Welcome to our topic entitled Principles of Business Communication! Swift, clear and precise communication is the foundation of any business operation. The Principles of Business Communication serves as a basis for a quick, and effective communication which in turn improves productivity, increases efficiency, and reduces redundancies. Whether you are emailing a colleague, pitching a client, or preparing for a job interview, strong communication skills will help you sell more, get more done, and land your dream job.
Intended Learning Outcome (ILO)
At the end of this topic, you should be able to:
- Explain the basic principles of business communication.
Principles of Business Communication
It is impossible to be in business today without the need to communicate with a wide array of stakeholders. Importantly, it is increasingly impossible to communicate with these stakeholders without using some of the newer technologies that have simplified and complicated the business communication landscape, including email, social media and mobile phones. With this in mind, let us examine the business letter and its important role in business communication. At the same time, let us learn the 7 C’s of business letters.
The 7 C’s of Business Letters/Communication
- Correctness. The principle of correctness hinges on facts and proofreading. Correctness refers to both factual and linguistic accuracy. All the information you provide needs to stem from valid, reliable, and credible sources that can be located. This is the reason why Wikipedia is not accepted as an information source for scientific publications. Correctness is fundamental in business letters and research paper discussions, where your claims need to be supported with facts and figures. Correctness is interconnected with the principle of consideration.
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Clarity. This is also known as the principle of clearness. The key to clarity is the observance of simplicity and good organization. Clarity is best achieved through short, simple and fluent sentences and paragraphs. Each paragraph should describe only one idea, and paragraphs should be organized from “the big picture” at the beginning to greater detail towards the end. The last sentence in a paragraph should indicate the information in the next paragraph. Appropriate idea flow ensures that the readers are exposed to right information at the right time, especially if they are not from your immediate scientific field. Clarity is interconnected with the principle of completeness and concreteness
- Conciseness. The key to conciseness is to get to the point. Conciseness means forming your message with minimum number of words possible without invalidating the other 6 C’s. Avoid wordiness, repetition, and filler words or phrases, such as “in short”, “as stated before”, “due to the fact that”, among others. This is also particularly important in project proposals or research papers with strict word limits. Concise message is also more appealing and comprehensible, and will save time both to you and your audience. Conciseness is interconnected with the principles of concreteness and consideration.
- Courtesy. In this principle, it is important to always step into audience or reader’s shoes. Courteous message is written from the viewpoint of the audience. If you prepare a seminar about your latest discovery, you will need to provide background information for your students, but you can skip those and get right to the details for your coworkers. Messages for general public should always highlight the societal benefits of your research. Courtesy requires some thinking about what the audience knows or doesn’t know and forming the message accordingly. Moreover, it is also a way of showing respect. Courtesy is interconnected with the principle of completeness.
- Completeness. This principle requires that no necessary information is missing. A complete message should convey all facts required by the audience. In interdisciplinary research, for example, your reviewers might be from another scientific field. It is therefore wise to include more general information than you normally would if you wrote a paper within your narrow expertise. On the other hand, there is no possibility for corrections or follow-up in the revision process of project proposals. You thus need to ensure that reviewers have all the facts at hand if you wish that your project is convincing.Completeness is interconnected with the principles of clarity and courtesy.
- Concreteness. To be concrete, technical writers must focus on the specifics instead of generalizations. Concrete message is like a fact sheet put into words. For example, it is much better to say: “In the review of the period from 2010 to 2015, A & B (2016) found that 75 % of publications from the research area of X reported on the phenomenon of Y” than “The phenomenon of Y has become increasingly recognized in the recent years.” Avoid also vague words and words with multiple meanings, such as “in the future” , “several”, “quickly”, among others. Concreteness diminishes the need to guess the meaning and the possibility of misinterpretation. Concreteness is interconnected with the principles of clarity, conciseness and consideration.
- Consideration. Always remember that technical writers are people too. Just because scientists are able to deal with complex ideas and tons of information, it doesn’t mean that they are able to deal with a flood of unformatted text. Whatever document you are preparing, be considerate and use visual design to make the main messages stand out. Figures, paragraphs, headings, bulleted lists, and highlights are tools you can use to make your paper, poster, or project proposal more appealing and comprehensible. Consideration also entails good language. Visually or linguistically, your message shouldn’t look as if it was prepared in a hurry! Consideration is interconnected with the principle of correctness.
References:
- . (2013). Principles of Communication: 7 Pillars of Business Communication. Udemy.com. Accessed August 5, 2018, from the website: https://blog.udemy.com/principles-of-communication/
- Leigh Richards. (n.d.) Business Communication Principles. Chron.com. Accessed August 5, 2018, from the website: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/business-communication-principles-716.html