What you’ll learn to do: explain the importance of effective communications within an organization

When you were a child you may have played a game called “telephone,” in which one person whispers a phrase into the ear of the person sitting next to her, and she, in turn, whispers the message to the next person, and so on, until the message travels around to the very last person, who announces to everyone what she heard. After traveling through the “telephone,” what may have started as “Joni likes going to the beach” has become “Your knee likes groaning tuna—eek!” It’s a fun game . . . but it also points out a very real challenge that all businesses face: how to avoid the distortions of the telephone game and maintain effective communication within the organization. In this section you’ll learn some of the communication practices businesses use for doing just that.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

The learning activities for this section include:

• Reading: Effective Communications in Business
• Self Check: Effective Communication

Take time to review and reflect on this activity in order to improve your performance on the assessment for this section.