improve written communication skills business

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Business English Communication Skills

Are you a professional who wants to communicate effectively in English? The Business English Communication Skills online program can help you expand your vocabulary and learn terminology. The skills you learn can apply to negotiations, telephone conversations, reports, emails and presentations. 

English Level

Intermediate

Not Eligible

What You'll Do

• Learn to communicate effectively in English in professional contexts
• Expand your English vocabulary
• Improve your ability to write and speak English in both social and professional interactions
• Learn terminology and skills that you can apply to business negotiations, telephone conversations, written reports and emails, and professional presentations

The Business English Communication Skills program — also known as a specialization — consists of four courses and a capstone project:

• Business English: Networking
• Business English: Meetings
• Business English: Planning & Negotiating
• Business English: Making Presentations
• Business English: Capstone Project

You can enroll in a single course or the entire program. After you complete all four courses and the capstone project, you’ll receive a certificate recognizing your accomplishment. Program costs vary based on the number of courses you take.

Meet a few of our program instructors in this video .

More Information

This online program is offered in partnership with Coursera, a leading online learning platform. For more information and to register, visit the Coursera program page .

For help with registration, payment, refunds and technical issues, contact Coursera directly.

Upcoming Sessions

Ongoing: flexible start dates

Register Now  

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Business Development > Starting a Business > Business Organization & Structure

Updated October, 2014 File C5-116

Improving business communication skills.

Good relations among members of a business are critical for success. Good communication skills are an important element for the development of good relationships. Poor communications starve a relationship while good communications nourish it. This is true regardless of whether you are a member of a committee looking at starting a business or a member of a team operating a business. So, improving communication skills is important for success. But this doesn’t just happen. Both the receiver and the sender must work at developing verbal and listening skills.

Business Discussions

Do not allow ridicule, punishment or lecturing in business discussions. Encourage listening, understanding, finding alternatives, commitment to action, and support for one another. Listen not only to what the other person is saying, but also to what he/she is feeling. Being respectful of all team members is important at all times. Attack, Counterattack, Withdraw When we are under pressure we become frustrated and may verbally attack the behavior of someone we work with. The other person feels hurt by our comments and counterattacks. This system of attack and counterattack continues until someone withdraws from the conversation. Instead of counterattacking, the other person may hold their feelings and the situation will not escalate. However, the other person will harbor these feelings and the emotions may be vented later. Sharing our Feelings Instead of attacking and judging the other person’s behavior, we could have shared our feelings about our frustrations. This will tend to bring us together rather than drive us apart.

Making Judgments vs. Sharing Emotions

Judgments and emotions are different. Judgmental statements are "I am right, you are wrong." Statements of emotions are “I am angry, I am afraid and I am worried.” Judgments are often the result of how we feel. It is often an expression of our feelings.

Judgments are much more likely to be heard as criticisms than are feelings. If I say, "You are wrong," you are likely to feel criticized and attacked. As soon as we feel criticized, it is hard to hear anything else that is said. Our mind is consumed by the criticism. However, if I say, "I am angry," you are less likely to feel attacked. This is because expressions of emotion (how we feel) are true statements. If I say that "you are wrong," you will probably disagree. But if I say that "I am angry," no one can argue. Although expressing our feelings seems to make us vulnerable, they really make us safer. If we make a judgment and attack the other person, we are isolating them and inviting them to counterattack. However, if we share how we feel, we are exposing ourselves to the other person. This makes it easier for the other person to respond in kind. Both people feel safer. Ideas versus Feelings Communicating ideas brings our minds together. But communicating emotions brings us together as individuals It is assumed that we should share ideas but keep our feelings to ourselves. This is part of the culture of rural communities. However, emotions are very powerful and cannot be ignored. Feelings are more important than ideas at influencing our behavior and decisions.

Keys to Effective Communication

Below are keys to effective communications. But just reading these points will not improve your communication skills. You must practice them. Practice them until they become habits.

• Give your attention - When someone starts to talk to you, stop what you are doing and thinking. Face the person and devote your whole attention to what and how it is being said.
• Listen, not just hear - One of the keys to good communication is the willingness to listen for meaning in what the other person says and not just for the words. Watch facial expressions and body language.
• Don't let your mind wander - While the person is talking, do not think about your answer or response. Listen until the person is finished, then decide what you are going to say.
• Check for accuracy - When the person is finished talking, paraphrase back to the person what was said to you. If you heard right, then respond to that statement or question.
• Be aware of other's needs - You need to be aware of the needs of the other business associates. Each person has different needs that should be considered and respected. Although each of us has differing needs, all of us have a need for trust, responsibility, praise, security, sense of belonging, and recognition.
• Ask, don't tell - demonstrate equality - Do this by asking for advice or asking a person to do something. This shows you respect the other person as a peer or equal. Telling often implies a superior/subordinate relationship, such as boss vs. employee.
• Keep an open mind - Do not criticize, pass judgment, or preach. It is extremely important to learn to make objective evaluations about ideas, people, and situations. You are making a value judgment when you attach your values, beliefs, or needs to an appraisal.
• Offer advice, don't give advice - Learn to offer in-sights, advice, and expertise without being forceful. It is wrong to say "this is how you should handle it" or "this is what you should do." It is better to say "what do you think about this way," or "I suggest we...." However, sometimes it is not appropriate to even soft-pedal advice. You should offer it only if asked for.
• Develop trust - Trust is the product of open and honest communications. So it is important that good communication channels exist. Also, trust is an essential ingredient of teamwork. If trust exists among business associates, teamwork and cooperation are much easier to achieve.
• Create feelings of equity - People share a sense of equality if all parties are informed, trust exists, and work is based on cooperation. For business ventures to succeed, all the parties must feel that they are equals. If one party feels left out or feels like a subordinate, success becomes less likely.
• Develop comfortable relations - Tension and stress are normal in any relationship. However, the level of tension and stress can be reduced in businesses that develop teamwork and trust through open and honest communication.
• Become genuinely interested in others - All of us have a need to feel important and be understood. One of the ways we feel important is if others are interested in us. So talk in terms of the other persons’ interests and try to understand another point of view. If we expect others to understand us, we must first understand them.
• Motivate others - There are several ways to motivate people. Both negative and positive reinforcement are effective. But in the long run, negative reinforcement like criticism or punishment often creates a desire for revenge. Too often we think of positive reinforcement as receiving more income, but other positive reinforcements that require little effort are praise, trust, interest, and recognition.
• Keep a sense of humor - Laugh at the goofy things that happen. Laugh off little annoyances. Smile at every opportunity. Seeing the humor in a situation can often defuse it.

Don Hofstrand, retired extension value added agriculture specialist, [email protected]

Don Hofstrand

Retired extension value added agriculture specialist view more from this author.

Module 1: Communicating in Business

Writing in business, learning outcomes.

• Identify key features of effective writing in business
• Discuss the overlap between professional and personal communication

Just like having a face-to-face discussion, effective business writing should rely on the seven principles of business communication:

• Objectivity
• Understanding of the audience’s knowledge
• Clear language
• Concise language
• Consistent messages
• Complete ideas

When you put pen to paper, you should be considering every principle. We’ve looked at these principles before, but now let’s take a deep dive into how they might impact your writing.

Phone System Outage

Let’s assume that you’re writing a communication to let everyone know that the corporate office phone system will be down for a certain period of time next Friday morning. Let’s take a look at how each of the principles of business communication figure into that written message.

• Clear: When you craft the message, you should make sure that it’s clear to your readers. In this case, you want the entire company to know that the corporate office phone systems will be down between 9 and noon. Being clear means that you add a.m. and p.m. , even if you think it might be obvious. You should indicate that you’re talking about Pacific Standard Time, and so on.
• Concise: Since it’s a message about the phone system, it should be a message only about the phone system. And then, a message only about the outage. If you’re inspired to include, “Tom broke the phone system last week and now it needs to be repaired,” resist this urge. Even if Tom is responsible for the outage, it may be appropriate to joke with Tom about it if he’s a personal friend, but this is not the kind of messaging that should go out to the whole office.
• Objective: Your own personal feelings and comments do not need to be a part of the phone communication. For instance, “Even though the timing is poor for those working on the polling project, we intend to repair our phone system on Friday” is a great example of not being objective.
• Consistent: If the phone system has been out three or four times before, your message should be similar in nature to those that came before it. If one of the details of the phone system is that it’s being upgraded so we can add a new satellite office to the trunk line, don’t include information contrary to this fact unless it is explained. Consistent means that the details are the same each time–that the communication looks the same, sounds the same; and that any new details are called out.
• Complete: If you set out to tell the company that the phone system is going to be out at 9:00 a.m. on Friday morning and then fail to tell them when it will be back up, then your message is incomplete. Strive to be complete in your written communication by anticipating any question a reader might ask: “Is the phone system going down this Friday or next Friday?” “How long will it be down?” “Is the whole corporate office affected or just a portion?”
• Relevant: When considering whether a message is relevant, you can ask yourself, “Are these readers affected by this information?” “Does it matter that the phones will be out on Friday if the office is closed for the holiday?” It also means not including information that isn’t relevant to the reader, such as, “The repair people think that, by replacing the left widget on the main switchboard, they may solve the problem, but it could also be the right widget, in which case they’ll need to order a part.” This is not relevant.
• Considerate of Audience Knowledge: Always keep in mind the knowledge your audience brings to the message. If you’re communicating the details of nuclear fission to a group, you would talk to them differently depending on how much they knew about science. In this case, everyone understands what a phone is. (Though those two extraterrestrials just hired in real estate may need to know it’s the black thing on their desk with the handset you can put up to your ear.)

It’s incredibly important to measure your written communication against the seven principles of business communication because in written communication, the “feedback” portion of that social communication model isn’t always accessible. When noise enters your written communication, you often don’t immediately know that your audience doesn’t understand, sometimes until it’s too late. Make sure you measure your message against the seven principles to stay ahead of any misunderstandings.

Practice Question

Personal and professional communication.

When you consider the difference between communication on a personal level and communication on a professional level, the first thing that comes to mind is the level of formality. In personal communication, you typically use relaxed language, and the level of knowledge your audience brings into the communication is usually significant and personal. The need to be clear and concise, to be objective, is thrown aside. Personal communications are often meant only for a single audience and are oftentimes understandable only to that audience.

Professional communication, on the other hand, is read by an audience that you don’t know as well. You find you need to make an effort to be clear, concise, relevant and objective. You make an effort to appeal to and be understood by a more diverse group.

However, with the advent of technology and social media, the lines between personal and professional communication are becoming blurred. Your customers are looking to connect with your company on a deeper, more personal level. Technology has turned the 9–5 worker into an always-accessible team member, and because of it, professional relationships are evolving into something that straddles the line between formal and informal. Customers, vendors, and even co-workers want to deal with a human being, not someone hiding behind the curtain and operating the great and powerful talking head that runs the company. Add to that myriad methods of informal communication platforms like texting and social media, and you can see there’s a revolution going on here.

Your business communications are destined to be affected by this shifting tide. If companies with strong brands are going out of their way to connect with their customers on social media and share the “human side” of their businesses, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t follow suit as long as you feel comfortable doing so.

Some things to keep in mind if you’re going to give it a try:

• Don’t give up the seven principles of business communication: No matter how personal you get, those principles are still the hallmark of a successful message. Your wider audience still needs clarity, uniformity, and so on. Your goal is to be understood, to yield a particular business result, and that doesn’t change.
• Don’t get personal to the point of irrelevance: Your co-workers and vendors might enjoy knowing that you’re a huge football fan, but they don’t need to know what you had for lunch today.
• Don’t share details that might not be easily embraced: People don’t always receive the message well if you express strong political beliefs that don’t fit with theirs. Be careful about sharing your “ideals.” GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons got called out in 2011 when he made a video of his exploits hunting elephants and posted it to his company’s site so he could “share” himself with the world. The attention he got for his moment of personal sharing wasn’t good.

Even though professional communication and personal communication are quickly becoming just “communication,” your success still hinges on being successful at it. Strengthen your command of the seven communication principles and move forward bravely with your list of shareable personality traits.

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• Writing in Business. Authored by : Freedom Learning Group. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

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