Notes
23 Index
Preface
The Communication Playbook is the text for the hybrid communication course designed to meet the complex needs of 21st-century communicators—those concerned with how to present themselves to others across the communication spectrum, whether face-to-face, using social media, in workspaces and workplaces, or in public.
How might those who matter in your life describe for others what it’s like to interact with you? Might they describe you as being present or distracted, empathetic or distant? How might they describe your behavior as coworker or team member? Might they assess you as cooperative and collaborative or instead report that you come off as self-concerned and a blocker? What words might people listening to you use to describe your presentation skills? Might they find you to be prepared and persuasive or ill-prepared and uninspiring? And were you to switch roles with them, how might those individuals describe you as a member of their audience? Might they report you to be attentive and encouraging or bored and disengaged? In each case, the adjectives others attribute to you is how you come across to them.
We 21st-century communicators face complex challenges. Each of us bears personal and social responsibility for developing, sharing, and managing a unique identity—the composite of characteristics we place on display in both physical and online worlds. Effectively, we create both a real-world or face-to-face identity and a digital-world or virtual identity for others to consume. It is as we navigate between these two spaces—the physical and the digital—that we shape our unique and personal communication presence, influencing the nature and course of our relationships and perceived communication effectiveness both online and offline.
Our goal in writing The Communication Playbook, of course, is for the communication presence you become known for in your personal life, in the workplace, and in your community to be positive and success enhancing. Becoming adept at connecting with others, whether you actually are in their presence or digitally dispersed, is a skill to be mastered. As such, this text seeks to help you present yourself as competently and confidently as possible in the communication arenas you frequent. Although various means of communication may become more popular than others at different times in our lives, for better or worse, they all evolve. The Communication Playbook shows you how to make communication work across the spectrum of available communication channels. Ultimately, because the communication presence you present and share in social, civic, and professional arenas and personal, group, and public settings affects your relationships and life satisfaction, we believe that you never can become too effective at communicating.
The Strategy of the Communication Playbook
The Communication Playbook coaches you to personal and career success, guiding you in learning to use and manage an authentic and effective communication toolset that will serve you today and in the future. How skillful you are at communicating as you navigate different life arenas influences how others in your social, professional, and civic spheres perceive and respond to you.
What are the competencies you need to master for others to perceive you as having value? What are the skills you need to hone to be considered an effective communicator? What are the understandings you need to develop as you navigate from one life arena to another? These are the questions we answer in this new outcomes- and skills-based hybrid text for the introductory communication course.
The Communication Playbook explores communication basics and key life arenas, highlighting the outcomes you need to achieve to become proficient in the essentials of communication; interpersonal communication and interviewing; group communication, leadership/teambuilding, and problem solving; and the preparation, practice, and delivery of public presentations. To accomplish this, The Communication Playbook investigates the communication domains and practices of 21st-century communicators and identifies steps to take, skills to master, and understandings to apply to build and manage a unique and value-laden communication presence, one that is authentic and approachable and that enables you to develop and maintain meaningfully effective personal, community, and work relationships.
To the Instructor: What Differentiates The Communication Playbook From Other Hybrid Texts on the Market?
The Communication Playbook incorporates some of the successful material that our best-selling textbook Communication Works was known for. However, we also have given The Communication Playbook a renewed focus and fresh content, making it a particularly useful and relevant text for the hybrid course.
A prime differentiator of The Communication Playbook is our highlighting the importance of both the physical and the digital domains in students’ lives. We coach students in conceptualizing, creating, cultivating, and communicating an authentic communication presence to foster success not only in their personal relationships online and offline but in their careers and civic lives as well. Although other texts may cover similar topics, none place students in personal control of how others value and perceive them—even though that is what happens as they engage others in both the physical and digital worlds. As Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has said, “Branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” We wrote this text so individuals with whom students interact in any life arena will have good things to say about them both to their faces and in their absence. We wrote this text so that those with whom our students interact are able to perceive their value and open doors and opportunities for them. We want our students to learn more about themselves as communicators—to develop empathy and perspective-taking so that they may envision how they affect others, to tap into existing talents and build communication skills that facilitate goal achievement, and to chart a course that nurtures the continual improvement of their authentic and unique communication presence.
In addition, woven through The Communication Playbook are the following proven pedagogical techniques:
A series of objectives and desired outcomes designed to facilitate personal development in communication
A selection of individual and group activities and self-assessments built to foster engagement
A series of personal goals for students to realize as they build their communication presence and develop communication skills and competence
End-of-chapter checklists and word-mastery lists that guide students in reviewing and demonstrating learning.
Four thematic threads are woven through The Communication Playbook:
1 A concern for communicating ethically
2 A focus on multiculturalism and global and gender self-awareness, particularly what it takes to be comfortable engaging with people who are culturally and ideologically diverse
3 A consideration of how technology and social networks impact every communication arena
4 An exploration of how to build bridges of understanding among those with whom we engage socially, professionally, and civically
To this end, The Communication Playbook also contains a series of highlighted boxes within its chapters.
Skill Builders: Learning activities for use inside or outside of class. Skill Builders encourage students to observe and consider their own and others’ face-to-face and digital communication practices,
