Business Communication College

The sender: I think the sender is both Lomax and Tim because Lomax sent his cooperation willingness to Tim and Susie. In a sense, Tim is also a sender as he is the person transmitting his agreement of joint venture to Susie and Clarie.

The receiver: To Lomax, all staffs in Brook&Company are receivers because they received messages from Lomax. To Tim, Susie and Claire are receivers because Tim expressed his join willingness to them. However, the participants are usually senders and receivers at the same time.

The channel of communication means the route through communication take place. In this situation, the channel of communication between Lomax and Brook was by conference call as it’s by talking among Tim, Susie and Claire.

The context includes time, place and socio-psychological factors. The communication was taking place when Brook&Company faced with a dilemma in finance and Lomax expected to invest in Brook and cooperate with them. Both of these two companies wanted to expand their business in the USA. However, one of the Brook’s owner—Susie, who owned the half equity of Brook&Company, was not convinced to join the joint programme due to her worries about losing the control and reputation of her company.

Anything that interferes with effective communication called barriers or noise. The barriers can be physical, such as background noise or a technical breakdown. It can be physiological, such as learning or comprehension difficulties or being tired. Also, it can be psychological, such as attitudes of the sender and receiver. In the context,the physical barriers are distance.I think the distance between Brook and Lomax interfere with their immediate and effective communication. It’s better for them to have a face to face discussing rather than conference call. In addition, Tim losing his temper in his conversation with Susie is unuseful to promote agreement between them, it’s physiological barrier. At last, Susie’s over-worries about losing her control of her company are the psychological barriers in the communication.

I think one is interactional theory and another one is integrated or ‘shared meaning’ theory. Both of these two theories would help meet the communication requirements in today’s ever changing environment. The interactional theory looks at the process of communication, or the transmission of information or message between people. If there is no reply, no feedback, no interaction, the communication would be incomplete. It’s a two-way process to communicate with others. An integrated or shared meaning theory includes the process of constructing meaning and the outcome,shared meaning. In the communication, we should discover the common concepts or ‘common words’ with others, then build good relationship with them. From the original shared meaning, we can expand our common views, narrow differences and achieve effective communications.

The similarities between these two theories are the similar elements. They both includes sender, receiver, encoding, decoding, message, channel, context, perception, purpose and interference. The differences are interactional theory aims at sending and feedback, the process of interaction. An integrated theory aims at discovering the same values among participants and collaborate to construct shared meaning to achieve effective communication.

A model presents a theory in visual form and simplifies a theory. It can aid our thinking about a concept or idea. Also, it shows the major elements in a process and the relationship of these elements to each other. The differences of a model to a theory are, theories are just definitions to explain information or behaviour by words.It has no charts, graphs or diagrams. It’s not visual compared with a model.

A stereotype is a fixed or conventional notion or conception, as of a person, group, idea,etc., held by a number of people, and allowing for no individuality or critical judgement. Gender stereotypes are stereotypes that apply to being a boy or girl especially their personalities in people’s stable conception.

I think the benefits and disadvantages of stereotyping to communication are half to half. Stereotyping can help us prejudge a person’s personality so that we can choose the best suitable manners to talk to him/her. This is the good aspect of stereotyping. However, stereotyping sometimes would mislead our judgement because not all people can be judged by their appearance. So we should apply stereotyping with caution.

M: entrepreneurial, critical, funny, handsome, intense, committed, dynamic, aggressive, competent, logical, gentle, self-starting, competitive, constructive, diligent, intelligent, intense, brave, passionate, active F: romantic, pretty, nursing, impatient, too sensitive, talkative, hates spider, intuitive, like flowers, fashionable, emotional, beautiful, passive B: persistent, assertive, nurturing, fussy, independent, warm.

I think they are aggressive, passionate, passive and too sensitive. Usually, aggressive and passionate are used to describe males because men are more active than women in these aspects. The same, women are more obviously in passive and too sensitive traits than men.

To improve my self-esteem I would improve my abilities of working first because if a man is good in his career, he would be respected by many people. After that I would improve my skills of communication with people as excellent skills in communication can help you build good relationship with others.

For the majority of time, my present level of self-esteem is helpful to my future decision because it gives me confidence and encourage me to achieve my goals, so it’s positive in a large extent. Whereas, my present level in self-esteem is not as perfect as I wanna to be, sometime I also feel confused and hesitate to do a decision.

The difference between self-concept and self-esteem is that the addition of feelings. Self-concept is simply the informational side of things, where you know facts about what you are like. Self-esteem is how you feel about those things you know, like whether you enjoy the fact that you are talkative at parties (high self-esteem) or you think that you are annoying and need to learn to shut up sometimes (low self-esteem). There are a variety of self-esteem effects that can come from the self-concept.

I think self-awareness plays an important role in effective communication because self-awareness tells us what words we can say and how we talk to different kinds of people. Self-awareness can help us avoid to speak pertly in communication.

In China punctuality is so important in any occasion. Especially to business people in China, they think punctuality stands for a person’s credit and quality. In their minds, if you were late, your promise in business also might be delayed. So you’d better attend meeting on time.

I advise you to wear formal clothes in business occasion. In our country, wearing formal clothes means showing respects to others. This will help you make favorable impression to others and build good relationship with them quickly.

Frankly speaking, we use shaking hands and eye contact more frequently than asking questions about personal life and using first names in greeting and polite conversation. We feel it’s not polite to ask somebodies’ personal life as it relates to privacy. In addition, we usually use Mr/Ms plus family name, so it’s not often to use first names.

Usually we exchange business cards with both hands in formal occasion. Using both hands can express our respects to others. We also exchange the cards always because we think even though we have no connection right now, maybe someday we need each other.

We give gift when we visit somebody or some company especially in the first time. What kind of gifts we give are depends on receivers’ hobbies and their culture. Normally we don’t open the gift immediately because it’s not polite. Also we’d like to give expensive gifts with famous company logo to show our respect and high status in business occasion.

As you are a business visitor to China, mostly our Chinese firms have already prepared the accommodation well for you. Usually they would arrange you live in at least three-star hotels and book a sumptuous dinner for you. So what you should do is just enjoying it. If for business we don’t like to live in copartner’s home because we think work should be separated from family life.

Language
For me, I think language is the most important factor in creating a culture because language is the base and transmission of a culture. Without language we can’t communicate with each other well.Also, language can express culture, it reflects the nature of a culture. Geography

Geography is important too. Flat geography with rivers around is good for a nationality’s development. Geography also can influence a nationality’s traits. For example, the people who live in plateau in China are very bold and unconstrained as the people who live in the region of rivers and lakes are not straightforward. Religion

Religion can affect a country’s politics and culture. Religion decides how would the culture develop. Example in India, the cattle are the deity in their religion, so in Indian culture they don’t eat beef and respect cattle very much. Historical events

Historical events also affect a nationality’s personalities. For example, the Jews suffered heavy wars and cruel massacre in the history and they lost their homes, such terrible historical events make Jews people become very aspirant, they study hard, work hard and stick-together.

Differences: New Zealand people don’t care too much about what they wear and how others’ people think of them. Chinese people are very care about their status and how others think of them.Chinese people are afraid of others look down upon them. In their values, big fortune stands for high status, they pay too much attention on making money but not value in spirit. Similar: Both Chinese and New Zealand people are enthusiastic and friendly. They are hospitable and willing to accept new things and new minds. They don’t like American people who are arrogant and exclusive.The majority of Chinese and New Zealand people don’t have racial discrimination.