Communication Studies

Organizations thrive or struggle as a result of interactions among team members. To optimize the performance of teams, Group Dynamics and Team Interventions bridges the gap between the most up-to-date academic research findings about group behavior and real-life practice. Chapters summarize the theories behind group and team behavior while offering proven application and intervention techniques that can be utilized in workplace settings. Topics addressed include team formation and development; understanding culture and team diversity; improving team cohesion, decision making, and problem solving; managing and reducing team conflict; team leadership, power, and influence; and others. Brief case studies and interventions that illustrate each theory help to enhance the clarity of the topics. Group Dynamics and Team Interventions will benefit academics and practitioners alike, who gain from a better understanding of the dynamics that inform team behavior, along with assessment tools and practical intervention techniques to create and maintain a high-performing team.

Linking neuroscience, social psychology, anthropology, and other fields, Us and Them investigates humanity’s “tribal mind” and how this alters our thoughts, affects our health, and is manipulated for good and ill. From the medical effects of stress to the rhetoric of politics, our perceptions of group identity affect every part of our lives. Science, Berreby argues, shows how this part of human nature is both unexpectedly important and surprisingly misunderstood.

This book goes beyond descriptions of culture-bound business practices or prescriptions for valuing diversity. Because intercultural dynamics take place in domestic as well as multinational companies, all business professionals must be competent in interpersonal communication. This practical approach presents techniques for managers to reduce diversity miscues, strategies to respond to uncomfortable conversations, and innovative ways to bridge cultural gaps. Managers will learn how to build rapport and promote constructive behaviors in a diverse work environment. The book also offers guidelines for communicating internally as well as with external stakeholders, including a sec-tion on how to develop employees' communication competencies through formal training.

Ordinary salespeople sell. Extraordinary sales professionals engage. Part of what sets them apart is their ability to understand body language, both their prospect's and their own, and use it to their advantage.

This book goes beyond descriptions of culture-bound business practices or prescriptions for valuing diversity. Because intercultural dynamics take place in domestic as well as multinational companies, all business professionals must be competent in interpersonal communication. This practical approach presents techniques for managers to reduce diversity miscues, strategies to respond to uncomfortable conversations, and innovative ways to bridge cultural gaps. Managers will learn how to build rapport and promote constructive behaviors in a diverse work environment. The book also offers guidelines for communicating internally as well as with external stakeholders, including a sec-tion on how to develop employees' communication competencies through formal training.

Timeless techniques of effective public speaking from ancient Rome's greatest orator All of us are faced countless times with the challenge of persuading others, whether we're trying to win a trivial argument with a friend or convince our coworkers about an important decision. Instead of relying on untrained instinct--and often floundering or failing as a result--we'd win more arguments if we learned the timeless art of verbal persuasion, rhetoric.

This best-selling brief text shows students how to analyze all kinds of arguments — not just essays and editorials, but clothes, cars, ads, and Web site designs — and then how to use what they learn to write their own effective arguments. Andrea Lunsford and John Ruszkiewicz’s instruction is engaging, informal, and jargon-free. Emphasizing inclusiveness, humor, and visual argument, it makes Everything’s an Argument student-centered and immediately accessible. Students like this book because it helps them understand how a world of argument already surrounds them; instructors like it because it helps students construct their own arguments about that world.

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