Reactance Theory

A colleague of mine studies a theory called reactance theory.  The idea is that each of us wants to make our own choices, and when something comes up that limits our freedom to make those choices, we react in such a way as to restore our freedom.  For example, if someone reminds us, “be sure [...]

Upward Influence

We’ve all been in situations where we need to convince a supervisor to go with one of our ideas.  I’ve blogged before about the importance of person-centered messages and solution-oriented conversations as ways of successfully influencing your boss.  All Things Workplace had a great post on ideas for influencing your boss that included audience analysis, [...]

Effectiveness–What You Say, Why You Say It

This week, I’ve talked about dissent messages and effectiveness and dissent goals and effectiveness.  Today, I want to draw these things together.  Our goals make a difference in how effective our messages are.  For example, if you want information, a question may be more effective than sarcasm.  In this research project I have been describing, [...]

What are your goals?

In the research project that I described last time, one of the variables of interest was the dissenter’s goals for the dissent conversation.  When we speak in the workplace or anywhere else, we are motivated by goals.  At work, these goals could be to improve our situation by changing someone else’s behavior, to build or [...]

Dissent Effectiveness

I’m finishing up a research project right now that looked at organizational dissent in a new way.  First, let me remind you—dissent isn’t only the griping and complaining that first comes to mind for many people.  Dissent is what happens when an employee expresses thoughts or feelings that are different from what management expects that [...]

Delivering Presentations

I know in the last post, I ranted about skills-based education, but I wanted to address a particular skill that I think is important but hard-to-come-by.  I see students and professionals alike delivering poor presentations.  The ubiquitous PowerPoint slides are fine and the content may even be adequate, but the speaker stands at the front [...]

Critical Thinking

Please forgive the soapbox digression, but I wanted to talk a little bit about education and organizations.  Through the course of this recent semester, I have heard two talks at my university about the value of a liberal education.  To be clear, a liberal education is typically one where students study a broad range of [...]

Authenticity

I recently asked my organizational communication class how they would define effective communication in organizations.  This class is a senior, capstone class, and these students are about to be entering the workforce.  I wanted to ask what they wanted in terms of communication from the organizations in which they would be working.  The first thing [...]

NonProfit Organizations–Practical Applications from Recent Research

I’ve blogged several times about the nonprofit study that I just completed.  Here are two practical applications that have come from that research.  First, if you want constructive feedback from volunteers, don’t seek out those who volunteer for selfish reasons.  If they are looking for a career stamp or need to volunteer because of a [...]