Communications management

My article today is inspired from the article written by Watson Wyatt, that I found in the Harvard business review.

This article starts with a quote that I find important to share : « Effective internal communications can keep employees engaged in the business and help companies retain key talent, provide consistent value to customers, and deliver superior financial performance to shareholders.”
Watson Wyatt 2009

Watson Wyatt explains us in his article, that to communicate effectively, an organization should gather three levels of performance : courage, innovation, and discipline.

First, the courage. In other words, « telling it like it is ». In the organizations, many people shield the employees from bad news. They do that because they think that the employees will lose effectiveness because of some bad news. However, Watson Wyatt demonstrates the opposite. He sais : « Tell people what they need to know and they will reward you with solid performance ».

Second, the innovation. In deed, organizations should always keep innovating. The innovation will allow employees to be encouraged and interested in their work.

Then, the discipline. The organizations need to give clear directions. The employees need to know what to do but also why. He adds that the employees need to know how well they are doing. The organizations shouldn’t forget to tell their employees about good news and perfomances.

He finishes his article by saying that courage, innovation, and discipline can help the organizations to survive or to do better in good times.

In my point of view, I totally agree with those points. I think that people have to be fair, have to tell the truth like it is, and employees need to know for what they are working. People need to be taken seriously to be more involved in the organization, and then accomplish a better work.

For my Ted Talk, I chose to talk about a subject we are almost all concerned about. In fact, my topic today will be about Facebook.
There are many things people maybe don’t know about Facebook, and I want to speak about that.

My first point is about Facebook chat. If you think your Facebook chat is private, think again !
Facebook announced that it looks at your personal conversations as a way to make more profits, from targeted advertising.
In fact, a company creates an ad for a specific target, and Facebook delivers it by collecting our personnal information, to increase its profit.

Secondly, I wanted to say that Facebook has all the rights on our photos, and for ever.
In deed, if we close our account, Facebook keeps the right to use everything we put on it.
Facebook can even sell our photos to another society, so they can create an ad with our photo on it.
And even if we change our privacy settings now, there is any way to avoid it.

And finally, Facebook even sees and uses the posts we finally don’t want to post.
This type of posts we begin to write and finally we don’t want to send… As an answer you finally juge to hard for example.
It is good to know that Facebook reads it and uses it as well.

What you put on Facebook isn’t as private as you may think. Be careful of what you share, you never know how Facebook could use it !

This comment today is inspired from the article called « Social media: Are we as informed as we think we are? » from CBC news.

Let start with a quote from Stuart Knight, which illustrates well the subject : "More than ever, technology has given us the opportunity to share our opinions, but they're not necessarily well-informed,".

He means that, nowadays, we are in a flow of information, we can all share our opinion on anything. However, does it mean that people are really informed to post something on the internet ? Are they competent to give any relevant opinion ?

That demonstrates that we can find completely false information on the internet, as people comment on subjects they often don’t really know well enough to give a clear, trustful and appropriate opinion.

The author speaks about tweets and retweets, here is what he says about people posting retweets : « Do you really know the whole story, and how much have you really thought about the opinion you’re sharing? ».

That’s why we can ask us this question, are we as informed as we think we are?

We have the illusion to have the access to lot of information, but how many is trustable? Can we even trust in the half of the information that comes to us ?

The better advice we can find to protect ourselves to that problem is to check our sources, and try to create our own opinion without spreading those of others, which can be unappropriate.

In his Ted Talk, Trew Dudley shows us that we can all be leaders. We don’t need a special skill to become someone who can affect others’ behaviours or way of thinking.

Have you never red a book or a quote, seen a movie, heard a song, which have completely changed your mind about something?

So much little things which can make you change.

Those books, movies, or songs have been written by someone with his or her own sensibility that had reached yours.

And more than that, you don’t even need to be a writer, a singer, a painter or whatever, to touch others’ mind. A person can impact someone simply by the way he or she behaves, reacts, talks, smiles…

I can share you one of my memories which made me change my mind. Four months ago, I was walking in the street and I saw a homeless man who was asking people for some money. I didn’t stop and I continued to walk. Then just behind me I heard a little girl, she seemed to be really touched to see this man in the street, she looked in her pocket to give him her own money.

This little girl didn’t talk to me, she didn’t look like a strong and powerfull leader. However she changed my way of thinking as she really touched me. Now I don’t behave the same way as before when I am faced to this situation.

We can all affect others, we can all make things change.

I strongly advise you to watch the TED talk of Amy Cuddy about the body language. She explains how our nonverbal communication can affect our presentation and govern what we think of us.

She tells us her story, how she managed to face her fear of speaking in public. She was terrified before speaking, however she pretended to feel powerfull, she adopted some hight-power poses before her presentations, as standing up straight, feet in the ground as wonder woman. She explains that « when we pretend to be powerfull, we feel powerfull ».

Her main idea during her speech is « fake it until you make it », pretend we can make it, even if we feel completely scared, and we will make it. And the end of her talk she changed her quote and said « fake it until you become it ».

Our nonverbal communication takes a major part of the message we send when we communicate.

We can also easily judge people with their body language. Nonverbal communication can differ, for example between different cultures. I come from France, and even if the Canadian and the French cultures have many commun points, I can see some differences which can create some misunderstanding between people. For example in France when we say hello to a friend or a person we know well we always give them a kiss, however in Canada as in other countries like in Germany, people can be really surprised as it is not in their behaviors.

Recently in the local news we spoke about the scandal of Dalhousie University. 13 male students created a facebook group called « Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen Facebook group », they nicknamed themselves the  « gentlemen ». In this group some of them posted violent and sexualized comments about their female classmates. On Dec. 6, one of the « gentlemen » asked the members of the group which of two female classmates the men would prefer to « hate f****». The girls discovered it, then the University did as well. It was a really shocking revelation for all and the story was told in the media.

I personally find that people shouldn’t post everything on social media. Those types of posts are extremely violent and shocking. Even if the « Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen » was a private group, everything on internet finally comes out…

There are a lot of examples of people posting things on social medias they shouldn’t have to, sometimes they do it unconsciously.

A good example could be this one on twitter after the recent terrorist attack in Paris, a man wanted to do a joke, however as I just said, we can’t say everything on social media…

To begin this blog I would like to introduce myself. My name is Agathe Deltour, I am 19 years old. I come from France and I live in Croix, a fairly small city next to Lille, which is a big city in the North of France, just one hour by train from Paris. In Lille you can find a lot of universities, shops, bars, museums… It is a really dynamic city.

I have 3 brothers and 2 sisters, I am the youngest in my familly and I’m still living with my parents. I am really fond of music, I have been playing the flute since I was 7 years old and I love trying new instruments and learning how to play by myself.

I have always lived in France and I started my studies there. I am in my second year in a communication school in France and I am doing my second term here in Canada. I arrived here 10 days ago and it is a new experience for me and I expect a lot from it; to meet new people, to improve my English, to discover a new culture…

I have never travelled for such a long period, however I have had the chance to visit Germany, Spain, Sweden, Italy, England and Belgium. My dream is to go to India and I’m already saving money for that.

In April I will go back to France and continue my studies. I don’t have plans for my future, however my main goal for the moment is to continue in event planning.