Business

Whether it is personal or professional life, one must have noticed how one needs to strike a balance between what one says, what one means, and what one ends up implying. However, business communication courses are designed to teach business students just that  when to say what is meant and when to mean what is said. In other words, diplomacy and political correctness are the order of the day (Mehrabian and Ferris, 1967). Three advantages of spoken communication include the facts that it is faster to administer and gets processed in real time that in spoken communication, certain implications are readily and obviously apparent due to the use of tonality and emphasis, which allows the preservation of a lot of meaning which is often lost in the case of written communication and that spoken conversation allows one to detect how much of it is honest or fabricated, due to the fact that responses are real-time and do not leave much room for fabrication. Three advantages of written communication, on the other hand, include the facts that written word implies a sense of accuracy, which can be readily witnessed in cases of advertisements that written communication serves as record in times of need (be it for referencing purposes or for double-checking) and that with written communication, one has the advantage to ensure that nobody takes advantage and goes back on their word.

A common dilemma faces several corporate personnel n the office setting, which revolves around what type of communication medium to use in different situations. There are several occasions when merely a face-to-face semi-formal conversation makes do. However, at other times, in fact in most cases, corporate conversations should be recorded in writing. In case of meetings, decisions should be minute-d and shared with all relevant parties at the soonest, so as to spot any confusions and miscommunications at the earliest possible, in order to ensure minimal chances of conflict. In my opinion, whether to use verbal or written communication depends on the importance and sensitivity of information under consideration (Mehrabian and Ferris, 1967).