In this course, the videos, readings, and assignments will help you build new approaches and techniques for effective communication in today's workplace. By knowing your audience, you can then use a more specific and customized approach, which will increase the chance that your communication will be successfully received. I recommend that you watch the four modules in sequence, starting with communicating with your peers.

For example, at a Starbucks store, baristas work together as peers to take orders, to make drinks, and hand each other items behind the bar. In an office environment at Apple, marketing managers may work together as peers to assess their customer, which might include sharing consumer data, reports, analyses and collaboratively design promotions that will increase sales in their market, which might include joint brainstorming, reviewing each others' drafts, and asking for feedback, while at the same time, navigating different points of view. There can be some overlap with contractors, or onsite team members from closely partnering organizations but for our discussions, we'll use employment as the distinguishing factor between internal and external.

John Maxwell is a leadership development expert and he's so passionate about this topic that he wrote an entire book about it called Everyone Communicates Few Connect. Use your body to highlight and emphasize your message in a way that indicates willingness for two-way communication, like, opening your arms, turning towards the recipient, maintaining eye contact. In today's reading you'll find additional techniques in all the areas we're discussing, however, despite our best intention conflict can arise during communication with peers.

It's able for you to do what we call course correcting, it's able for you to step in and help navigate any problems that arise and because you've given simple small tasks at first, it's not like the fate of your entire work rests on this at the beginning. In fact, one way to encourage people to use this, which ties into one of our other conversations about virtual meetings, is if you create a game and you do a, I'm going to read a description of a skill that somebody has and those who are listening tell me who is this. Sometimes in a virtual world communication conflicts can escalate quickly, especially maybe via email or text, because people may say things that they wouldn't say in person or they might say something differently or they might keep repeating themselves because they're not sure why they don't understand each other.

When you work with virtual teams, you are going to want to reach beyond emails, and texts, and discussion forums, and document management systems. The reason is sometimes there's a time delay, and if you've already moved on before others have even seen the slide, it's disconcerting and it makes your presentation appear a little bit disjointed. But if you stare at the camera the whole time, this is the videoconferencing equivalent of making uncomfortably long eye contact.