Organizational Communication- Applied

The company that my group made was a privatized comedy television station called "Kicks n' Giggles" that was based of of the Bet-Your-Company-Culture. Our main goal was to achieve higher ratings than other stations with the different televisions shows that we air. The main shows that we will show are sitcoms and movies, mainly of the comedy and dramady genre.

The leadership hierarchy that we have will have a CEO at the top who is driven and able to communicate well. Below him or her will be a board of directors and then below them will be a board of supervisors/representatives and then at the bottom will be all the technical employees. They will all report any problems to the people above them and they have to be able to communicate well with everyone. They must be open-minded to each other and new ideas as well. We will have meetings where everyone can give their input for new ideas. The type of communication we will use is non-controlling and downward. We will also have promotional rewards to help keep the morale of the office up and people working hard. Wacky tie wednesday is also a must here at Kicks n' Giggles!

Organizational Communication- Personal

In my experience working at a restaurant in Phoenix called Market Bistro, the manager that I had used supportive communication and was always open to talking about problems in the workforce. She would help anyone to solve problems that had arisen while at work and even developed a system of rewards for the employee that worked the hardest that month. The employee that worked the hardest and showed the most effort was rewarded with a $25 gift card to their choice of place. This system helped to create a positive morale in Market Bistro and made the employees more happy and we had a stronger desire to work harder. My manager was about 23 and this made it easy to talk to her about problems that were going on or something that had happened while I was at work. She was very involved in working with all of the employees below her in order to gain a better understanding of them and how they felt in the work environment.

In order to communicate effectively, we also used notes left at the register and on the schedule where people would see them. They were normally about if something had changed about the schedule or if we were out of a specific food for phone orders. This helped create a better communication style though because it was always right next to the register for me to see whenever someone called in a phone order. This type of organizational communication was a great help to the restaurant and provided them with the much needed tools for being a thriving bistro.

Organizational Communication- Definitional

In organizational communication, there are four types of organizational cultures that exist in different companies. These different types of cultures show how people interact in the workforce and the different types of leadership that go with them.

The first type of culture is Tough-Guy-Macho-Culture and this normally exists in high-risk organizations like police departments and surgeons because they deal with life and death situations. Other places where this type of culture is used are management consulting and venture capital firms where they make fortunes yet lose them at the same time.

The second type is the Work-Hard-Play-Hard Culture where the organization focuses on the sales and maintaining the customers needs. Some examples of this culture are IBM, Xerox and Hewlett-Packard. This culture also uses celebration to keep energy and motivation up so the workers continue to do their job well.

Bet-Your-Company Culture is the next type of organizational culture and this requires that you endure high risks but slow feedback. Large oil companies invest millions of dollars in exploring places for oil before they see any success or failure. Same goes for NASA, mining companies and the military; they all invest in something without seeing feedback for quite sometime.

Process culture is the last type of organizational culture and this is a low-risk, slow feedback culture. The types of companies that fall into this category are mainly pharmaceutical firms and other highly regulated industries. The people that work in these cultures hardly ever see the results of their work. The main focus is on the process of how to get things done. There is a lot of communication between the employees, whether it be through meetings or memos.

All of these cultures are used in each company that is in our world today. They are very important to the organization of the different workforces that are present in our community. Without these different organized cultures, there would be much difficulty communicating with the people inside the business.

The Nonverbal Message- Application

The facial expression is one of the key factors in nonverbal communication and in an episode of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Charlie is "the wild-card" of the group. The gang is trying to get a loan from the bank and they each have a key role that they are going to play when they go to the bank to talk to the loan adviser. Charlie decides he wants to have a "wild-card face" to get the point across that he's the one that can do anything in a moments notice. He practices a few faces that obviously show that he is not a "wild-card" and goes to practice more. The point of this is that he wants to use nonverbal communication to show his role in the group at different points of the television program. Dennis and Mac make fun of his facial expressions and ask him what he is trying to tell the people with his face. This is a valid question because that is the whole point of a facial expression, one is trying to convey something without words. So when Charlie practices his facial expressions, he is able to communicate between others without words and he has a successful yet weird "wild-card" face.

The Nonverbal Message- Personal

With the nonverbal message, facial expressions also plays a large role in communicating between people. People have told me that I always use facial expressions when I'm communicating with them. Apparently I have a "signature Beth face" that I do whenever someone says something that I don't agree with or think is dumb. It's just a blank stare that I give them and then they say "Don't give me that look!" because they know what I'm thinking by the facial expression that I do. Facial expressions play a big role in my communication style because I tend to use them with everything that I say. I also raise my eyebrows a lot for a look of surprise. I think that the different facial expressions that I do daily are very interesting and say a lot about who I am and what I think because they directly match my personality. For example, I also have a facial expression that I use whenever I say something sarcastic. Some people don't always pick up on this and it confuses them when they don't understand the underlying sarcasm and what I'm actually saying. Learning to read facial expressions can be difficult, especially mine because I have so many of them and I use many different ones so often. Often times I will only respond to things with a facial expression at first and then I'll say something if the person doesn't pick up on my mood right away. There are so many different uses for facial expressions. They can convey a mood to someone and change the situation of a conversation instantly. I really enjoy the use of facial expressions and I like to see how many different ones I can use and confuse people with.

The Nonverbal Message- Definitional

With the nonverbal message, space plays a key role. Proxemics is the study of how human beings communicate through their use of space. There are 4 different types of space that we consider appropriate. The first is personal space which is a person's portable territory and we carry with us wherever he or she goes. The distance for personal space is 1.5-4 feet and the voice that is used is soft and slightly lowered. The message that is portrayed is a personal subject matter. We defend our personal space with our personality and communication style. With personal space, we also have a greater feeling of confidence when we are within our own surroundings.

Intimate distance consists of a space of 18 inches or less. The voice that is used is a soft whisper or an audible whisper and the message that is conveyed is either top secret or very confidential. The presence of another person may be overwhelming and unmistakable at times because of the stepped up sensory inputs. The distance of 6 inches or less is usually reserved for close friends and family. People generally tend to avoid close contact with people if they do not know them as well as they do with others.

Social distance is a psychological distance that ranges from 4-12 feet. This distance is suitable for talking to people at a party or something of the like. The voice that is used in this situation is full and with slight over-loudness. And the message that is trying to be conveyed is non-personal information or public information for others to hear depending on the phase you are in. The social distance has been extended by telephone, television, email and teleconferencing. In this type of distance, anxiety is frequently able to be present.

The last type of distance is public distance. This is 12 or more feet of space and it is the largest of the zones. This only exists in human relationships and the styles of public relationships vary drastically between Americans and Europeans. This style of distance is frequented in public speaking because they vary their body movements and gesticulate to get their point across to those listening.

These four types of interpersonal distance make communication between people easier for them to discern between people that are easy to talk to and that are not.