Glossary Chapter 16 acquaintance time cultural norm for how much time you must spend getting to know someone before the person is prepared to do business with you active listening assuming half the responsibility for successful communication by actively giving the speaker nonjudgmental feedback that shows you’ve accurately heard what he or she said address terms cultural norms that establish whether you should address businesspeople by their first names, family names, or titles appointment time cultural norm for how punctual you must be when showing up for scheduled appointments or meetings attribution theory theory that states that we all have a basic need to understand and explain the causes of other people’s behaviour closure tendency to fill in gaps of missing information by assuming that what we don’t know is consistent with what we already know coaching communicating with someone for the direct purpose of improving the person’s on-the-job performance or behaviour communication the process of transmitting information from one person or place to another communication medium the method used to deliver an oral or written message company hot lines phone numbers that anyone in the company can anonymously call to leave information for upper management conduit metaphor the mistaken assumption that senders can pipe their intended messages directly into the heads of receivers with perfect clarity and without noise or perceptual filters interfering with the receivers’ understanding of the message constructive feedback feedback intended to be helpful, corrective, and/or encouraging corporate talk shows televised company meetings that allow remote audiences (employees) to pose questions to the show’s host and guests counselling communicating with someone about non-job-related issues that may be affecting or interfering with the person’s performance cross-cultural communication transmitting information from a person in one country or culture to a person from another country or culture decoding the process by which the receiver translates the written, verbal, or symbolic form of a message into an understood message defensive bias the tendency for people to perceive themselves as personally and situationally similar to someone who is having difficulty or trouble destructive feedback feedback that disapproves without any intention of being helpful and almost always causes a negative or defensive reaction in the recipient discussion time cultural norm for how much time should be spent in discussion with others downward communication communication that flows from higher to lower levels in an organization empathetic listening understanding the speaker’s perspective and personal frame of reference and giving feedback that conveys that understanding to the speaker encoding putting a message into a written, verbal, or symbolic form that can be recognized and understood by the receiver feedback the amount of information the job provides to workers about their work performance formal communication channel the system of official channels that carry organizationally approved messages and information fundamental attribution error the tendency to ignore external causes of behaviour and to attribute other people’s actions to internal causes hearing the act or process of perceiving sounds horizontal communication communication that flows among managers and workers who are at the same organizational level informal communication channel (“grapevine”) the transmission of messages from employee to employee outside of formal communication channels kinesics movements of the body and face listening making a conscious effort to hear noise anything that interferes with the transmission of the intended message nonverbal communication any communication that doesn’t involve words online discussion forums the in-house equivalent of Internet newsgroups; Web- or software-based discussion tools available across the company to permit employees to easily ask questions and share knowledge with each other paralanguage the pitch, rate, tone, volume, and speaking pattern (i.e., use of silences, pauses, or hesitations) of one’s voice perception the process by which individuals attend to, organize, interpret, and retain information from their environments perceptual filters the personality-, psychology-, or experience-based differences that influence people to ignore or pay attention to particular stimuli schedule time cultural norm for the time by which scheduled projects or jobs should actually be completed selective perception the tendency to notice and accept objects and information consistent with our values, beliefs, and expectations, while ignoring or screening out or not accepting inconsistent information self-serving bias the tendency to over-estimate our value by attributing successes to ourselves (internal causes) and attributing failures to others or the environment (external causes) survey feedback information collected by surveys from organizational members that is then compiled, disseminated, and used to develop action plans for improvement televised/videotaped speeches and meetings speeches and meetings originally made to a smaller audience that are either simultaneously broadcast to other locations in the company or videotaped for subsequent distribution and viewing upward communication communication that flows from lower to higher levels in an organization