Management Communication (MCOM-GB)

In a September 2007 feature The Wall Street Journal reported that corporate MBA recruiters ranked Communication Skills as the most important attribute they considered when evaluating applicants Being able to communicate effectively is a vital component to many aspects of business life This course emphasizes both a strategic and practical approach to provide you with a set of frameworks that will help you construct effective email correspondence documents and presentations which inform persuade and influence your audience The Management Communication course offers you the opportunity to speak and write in a managerial context while receiving personalized feedback and coaching to help develop and sharpen these critical skills.

No longer can business professionals rely on strong technical and analytical skills alone. Leaders must also be persuasive and credible communicators. This course designed for students who are experienced communicators is built on the concept of a career life cycle which blends theoretical models for effective persuasion with practical communications strategies in a simulated business setting. The life cycle encompasses a number of individual and group situations that an employee will face during the course of their career. In developing communication strategies we will examine factors impacting a person career life cycle such as personal goals business stresses corporate situations and environmental events that must be considered to be persuasive and credible in a given situation. Exercises focus on communicating to potential audiences of internal and external parties including colleagues senior management clients competitors and potential business partners. Written and spoken communication assignments range from informative to persuasive in a variety of simulated settings. Situations engage hypothetical audiences involving external industry experts that range from receptive to challenging. Strategies and lessons learned in this highly participatory course can be put into action immediately in a student daily business and personal environment. Students benefit from individual feedback on all written work as well as individual and team coaching based on video recorded reviews of each presentation.

Persuasive communication is a vital component to many aspects of business life. This course introduces the basics of communication strategy and persuasion: audience analysis, communicator credibility, and message construction and delivery. Written and oral presentation assignments derive from cases that focus on communication strategy. Students receive feedback to improve presentation effectiveness. Additional coaching is available for students who want to work on professional written communication. This course is required for all Langone Program students.

In this course, you will use improvisation techniques to enhance your ability to think on your feet, connect with others, build trusting relationships, and develop greater confidence to make good things happen. Through improvisation, you will learn how to listen openly, let judgments of yourself and others fall away, and adapt to change. After all, effective leadership communication is that which compels change in what we do as individuals, as a team, and as a company. It is about developing a strategy and communicating it so compellingly that it brings new ideas to life. Improvisation is unique in its ability to heighten awareness of self and others, helping you take and support responsible risks, owning your authority and sharing it well when it makes sense. Staying empathic, agile, and present amidst ambiguity and adversity is essential to cultivating the resilience and integrity needed to become a leader in an increasingly transparent society. That is what this course is designed to help you do!

A story can influence, persuade, and inspire action. This course is designed for students who want to explore the power of stories in a business context and improve their storytelling abilities. In each class session, students will have the opportunity to practice delivering a story that is based on their own experience, and then receive feedback on the story’s impact from their peers and the professor. Students will learn how to find, develop, and tell compelling stories that elicits an emotion/response/reaction from their audience. Practice exercises will focus on expanding their range of expressiveness and enhancing their ability to communicate congruently. Throughout the course, students will engage in a process of personal reflection on their stories and storytelling techniques, view videos, and read articles. They also will develop a library of personal stories that can engage audiences and make their messages memorable.

Former CEO of ITT and NYU alum Harold Geneen famously said that Leadership cannot be taught but it can be learned.Over three full-day sessions this course will provide you with learning opportunities to develop your leadership presence drawing on best practices from both business and the arts. You will learn how to tell concise and evocative stories which build trust and inspire action. Using improvisation and innovative thinking techniques you will develop your collaborative and interpersonal communication abilities. Lastly you will learn best practices for argument development and persuasive techniques in preparation for a final presentation. As with all the exercises feedback will be provided by the professor and your peers.

Engage Your Audience: In-Person and Online COURSE OVERVIEW Successful business presentations whether in-person or online are based on effective communication strategy. This course is designed for students who want to become more dynamic and engaging presenters in-person and on virtual meeting platforms. Three sessions will be held on-site at Stern and three sessions will be held virtually. Practice exercises will focus on planning effective strategy; refining visual vocal and verbal delivery to strengthen your in-person and online presence; structuring and designing content; and handling questions from both internal and external audiences. During this course you will prepare and deliver in-person and recorded online individual presentations as well as in-person and live online team presentations. Students will benefit from individual feedback and coaching.

Successful MBA graduates in today’s diverse and complex marketplace must engage in productive team relationships and possess the ability to lead through strategic communication. Course activities are designed to help you: - Become aware of how you personally work in group settings - Develop specific strategies to foster effective team performance - Enhance your communication and collaborative problem solving skills

This course supports your success as an effective communicator, innovator and business leader in an age that demands immediacy, authenticity, and transparency. Translating your ideas into successful initiatives requires a communication discipline with the capacity to connect with multiple audiences from diverse cultural, intellectual and professional backgrounds. As leaders of organizations, you and your teams must also align messaging with the business strategy and stakeholder expectations to achieve and maintain a strong reputation.

This course supports your success as an effective communicator, innovator and business leader in an age that demands immediacy, authenticity, and transparency. Translating your ideas into successful initiatives requires a communication discipline with the capacity to connect with multiple audiences from diverse cultural, intellectual and professional backgrounds. As leaders of organizations, you and your teams must also align messaging with the business strategy and stakeholder expectations to achieve and maintain a strong reputation.

The Wall Street Journal once reported that corporate MBA recruiters ranked communication skills as the most important attribute they considered when evaluating applicants. No longer can executives rely on strong technical and analytical skills alone to get them through the day and ensure career advancement. Leaders must not only be able to effectively communicate financial models, analytic results, strategic plans and business forecasts, but be able to do so in a variety of settings, situations and communication channels, while addressing a variety of internal and external audiences. Management Communications is designed for students who seek to improve upon existing communication skills by blending theoretical models for effective persuasion with a practical application of course material in a simulated business environment. The course’s “career life cycle” concept encompasses a number of individual and group situations that an employee would face over the course of their career. Students working in any number of fields will find this highly interactive course to be challenging and entertaining as they navigate numerous communication events where assessments of the environment, communication modes, team dynamics and “what’s at stake” play a role to a successful outcome. Most importantly, these exercises and lessons will provide students with communication and situation analysis skills they can put into action immediately as they go about their various business and academic related pursuits.

As a business leader you are expected to give direction, establish vision and manage events with well-honed, clear messages and constant communication clarity. Achieving and maintaining this level of excellence is easier said than done. Conquering High Stakes Communications focuses on the tactics and skills you need not only to manage critical conversations but also to identify them in advance with the objective of maneuvering the ultimate outcome to your advantage. This course quickly reinforces core communication skills and teaches advance communication techniques through intensive drills and immersive scenario role playing sessions. It also personalizes the experience by having students bring “real life” managerial and communication challenges they may currently be facing to the course. This approach allows students to take what they are learning and immediately put these skills, strategies and techniques into action at work.

Successful business relationships require the ability to manage difficult conversations. When managing clients, managing direct reports, or managing up, you will encounter difficult conversations. This course will enable you to effectively lead your most challenging and consequential conversations at work to desired outcomes. You will gain an understanding of the variety of difficult conversations, the neuroscience of what makes a conversation difficult, and the business case for why avoiding these conversations is too costly for employees’ careers and for their organizations’ effectiveness. Through readings, group practice with feedback, analysis of past challenging conversations, and class discussions, you will learn how to use the core communication skills to manage difficult conversations well, and how to identify and manage interests and motivations. You will practice difficult conversations, reflect on these interactions, and action plan for future conversations. As a result of this course, you will be able to identify the personalized mindset and behavior shifts you need to master “crucial conversations” and perform effectively during the most critical moments in your career.

Research shows that being on inclusive teams makes people more creative, more diligent, and harder-working, and that more diverse leadership teams outperform their less diverse peers in financial returns. Furthermore, inclusion leads to increased innovation, which is critically important in today’s rapidly changing world. So what does inclusion mean and how does one cultivate it? This course aims to develop mindful, inclusive communication skills to nurture belonging and increase success for all. With this course, you will gain a foundational knowledge of inclusive language, build awareness of your identities and their relationship to inclusion, and practice increasing inclusion and cross-difference understanding. Through readings, videos, conversation role plays, self-reflections, peer feedback, case analyses, and class discussions, by the end of this course, you will be able to: 1) Recognize to what extent an interaction is or is not inclusive; 2) Apply the knowledge, skills, mindsets, and frameworks learned in this course to maximize inclusion in your conversations at work and beyond; and 3) Empower yourself and others to foster inclusive team communication and to continue ongoing learning about inclusion. Inclusive Conversations is for everyone who wants to create more shared understanding and connection across lines of difference, both 1:1 and in teams. Regardless of your starting point, this course will empower you to grow your emotional, relational, and cultural/social intelligences.

Independent Study

Communication for Consultants Professors Susan Stehlik and Aline Wolff MCOM-GB.3111 Consultants today are expected to be strategic in their communication innovative in their thinking and authentic in managing the client relationship. In this course students will work on real client engagements for both profit and non-profit companies. You will be expected to engage with clients by: Listening to their needs problems and/or issues Collaborating with their selected staff and possible consumers on existing or newly defined projects Brainstorming new approaches to their business or analyzing existing strategies that could be more effective Communicating your insights to appropriate decision-making executives in the firm. The course is delivered as if you were working for a consulting company. Being able to think innovatively is especially important to becoming a successful consultant. This semester we have added a systematic focus on using innovative thinking techniques for business including design thinking biomimicry business ethnography current neuroscience research findings rapid prototyping and more. These different techniques applied to your consulting engagements will provide you with a toolbox of techniques to help you succeed in the uber-competitive fast-changing and constantly challenging world of consulting. This course will include fieldwork managing communication touch points with the clients developing and testing innovative approaches to client needs and issues and delivering results and recommendations to the clients at the end of the process. In the past participants in the class have worked with clients from a broad range of organizations: a long-established toy manufacturer looking for a way to re-engineer the business a restaurant focused on understanding their customers a start-up venture trying to decide on a for profit or not-for-profit business a power company needing a better customer relationship management program a small chocolate company in need of a business plan and more. Your assignments will require participation starting with the initial client meeting through data collection and finally presenting to the client. While the course experience will entail considerable field work students will be supported by: A team of undergraduate business students that you will manage; no other course gives you hands on management experience Class work that focuses on the communication tools in a typical consulting contract. In class exercises to assess your skills and apply techniques for improving activities such as conducting interviews facilitating meetings building consensus and presenting recommendations. This course will examine the two most demanding aspects of any profession today: effective communication and innovative thinking.