include the following:
• Who needs what information.
• When and how information should be distributed.
• Who will handle the distribution.
• Techniques, tools, and escalation processes.
• Constraints like confidentiality.

Communicating Change

• Examples of change include:
• Implementation of new systems (e.g., ERP, CRM).
• Changes in working conditions (e.g., return to office, relocation).
• Organizational restructuring and workforce reductions.
• Other major organizational changes.
• The Kübler-Ross Change Curve is a framework for understanding emotional responses to change, moving through stages such as denial, resistance, exploration, and acceptance.
• When building a message for change, consider:
• "What are we doing?": Provide a clear summary or "elevator pitch".
• "Why?": Explain the reasons, timelines, and next steps for the change.
• "What?": Define what is happening, when, and the facts.
• "How?": Outline benefits, outcomes, and the impact on various stakeholders.
• A "Call to Action" by ending with clear next steps for the audience.
• To define purpose and goals:
• Describe the business objective and desired outcomes.
• Communicate the purpose of the change to align the audience's knowledge, feelings, and actions.
• Desired reactions include acceptance, engagement, or support.
• To rehearse effectively:
• Practice delivering the pitch
• Gather feedback on others perceptions .
• Continuously refine.
• Effective communication channels include email, posters, news, town halls, blogs, webinars, team meetings, and feedback sessions. Communication channels should be tailored based on degree of involvement needed:
• Awareness: General communication.
• Support: Engagement-focused channels.
• Commitment: Direct, dialogue-based interactions.
• The communication setup involves:
• Identifying the target audience.
• Selecting appropriate channels by matching methods to audience needs.
• Defining, how often updates should be delivered.
• Everyday communication management involves:
• Clarifying responsibilities,
• Following up to ensure feedback and evaluation,
• Show care and attention to individual needs,
• Communicating vision and strategy
• Foster collaboration and involvement through engagement.

Giving Feedback

• Is a mechanism where the effect of an action is communicated back to improve future actions.
• Feedback can be given by:
• Managers to teams
• Team members to managers,
• Any one within the organization.
• Consequences of ignoring feedback include severe outcomes; along with reduced employee engagement, declined performance/productivity, increased turnover, and lower quality of work.
• The main components of effective feedback are:
• Stop: Identify actions to stop.
• Start: Introduce new actions to adopt.
• Continue: Reinforce positive behaviors.
• Main rules for feedback involve to:
• Care: Focusing on improving recipient's outcomes.
• Expectations: Clearly stated.
• Solutions: Collaboratively proposed.
• Consent: Ensure the recipient agrees with the proposal.
• Help: Offering assistance to implement changes.
• Before any session, set aside adequate time.
• The Pendleton feedback model is an iterative process:
• Confirm the recipient is ready to receive feedback.
• Allow recipient to share their view of the situation.
• Identify positive aspects together.
• Discuss areas for improvement.
• Collaboratively develop an action plan.
• When praising:
• Avoid comparisons or conditional statements.
• Be objective and specific.
• When criticizing, do the following:
• Focus on behavior, not the person.
• Provide specific examples and avoid generalizations.
• Be calm, empathic, and constructive.
• Key notes:
• For constructive criticism, highlight positive elements alongside areas for improvement
• Avoid labels and generalizations.
• Effective feedback occurs when the receiver will focus on behavior in the "here and now."
• A feedback summary should:
• Be provided privately, directly, immediately.
• Be specific and actionable and relevant.
• Ensure a balance of positive and negative messages.

Defining Priorities

• The MoSCoW method for Prioritization involves:
• Must have: Essential tasks that if not delivered, activities stop.
• Should have: Important but can be deferred.
• Could have: Nice features, not critical.
• Won't have: Desirable but not delivered in the foreseeable future.
• Steps in applying MoSCoW:
• Identify and list all needs.
• Determine dependencies.
• Check for duplicates or prerequisites, and assess the resources required such as time, money, personnel, and other equipment.
• When reprioritizing, remember tasks may shift in priority, additionally new items may emerge.
• When assessing importance and urgency:
• Urgency: considers deadlines, workload, and time slots.
• Importance is assessed by regulations or the consequences of non-action (quantifiable and non-quantifiable impacts). The Eisenhower Matrix consists of four quadrants.
• Important & Urgent: Tasks requiring immediate action (e.g., crisis management).
• Important but Not Urgent: Long-term planning, strategy building.
• Not Important but Urgent: Routine tasks, unnecessary meetings.
• Not Important & Not Urgent: Time-consuming or low-value activities.
• The impact assessment technique involves evaluating tasks based on Current impact, Urgency, and Future impact using a High, Medium, or Low scale.

Defining goals

• Is a purpose or something you want to achieve.
• Defining agreements, making predictions, rewarding discussions, and doing personal and business planning.
• When setting goals, note there may be challenge in:
• Communicating clear the target
• Establishing a common understanding.
• Defining clear ways to determine if the goal is reached via verification.
• The SMART Framework details each goal should be:
• Specific.
• Measurable.
• Ambitious.
• Realistic.
• Time-Bound.

Knowledge sharing

• It primarily resides in peoples' minds and comes from various sources.
• To effectively do this do the following:
• Inventory available knowledge.
• Store organize and store knowledge.
• Update and keep current info.
• Share to ensure accessibility.
• Data refers to discrete facts stored in structured databases.
• Key activities include capturing accurate data, analysis, synthesizing, and focusing on relevant data.
• Data is the contextualized and stored in semi-structured formats (e.g., documents, emails). Key activities include managing content for ease of capture, querying, reuse/learning and preventing repeated mistakes/duplicate work.
• Knowledge comes from experiences, insights, and judgments, which combines personal, peer, and information. This will also facilitate dynamic decision-making.
• Wisdom represents discernment and ability to apply knowledge with context and common sense.

Communication in Crisis

• A crisis situation arises when there's any serious, sudden, and unfavorable event causing a significant deviation from normal conditions which is potentially dangerous to those involved.
• Crisis situations are unexpected/uncontrolled and caused by:
• E.g., natural disasters, catastrophes, human actions, or omissions.
• Key components:
• Intangible Losses refer to reputations, health, and life risks.
• Material Losses refer to property losses.
• Financial Losses refer to any direct monetary impacts.
• Key element to communication in crisis:
• Form a crisis team with clear roles.
• Determine the information source for external stakeholders.
• Identify the media and conflict sides, if applicable.
• Prepare arguments and scenario-based action plans.
• Establish emergency communication rules.
• The Crisis Team includes top management/experts and be planned in advance, available, and able to quickly make decisions.
• A war room will act as a dedicated location for management. Includes separate spaces for press, silent rooms, it may be inside or outside the company.
• A single point of contact (SPoC) ensures integrity the message and should follow the principles of openness without oversharing, avoiding unconfirmed information and using clear language.
• Media management is how leadership must:
• Maintain a database of journalists, and bloggers.
• Engage even with media that have a negative stance.
• To prepare arguments in case of crises must:
• Base arguments on facts and describe What happened, how, and why including preventable action that was transparent.
• To best take preventative action during a crisis, Scenario Planning the best route.
• Develop plans for best, interim, and worst-case scenarios tailored to each situation is critical.
• Some examples of ways to communication are:
• Prepare ground rules in advance.
• Start and maintain communication immediately and consistently.
• Ensure communication remains fair, factual, and purposeful, fitting to the target.

Negotiation

• Definition: A process involving at least two parties aimed at achieving common goals despite initially differing opinions.
• Common methods include; Arguments, Persuasion, and Resolutions.
• With the goal of creating acceptable solutions.
• There are a few Possible scenarios for negotiation
• Win-Win (Ideal): Ethical behavior, long-term perspective, all benefit while encouraging cooperation.
• Win-Loss: One party wins, resulting in dissatisfaction.
• Loss-Win: One party sacrifices their needs.
• Loss-Loss: No benefits follow.
• In order to successfully prepare for negotiation there are a few actions that should happen such as:
• Define clear objectives and boundary conditions for success.
• Research others' expectations and possibilities and prepare with strong arguments.
• Techniques for Effective Negotiations:
• Authority: Referencing experts or using personal experience.
• Building Trust: Providing non-recommended options.
• Hypothetical.
• Questions: Exploring scenarios casually to avoid showing preferences.
• List Price: Present fixed prices.
• Potential Losses: Highlight what the other party declines.
• Adding Bricks: Gradually introduce info during negotiations.
• Additional Techniques that improve Negotiation:
• Conditional Consent: Agree to one action in exchange for another.
• Small Steps: Work on simple issues.
• Auction: Increase competition.
• Delay difficult topics.
• Limited Mandate: Get upper-level approval .
• Blocking: Highlight external limitations.