Nora and Sean are salespeople at a hardware distribution company. Nora has just joined the company, and Sean is a 10-year veteran.
Question 1 Nora and Sean are salespeople at a hardware distribution company. Nora has just joined the company, and Sean is a 10-year veteran. Both attended a full-day training session about building effective communication with customers delivered by Olivia, a member of human resources.
Because Nora is new to the company, this was her first training session with Olivia. Sean has attended many of these sessions before. After Olivia announced the agenda for the day’s training, she introduced an interactive activity and distributed a handout. Nora’s previous employer used the same activity and handout in a similar training, so she was happy that she wouldn’t be completely lost.
There are a number of possible types of plagiarism; classify the following scenarios as “Unintentional Plagiarism,” “Deliberate Plagiarism,” or “Not Plagiarism.”
Unintentional Plagiarism
Deliberate Plagiarism
Not Plagiarism
Olivia tells her boss about some new product ideas discussed at a recent conference she attended
Olivia finds designs left behind by a previous employee, puts her name on it, and submits it.
Olivia doesn’t remember to include quotation marks when using a quote from a design expert.
Question 2 Part of the communication training focused on building rapport with a customer through active listening and questioning.
“It’s important to build a relationship during every customer interaction,” Olivia said. “For example, if you are on the phone with a hardware store owner who is struggling with debt, tell them you understand because your father owned a small business and was put out of business by a large chain. They’ll think you can relate.”
Nora leaned over to Sean and whispered, “I’m not going to lie to customers to get them to buy from me. Isn’t that unethical?”
Determine whether each of the following behaviors is “Ethical” or “Unethical.”
Ethical
Unethical
A motivational speaker always begins his speech with a quote by Vince Lombardi.
A school board candidate presents ideas of a previous colleague as her own.
A speaker chooses not to answer a question and says it is due to a conflict of interest.
Question 3 Sean didn’t see how Olivia was going to help him improve his paycheck by teaching him communication skills again. He thought the training was a waste of time, so he decided to catch up on emails instead. He left his phone on silent and checked it frequently.
Before the group broke for lunch, Olivia asked everyone to summarize one key point from the morning’s session. When it was Sean’s turn to share, he couldn’t remember anything and muttered, “Pass.” After lunch, Sean’s phone battery died, so he was forced to listen and participate.
Put the rules of listening that Sean violates in the order that they occur.
a. Demonstrate active listening
b. Don’t cause excessive noise
c. Eliminate distractions
d. Be open-minded
Question 4 In the afternoon, Olivia played a recording of a phone call between a customer and one of the company’s account managers. Nora was surprised to hear that the account manager listened more than she spoke while the customer talked about his difficulty selling building materials during the previous quarter.
The account manager asked probing questions and repeated key points back to the customer before suggesting actions to improve sales in the next quarter. Olivia also pointed out that the next time the account manager heard from this customer, she was able to recall the conversation.
There are five stages of listening. Identify and order the first three stages in the listening process using the concepts below.
b. The stage during which the listener hears and attends
c. The stage during which the listener determines the context and meaning of the words that are heard
a. The stage during which the listener critically assesses the information received from the speaker
Question 5 Olivia then played a recording of a phone call between Colin, a sales associate from New York, and Grace, an elderly hardware store owner in the South. Grace began the conversation with chitchat about the weather and her town. Colin interrupted her to ask about her inventory. Grace paused before replying and then launched into a story about one of her customers. Colin started reeling off promotion prices from his catalog. Grace asked him to repeat himself, so Colin said he would just send it all in an email. Grace admitted that she doesn’t often use email. The conversation ended abruptly when Colin said he would call back when he had more time.
Nora recognized that cultural differences were a barrier to communication between Grace and Colin.
Match the types of communication barriers to the corresponding examples from another call between Grace and Colin.
Gender
Culture
Technology
A.Colin assumed that Grace would understand which products would sell best in her area, but he quickly found that Grace didn’t even understand the jargon they used in the salesroom.
B.Toward the end of the follow-up conversation, Grace had finished her order, but was still talking about the needs of her store. Colin started zoning out and checking other emails. When Grace asked him what he thought of her situation, he didn’t know what to say because he honestly had not been paying attention.
C.Grace and Colin had trouble connecting again because they realized very quickly that they had different senses of humor. Colin kept making jokes based on puns and Grace continued to roll her eyes on the other end of the line.
D.Colin began the conversation trying to entertain Grace with a joke or two. He then followed up by making sure that Grace knew he was in control and would help get her what she needed. However, Grace found herself wishing that Colin would apologize and spend more time building up the relationship between them.
Question 6 Olivia asked the group to focus on the initial stages of the listening process and make suggestions to improve Colin’s communication with his customer.
Nora said, “If your listener can’t register or process your words, then she definitely won’t understand, so Colin should match Grace’s pace and tone. He might need to turn up the phone volume and slow down.”
“Those are both good points,” said Olivia.
Paired with hearing, (A) is the other half of the receiving stage. In the second listening stage, the listener must accurately identify certain sounds as words and determine (B) and meaning to comprehend what he or she has heard.
A understanding comprehension speaking attending segmentation
B context accents language segmentation message
Question 7 There are four other members of the hardware sales team that Olivia is training. While some in the training group nodded along, or asked questions that built upon the material, others spent more time listening and needed Olivia to repeat or clarify certain points.
The training group moved through the listening process at different paces based on their own learning style and approach to listening. Speakers need to be aware of different types of responses and what they say about how their message is reaching their audience.
The actions below are either part of the “responding” stage or the “remembering” stage of listening. Select two actions that characterize the “responding” stage.
Using a recent experience you had at the grocery store as an example in conversation.
Rolling your eyes when you hear something that you don’t agree with.
Making eye contact with the speaker.
Completing homework from that day right after school.
Thinking about an experience you had as a child that made you feel the same way the speaker feels.
Considering a speaker’s motivations and goals and how they compare to your own.
Question 8 At the end of the day, Olivia set aside time for the group to provide written and verbal feedback. Because the six participants were all American and were relatively the same age, all were generally comfortable giving and receiving criticism in this manner. Comments focused on each individual’s learning and experience in the training and were specific and straight to the point. One member of the group was from a Japanese family, however, and relayed that Japanese business people might not feel as comfortable giving criticism to an instructor in this manner.
Cultural differences play a role in giving and receiving criticism. Rate the verbal style in the feedback below as representative of an instrumental or affective speaking style.
Instrumental
Affective
“Well, it’s not my problem that you interpreted my lecture that way.
“I really should have explained myself better when I was teaching.”
“I would understand better if the teacher had given us more examples in his lecture.”
Question 9 By the end of the training day, Olivia was worn out. Sean’s disinterest had been taxing and she lost her train of thought when she heard his phone beep loudly.
“Because you apparently don’t know the basic rules of professional courtesy, Sean, I will ask you again to turn your phone off,” snapped Olivia. “You’ve ruined the training today for everyone! I can only imagine how your manager and customers feel trying to communicate with someone as rude as you!”
Sean stormed out of the room, exclaiming, “I might have paid attention if there were any point to this training!”
Olivia broke the rules for providing effective criticism by getting angry. Select the best alternative that follows the rules of providing effective criticism.
•”Sean, I’m sorry to get frustrated with you, but your lack of attention today has really been annoying. Why can’t you be a better listener?
•”Thank you, everyone, for being here today. Some of you paid great attention, but others didn’t participate as much as I would have liked.”
•”Sean, I understand that there is a lot of work to be done, but I really wish we could have had your attention today. You have so much that you can add to the group discussion. I would really appreciate it if you left your phone off next time so that you could fully contribute to the group.”
•”Sean, you are normally such a strong team member, I really wish you would have valued this training more. Perhaps next time you will come better prepared to listen and contribute.”
•”Sean, I should have guessed you would be the one to be on your phone all day. This is just like that time we all went out to dinner; you couldn’t even take three bites without checking your email.”
•”Sean, I am so disappointed that you used your phone during our training today. Next time you come to a training, at least have the courtesy to turn off your phone or at least be a little more secretive about checking it.”
Question 10 Sean didn’t engage in active listening techniques throughout the entire HR training about the communication techniques that improve relationships with customers. He looked unprofessional in front of his colleagues. The next day was worse because Sean’s boss asked him to apply the communication principles taught in the training in a presentation on sales metrics to senior management the following week.
Illustrate the relationship between critical thinking and active listening by completing the statements below.
Sean did not use the three degrees of active listening, including (A) , to thoroughly engage with the trainer and ensure that he had mastered the material.
Sean tuned out when he heard Olivia talk about communication because he believed he’d heard it all before. Sean’s (B)
prevented fully engaged listening.
ARepeating, Retaining, Reiterating Repeating, Paraphrasing, Reflecting Perceiving, Thinking, Reasoning Reflecting, Rewording, Responding Watching, Hearing, Understanding
Bcultural difference lack of prioritization critical thinking focus on style, not substance poor judgement
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