Assignment 4: Communication Methods

Dr. Valery Shumate
MGT505
December 1, 2013
Augusta Campus, Strayer University

In choosing five different communication methods and identifying and advantage and a disadvantage for each one: Face to Face communication, Advantage: Creates a better experience because the depth of understanding is enhanced by body language and posture.
Disadvantage: Body language could be misread and lead to a miscommunication of the intended message. Facial expressions could be seen as disrespectful, confrontational and less favorable depending on when and how often expressions are made.
Telephone, Advantage: With the presence of cell phones, communication can be done anytime and anywhere. Smart phone also allow for multiple avenues to make contact with the individuals as well. Disadvantage: The cell phone presents times when phone conversations may not be appropriate and could cause a miscommunication in the conversation. Also, if the individuals does not answer the phone in the callers mind they could be ignoring the call all together. Videoconferencing Advantage: It is inexpensive, builds relationships, and allows face to face communication with multiple persons at once from various locations. Disadvantage: There could be technical problems that hinder the conference from happening. Questions and dialogues are minimal because of the time delay form one site to the next, the time delays creates a challenge because if those who are in the conference has to interrupt so to speak to have their voice heard because the time delay is not real time.
Email, when you need to get an important message to a client or business associate that is located thousands of miles away, one of the fastest ways to do it is by email. The advantage email has over the telephone in communication speed is that you can send attachments with an email that contain important documents or even a presentation to clarify your message.
Thousands of email messages can be archived into folders on your computer or handheld communication device such as a cell phone to be retrieved when you need them. The convenience of email prevents you from having to keep file folders filled with papers and it makes your important correspondence portable. A disadvantage of email is that people tend to treat it like a conversation because email can happen so quickly and they begin to use slang terms and try to carry on conversations via email. Because email recipients cannot see each other, the emails do not have any voice inflection or emotion that can help with proper interpretation. Memos, Advantage: Reach a large amount of employees at one time. The message could be very traditional or high impact that is easy to interpret. Disadvantage: The memo could have a message that is not easy to interpret and is hard for the reader to understand. Disadvantage of standard memos is that they are designed to contain one or two pages of information. This makes them a less-than-useful tool for communicating complex topics. Memos are also meant to focus on a single subject, so they’re not a good choice if you need to convey multiple areas of information to employees.
One of your employees is constantly late, leaving food and drinks at the work station, and you are forced to address the situation. The best form of communication for this situation is face to face. Face to face communication is the “richest: form of communication because it contains cues from many sources that add to the interpretation of the message exchanged by the sender and receiver. (Stuart, Sarow, & Stuart, 2007).
This would be the form because it is important that the employee who is participating in this type of behavior in the workplace understand the implications of the rules that are being broken in the workplace. The employee may need a serious demeanor and body language that
expresses