Bussiness Communication

Q1. When ShanayaMalkan boarded her Air India flight to London in Mumbai, she was seated in the middle of an unkempt person who apparently had not bathed recently on one side and a baby crying on the other. The person in front of her immediately reclined his seat. Shanaya knew she would not be comfortable in making the seven hour long trip under these circumstances. What can Shanaya do to make the trip more comfortable?

CASE SYNOPSIS:

*Diagrammatic representation of Shanayas situation in Air India Airlines

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As seen above Shanaya is in a very uneasy situation where her journey of 7 hrs shall be highly uncomfortable.

Let’s look at how can Shanay tackle the situation.

: Assumption- another seat is available.

• Firstly Shanaya can speak to the airhostess and request for another seat explaining her current ordeal.
• If she is currently traveling in a business class, she can ask for an availability of seat even in an economy class if it makes her current situation better.

: If there is no seat available.

• Then we look at each parameter or problem and how best she can solve it. To begin with:

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BABY CRYING[pic 6]

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Q 2. Ms. Anjali Chaturvedi is the head of the sales division in Fedington Technologies. Whenever she asks for feedback during the departmental meetings, she blasts anyone offering criticism which causes her sub-ordinates to agree to everything she says and not voice their true opinion on the way they manage their functioning. You want to talk to her about it , but what should you say ? List some of the points that you would like to make with when you would discuss this issue with her.

To address this situation we first try to analyse Ms Anjali Chaturvedi situation & behaviour on the basis of few practical psychological parameters.

• Being the head of sales division it’s bound that Ms Anjali Chaturvedi has high targets to achieve & is under constant pressure from the superiors.
• Along with the designation arrogance and attitude come as a package.  Thus, anyone pointing out the mistakes or criticising one before many would not be taken sportingly by the head as the egos are hurt.

We now see a few pointers, if the situation is not handled; the possible results of the same.

• Low employee retention as employees prefer to walk  out from a job if they don’t have job satisfaction and superiors & heads being the major directives under whole they are supposed to work, and if they aren’t comfortable working with them the switch jobs
• It may not only effect the employees or sub ordinates but also organization at large as have poorer performances, it can create greater stress for others and their behaviour is likely to create a “poisonous” atmosphere leading to poorer customer satisfaction and loyalty, adversely affecting a team’s ability to work together and eventually hurt the bottom line & revenues of the organization.
•  If this becomes a regular phenomenon the HR might take a step further to find out the reason for the same via dip stick survey & result into threatening the job security of Ms Anjali. There by having an effect on her too after a period of time.

After having understood the importance of tackling this, we look at handling it from 2 perspectives.

1. We assume that I am on good terms with her both professionally & personally and thus have the liberty to speak to her in a casual tonality in the non-office hours or in the absence of office staff.
2. Here we assume that I’m simply her sub ordinate and share a very formal & professional relation with her. So how would I address this situation then?

In the first case:

- Having known the fact that criticism when given before all is not acceptable to the superiors, it becomes necessary that we list the points and then discuss the same later when the superiors are in a frame of mind tohear them at least and then absorb the same.