Abstract/Reflections
This study shows that communication in an official setting and a corporate environment involves a lot of effort and hard work. It involves bringing to the fore, some basic tenets of communication. This is about decoding the message in a way that the consumers can interpret and make meaning from. Also, the study shows that there is the need to establish credibility in communication and appeal individually to consumers in order to establish and create a rapport. This rapport leads to the provision of a personalised message that induces action and motivates the listeners
Critical aspects of business success is mainly based on maintaining an emergent strategy. An emergent strategy is one that is flexible enough to incorporate the needs of all stakeholders, particularly consumers. This is because consumers are the most important class of stakeholders as far as building successful businesses is concerned. Therefore, instituting good and positive marketing techniques and systems always leads to better results. Marketing must take information from clients and provide the needs and requirements of clients at various points in time. This ensures that a firm remains the favourite brand for the consumers and the consumers remain interested in their activities and processes at all times.
Introduction
The purpose of this module is to introduce important elements of speech analysis and summary review in order to draw inferences and conduct prose analysis and rhetorical analysis. This paper provides a real case relating to the speeches of two people – Michelle and Barry. The paper will consolidate their speeches across various themes in order to draw a conclusion on what the different concepts were presented and how it leads to the presentation of information.
Speech Analysis
The speeches of Michelle and Barry provide major inputs on how each of them developed their careers. This is summarised on a line-by-line basis with short sentences encapsulating the pointers they sought to project in their speeches. Each of the speech discusses the background and origins of the speaker and how they became who they are. It exposes major social and economic factors that shaped their careers and got them where they are today.
There are four main things that cuts across the different speeches and gives information about how their firms are operating and how they are achieving results. The research will examine the communication, motivation, critical thinking and passion elements of the two speeches and draw inferences in textual and discourse analysis. This will lead to the differentiation and synthesis of the two speeches in order to draw major inferences.
Communication
The first dimension of this research is to identify the way the two of them presented their information and sentiments to the audiences. There are different definitions of the term “communication”. One definition indicates that “communication is a transaction whereby participants together create meaning through the exchange of symbols”. Another dimension of communication is that it involves “any message that is intended to shape, reinforce, or change the response of another, or others”.
This implies that the process of communicating with another party involves exchanging idea and views in order to create meaning with the other party. Some authorities indicate that communication must have an end in sight and this end must be express and obvious and the entire process of communication should be aimed at gaining that end. This makes communication purposeful and focused on attaining a given set of goals.
In the two communications, the end in sight was to try to get the audience to understand the processes and stages through which the different speakers attained their current status. This means the audience were to be given guidance and information about what has transpired in the past and how that had shaped the future for the speakers – both Michelle and Barry.
Barry started with the presentation of his biography and within the biography, he was able to present his background and show the listeners how entrepreneurship became a part of him and the most essential elements and processes that shaped his future. This is viewed as a biographical communication whereby the message is generalised and presented in a way that the audience can make inferences from and draw deductions by presenting similarities to their own lives.
On the other hand, Michelle presents information in a direct manner describing the actual achievements she created and how those achievements were grown and consolidated over the world. This is done in a way that presents the facts of the circumstances without much backgrounds and are based on the realities of the situation and could be akin to non-fictional writings without so much elaboration.
However, both of the two approaches provide different methods of telling the same kind of story. It is all about how the two people became successful and how they were able to bring together different situations. They both present a high level of credibility in their narration since they are both people who have achievements and showed their credentials at the beginning of the communication. Credibility in communication is defined as “how believable the communicator is”.
Credibility is established throughout the speech and reinforced in various ways and forms by giving logical and factual presentation of information. They are all presented in ways that are believable and can be internalised without questions and issues. The two speakers seem to have mastered the art of public speech and they used their ability and competency to present their information in various ways and forms.
Another aspect of communication is the ability to identify with the audience and the ability to get audience to remain attentive and identify familiar patterns in speeches. To this end, it appears that Barry is able to identify more with the audience because he provides real-life situations and circumstances that makes his communication more graphic and much more realistic to the audience. This allows the audience to get a fair understanding and process through which the message is presented and memorised by the listeners.
All in all, the communication enabled the listeners to get a fair view and understanding of the backgrounds of the speakers. This involved the encoding of their message in an understandable form and presenting this encoded message to the audience who were able to decode and interpret the message in order to form views on the message based on their perception. Indeed, Turner and West identify that this is the standardised communication loop which is used in all forms of communication in order to present information to listeners and make sure the information is meaningful to them (2010).
Motivation
Another fundamental essence of the communication is to create some kind of motivation for the audience. This is because the essence of the speeches given by the two parties is to get them to understand how ordinary members of the society can take inputs from the society, develop it and produce it to consumers as outputs. Therefore, there was the need for some kind of technical elements of motivation to be applied in the speeches to get the audience to be charged and incited to try to do something meaningful for themselves and the communities they live within.
Motivation is an individual process where people are induced internally to opt to do one thing instead of another. Motivational speaking is an art that blends counselling with storytelling in order to help the audience to help themselves individually. This involves the identification of basic things that are presented to consumers through a narrative and a narration that is presented by the speaker and the motivational speaking expert.
In the two speeches, Barry seem to focus on the importance of learning from mistakes and errors. Barry tells a story of making changes and modifying his life in order to achieve the goals and objectives that he sought. He stated that there are many different issues and matters that people need to learn. He shares experiences on the loss of money and the failures and problems with entrepreneurship. These provide the listeners with information about the kind of pitfalls that they should expect when they decide to go into entrepreneurship. This will give them a lot of information about the way and manner in which they can thrive and can carry out their business and operations. The main focus of this system is to identify the main issues that are common to the different members of the audience. Each member will have various perceptions and identify some elements and words of encouragement of the story of Barry and through that, they will learn and understand important things and processes that they will go about their activities and processes through.
Barry’s story also presents an important thing that will help every participant to identify the most important aspects of business – the art of selling to consumers. As a matter of fact, any business that is not successful in selling products to consumers is not going to survive. Every business that fails to sell to consumers is destined to be crashed out of operations. Therefore, he provides an important message to people who want to succeed in business by focusing on the most important thing of entrepreneurship – selling. It is expected that everyone in the audience will find ways of getting new markets and new skills in selling their products and this will help the to become better people and gain the ability to sell and achieve better results in delivering their services.
Michelle Hogwarts on the other hand, focused on her modest beginnings. This included the way she began and how small she started. This is presented to the consumers to give them a sense of perseverance. Thus, unlike Barry who teaches that he had everything right except one small skill which was lacking – experience in selling, Michelle shows that there is the opportunity to start small and in a relatively unknown situation and context. Through this, the listeners are most likely to identify that their situation might not be as bad as Michelle. And based on this, they are going to work harder and take chances. Others are also going to learn things directly and become charged and motivated to face the business environment with a strong desire to achieve results. This is because they are going to realise how impossible it was and how difficult it was for Michelle to live above all the obstacles. Through this, they are going to be able to develop themselves and improve their possibilities of achieving results so that they achieve heights similar to what they achieved.
Michelle was enthusiastic and full of energy. She was full of a lot of desire and drive. This shows that it is not easy to succeed in the field. Therefore, anyone in the audience is likely to work harder and try to live above their own personal struggles and difficulties in order to achieve better results and also complete all the major tasks that are ahead of them.
Thus, in the area of motivation and inspiration, it can be said that the passion of the messages of both Barry and Michelle provided information and guidance that laid the parameters of how to succeed in business. It also provided specific clues that individual members of audiences could connect to their personal lives and gain results in order to become better people.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is about the “ability to incorporate prior knowledge, technical reasoning and cognitive strategies to generalise, prove and evaluate issues in a familiar manner”. This is mainly about the use of the contextual perspective to analyse an issue through the use of generally accepted tools and techniques in the field. This indicates that in a communication, there is the need for the utilisation of generally accepted tools and techniques to get the audience to understand and reflect on the facts and figures of the situation at hand.
The discussions present information about things relating to business management and entrepreneurship. Thus, the ultimate end of the discussion is to open up the eyes and worldview of the listeners and audiences to the fact that there are many concepts we take for granted in our business administration courses that are really at play and present in the way we start businesses, run them and make them work out to meet our goals and expectations.
Michelle started a garage kind of fashion business. Within this process, she was able to utilise a very simple marketing strategy and marketing system which was used to get in touch with consumers. The approach used by Michelle can be seen as one that is based on an emergent strategy. An emergent strategy is one that responds to the realities in the environment in order to build on strengths and ameliorate losses. This is often based on marketing.
Marketing is defined by Kotler as “a social managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and values with others”. Therefore, Michelle built on marketing by having a word-of-mouth marketing system whereby her satisfied clients connected with consumers and built major relationships with them and achieved results.
The marketing process enabled Michelle to build a relationship with her suppliers and consumers. This interpersonal and emotional intelligence always lays the foundation for long-term relationships that often last for many years and this leads to trust and positive growth.
Another aspect and element of Michelle’s success was in her ability to innovate. She found new markets that needed her products and they expanded into those markets. This will tell the discerning listener that she used the normal theories of business and management. They provide the average listener the view that there are many opportunities in business and if a firm is able to identify the main issues and problems within the industry, that individual can grow into them and build and hold on to relationships.
The narration of Barry shows that there is more to entrepreneurship than just combining factors of product – land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship. It shows that there is the need to know how to convince your consumers to take the best products and also how to learn from the consumers and improve your technology and service offerings. As Steve Jobs said, a successful business grows by “connecting the dots” and this is done by identifying what consumers might need, what no one else is doing and then do them.
Therefore, the message of Barry to the audience is that consumers and the market want new products and services that they can grow and enhance and enjoy in consumption. Therefore, there is the need for a business to find ways of detecting those needs and provide them to the consumers. The procedure is rather based on the need to constantly review and identify what consumers want and what they desire. It is not enough to have the capital. Rather, having the capital and keeping your customers satisfied is most important and most vital.
Another aspect of business and management that Barry presents to the audience is that success in business is not really about who you are and where you are from. As a person from Jamaica, he was likely to face high levels of discrimination. However, Barry found relevance for himself and produced things that are relevant to people – things that people needed. Therefore, we realise that if you provide something that people need, they will always purchase your product and services irrespective of where you are from or what your origins might be in a given country.
Furthermore, going the extra mile to stay in touch with your customers and dealing with their deepest and truest needs is the best way forward. That way, the consumers feel they are being served by the company and they tend to give more attention to the company and purchase more products from the company. This is what makes a company successful and this is what causes a company to grow. It is mainly due to the fact that the company’s customers feel they are being treated right and given the right level of attention and care.
In conclusion, the speeches of Michelle and Barry provide major effects and impacts on the audiences. As communication, they encode ideas and present it to the audiences who decode them. They do this on the basis of establishing credibility and building on it. Also, they provide motivation to their listeners. This is because they show them the difficulties and challenges they went through. The average listener can identify what is really needed and then find an individual voice in the speech. Critical thinking can unearth the conventional tools of success in mainstream business management. And this is in the fact that emergent strategies based on marketing and connecting to the consumers lead to success.
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