Business Relationships

Assessment event 1 : Case study

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 Table of content

1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………….3

2. Supportive communication and supportive listening that are not adhered in

the case study…………………………………………………………………...3

3. The major obstacles to effective interpersonal communication…………….3-4

4. The principles of supportive communication Rita should use in her follow up

meeting with Mike………………………………………………………………4

5. Internal and external factors that impacted Mark and Rita’s relationship.4-5

6. Conclusion ………………………………………………………….…………..5

7. Reference…………………………………………………………………….….6

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1. Introduction
The essay will be analysed and discussed based on the case study of Rita - a new
manager and Mike - a plant manager at Parker Manufacturing. In this case, both Rita and
Mike have not being using the right methods of supportive communication and
supportive listening skills in order to make their meeting could has been better.

2. Supportive communication and supportive listening that are not adhered in the
case study
One of the supportive communication principles that was not held in the case is
supportive communication based on congruence not incongruence . This principle means
when people communicated, if they use both verbal and non-verbal match with what
communicators really feel and think, the conversation are going to work better (Carlopio
& Andrewartha 2012). To illustrate this principle, it can be seen when a manager talks to
her worker, she maybe aware that she is angry but she doesn’t explicitly express her
feeling. She tries to hold back her true opinion. This will create a impression to the
person she is talking to that she tries to cover something. As a result, the person who talks
to her will trust her less and focus more on trying to figure out what is she trying to hide.
On the other hand, there is a supportive listening principle that was not mentioned in the
case is probing. Probing listening is when listener asks questions to communicator which
are related to the topic selected. The purpose of this principle is to acquire more
information (Carlopio & Andrewartha 2012). A great example of this principle when
both communicators try to avoid prejudgment and being evaluative, both of them ask
more questions to understand what the other try to express, hence, there will be no
misunderstanding.

3. The major obstacles to effective interpersonal communication

There are two major obstacles to effective interpersonal communication are
defensiveness and disconfirmation (Carlopio & Andrewartha 2012). In the case of Rita
and Mike, disconfirmation is a great obstacles to their communication. It can be seen
from the case that, Mike feel incompetent, unworthy or insignificant as a result of the
communication when he said that “ I’m not going to fight about that. It’s a losing battle

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for me.” Mike thinks that there is no use of this conversation for him as everyone will
only listen to the manager instead of him.
Another disconfirmation obstacle can be seen in this case is Mike spend too much energy
trying to portray self-importance, rather than on listening (King 2009). It was shown
when he talked about his pride in neatness and telling Rita that she has no experience in
this case so how can she judge what Mike is doing.

4. The principles of supportive communication Rita should use in her follow up

meeting with Mike
To create a better outcome of conversation there are seven ways for Rita to use in her
follow up meeting with Mike. There are seven principles of supportive communication
which are problem-oriented, congruent, descriptive, validating, specific, conjunctive, and
owned communication (King 2009). However, the most effective way Rita should be
using in her follow up with Mike is validating supportive communication (Vermeulen
2015). Instead of pointing out all of his inappropriate behaviour, she can talk to him like “
I have some good ideas to solve this problem, but what do you think to make it better?”.
By asking this question, Rita might eliminate the bad view of Mike about manager they
are here just to tell him how bad he is instead of helping him to be more productivity.

5. Internal and external factors that impacted Mark and Rita’s relationship
Tiernan (2003) discussed there are internal and external factors that potentially impacted
manager and employee’s relationship. One of the internal factors what effects
relationship of Mark and Rita is her management skills. She need to be more polite and
need to put more effort on understanding her employee rather than just looking at the
report and draw a conclusion on Mike. As Mike works in plants department and Rita
works in head office, she might not know what really happened with Mike. An example
from the case is in the first meeting, the first thing Rita told Mike is she has been
reviewing his performance data and gave him feedback that was not favourable.
On the other hand, the external factors that create an uncooperative behaviour from Mike
is when he said that, since Rita is the new boss then he has to listen, moreover, there are
also several meeting like this before and people just do not understand about him and his

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place. This appears a organisational/team culture, because it happens repeatedly and
Mike seems fed up about people making assumption on him all the time. This
organisational culture should be eliminated to make manager and employee become more
united (Pederson & Mclaren 2017).

6. Conclusion
Communication is one of the important tools for the business to get acquainted, approach
and keep good relationship with customers. A good communications business will make
your customers happy and engaging. Internal communication too, the customers here are
the employees in the company, from the senior to the subordinate, good internal
communicators will help businesses be united and sustainable from the core within
(Osobajo & Moore 2017).

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7. Reference

Carlopio, J and Andrewartha, G 2012, Developing management skills. 5th ed. Frenchs
Forest, NSW, Pearson Australia, pp. 242-262, viewed 24 August 2018.

King, W 2009, ‘Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning’, Knowledge

Management and Organizational Learning, pp. 3-13, viewed 24 August 2018, <
http://www.uky.edu/~gmswan3/575/KM_and_OL.pdf>.

Osobajo, O and Moore, D 2017, ‘The B2Com Relationship: An Empirical Study of the
Measure of Relationship Quality in a Business-to-Community Relationship’,
International Business Research, vol. 10, no. 7, pp. 118, viewed 24 August 2018, <
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317699408_The_B2Com_Relationship_An_E
mpirical_Study_of_the_Measure_of_Relationship_Quality_in_a_Business-to-
Community_Relationship>.

Pederson, J and Mclaren, R 2017, ‘Indirect effects of supportive communication during

conversations about coping with relational transgressions’, Personal Relationships, vol.
24, no. 4, pp. 804-819, viewed 24 August 2018, <
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321132570_Indirect_effects_of_supportive_co
mmunication_during_conversations_about_coping_with_relational_transgressions_Supp
ortive_communication_stress_emotion>.

Tiernan, E 2003, ‘Communication training for professionals’, Supportive Care in Cancer,

vol. 11, no. 12, pp. 758-762, viewed 24 August 2018, <
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00520-003-0535-8>.

Vermeulen, F 2015, ‘Three reasons why managers don’t know what they’re
doing’, Business Strategy Review, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 34-35, viewed 24 August 2018,
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/2057-1615.12033.

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