CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In any organization, management—from bottom to top—is concerned with efficiency. In business writing courses, a desired outcome of the course is that students learn to phrase messages concisely; indeed, conciseness is one of the concepts of business writing that is paramount to the nature of business communication. Assignments in such courses frequently include a word or page limit to encourage students to practice skills related to clarity and conciseness. In business, a desired outcome is profit; one of the primary measures of performance is net profit in a given period. In manufacturing, a valued outcome is that production takes less than a certain amount of time without quality being compromised. In most offices, a goal is to perform tasks using a certain amount of effort and in a given period of time.

Let’s consider a situation in which you are the manager of an employee who has conveyed concern about his performance review, which indicated a lack of efficiency as a main issue. Though there is evidence that the employee’s work could have been done more efficiently without compromising quality, the employee explains that he would not have felt comfortable using the more efficient approach and that his approach is better. In challenging you to explain why you had mentioned the efficiency issue on the report, the employee acknowledges that he knew there was another way to do the jobs but understands that good leaders “break the rules” to get the best results possible. Indeed, in an effort to show their leadership potential, this employee acknowledges that he “often” break the rules, even if it means violating instructions given by management.

While you could respond merely with the statement that he violated the explicitly stated standard of efficiency and leave it at that, you do not. Clearly, the employee aspires to a position of leadership and has some experience with leadership development. The employee would not respond favorably to that blunt message; in this case, “respond favorably” means that the employee would have respected the response and learned from it. Instead, you acknowledge what the employee learned in his own leadership training experience (breaking rules) as well as what you learned in your own management and leadership training: be careful in breaking rules, don’t set out to break the rules all the time, and don’t break a rule directly connected to the desired outcome. Further, you implicitly use some elements of neuroscience that you understand could elicit a more favorable response.

Though your response is relatively long, the employee responds favorably. He acknowledges his appreciation for the detailed response and, also, acknowledges his appreciation for the links you made to leadership concepts. By the end of this chapter, you will understand several reasons why the message was successful. By the end of the book, you will understand how to apply the neuroscientific concepts involved in a variety of situations.

Topics and Goals of This Book

Communication is a primary tool of management and leadership, affecting every part of business. While management and leadership involve several different attributes to distinguish one from the other, as Jacob Morgan notes, “managers must be leaders.”¹ Ideas are conveyed through communication to an audience; and the audience assesses how to respond to the idea, based on how it is communicated. The audience is the center of the message; not the end. Managers at all levels of an organization need to think carefully about how to phrase a message in order to get the best desired response. The higher up one goes in management—to executive levels and other leadership positions—the more challenging these messages become, because they often deal with elements of changing behaviors or structure and affect many people.

Whether presented in written or oral form, a proposal that does not motivate the audience to the desired action will not be accepted. A message informing an audience of an accounting or financial issue will not be understood if the sender does not consider the audience’s background with accounting and finance. A directive related to changing a policy or procedure will not be well received if it does not address the audience’s concerns and fears about change. Training material that does not address the audience’s learning style and cognitive needs will not be effective.

An understanding of things that affect an audience’s perception of a message and understanding of it will enable the communicator to convey the message most effectively. This point is not new to anyone who manages others. Anyone educated in principles of management has learned that management is more a social science and art form than anything else. Management involves leadership of varying degrees, and leadership involves managing people; a manager at any level is trying to help the people she leads do their jobs well by keeping them motivated and helping them understand their job expectations. Even communication between managers at different levels requires similar dynamics of audience analysis in order to be effective.

Peter Drucker called management a liberal art because management at any level involves being able to think critically about a situation or context, analyze options available to solve a problem with that situation, and communicate decisions effectively.² Aristotle labeled rhetoric as an art rather than a science; however, he also pointed out that rhetoric is affected by the audience’s biological makeup.³ Indeed, social sciences are part of liberal arts, and social interactions affect biological development. Interestingly, articles have appeared in The Harvard Business Review that reinforce this blending between art and science relative to communication.^{4, 5} Scholarship in cognitive neuroscience is helping people in various decision making and leadership positions understand why the way certain messages are presented causes a certain response from an audience. That is why it is important to consider neuroscientific attributes that are involved in various messages, particularly messages common to managers and leaders: persuasive messages, informational messages, and instructional messages. The goal of this book is to help you understand these attributes and develop effective messages that can be conveyed either in writing or orally.

This book includes information about various forms of managerial and leadership-related communication, especially written communication such as correspondence and short reports. While it includes some principles of oral communication, there are subtle differences between a written proposal and one presented orally; in many cases, a proposal may be delivered using both—a written report and an oral presentation. Consequently, this book includes many of the same kinds of business writing topics covered in most business writing textbooks or handbooks. However, this book differs from those in that it emphasizes neuroscientific concepts to explain approaches to responding to particular managerial or leadership-related communication situations.

While other textbooks or handbooks provide tips on how to make a message effective, applying reader (or “you”) perspective, for example, I show how an understanding of certain concepts of neuroscience can help improve a message’s effectiveness and get desired results. As with many textbooks, this book emphasizes the relationship of audience and purpose within a message. However, the neuroscientific approach helps to explain why certain messages work better than others relative to audience and purpose. How do I know that this understanding can accomplish desired results? I have used my own application of the concepts in various management or leadership situations resulting in desired outcomes. A number of these are included in this book as examples and cases. Most of them address what Hamm labeled “The Five Messages Leaders Must Manage” in a May 2006 Harvard Business Review article.⁶

Hamm identifies five particular messages, or situations, requiring careful approaches to addressing them, which I extend to the general nature of the situation. Some of my extensions are very close to, if not the same as, Hamm’s original characterization of his terms. I list each of Hamm’s terms, a general description of it, and my extension:

Throughout the book, we will consider scholarship in rhetoric, neuroscience, and managerial communication. I describe applications of theory to practice and link certain practices to theory. As such, this book combines scholarly theory with proven application. A background in the theories that drive effective practice is important to understand why a given practice works and to facilitate transference of the practical skill to similar situations. Most of the theoretical review is integrated into the first few chapters, with each subsequent chapter integrating less theory and more practical application. All chapters include examples of the application of related skills. Several include activities to provide you with practice. This chapter also provides some basic information about concepts of rhetoric and neuroscience relevant to managerial communication.

Chapter 2 covers concepts and their relationship to principles of communication and rhetoric that you may already understand. However, those who are already familiar with these concepts will benefit as well from the explanations. I provide an overview of some principles of the different forms of business writing covered in those other textbooks and handbooks, linking neuroscience to those principles. Because of the concise approach to this book, I do not detail those concepts as they may be covered in other textbooks. You may view more information and examples of the various kinds of communication by searching websites using the concept as a search term. The book avoids technical, scientific jargon; so, you do not need an advanced understanding of rhetoric or neuroscience to benefit from this book.

Chapters 3 through eight cover specific examples of messages I have used in different situations, mostly in leadership situations—corresponding from a leadership position or to leadership. For 4 years I have coordinated the business writing course required of all undergraduate business majors at my institution. This coordination includes mentoring and directing six to seven teachers in any given semester. As such, I lead this group, which usually changes from semester to semester. My role as coordinator also has involved acting as a liaison between the Department of English and the College of Business, communicating with leadership of that college and reporting to leadership in my department; I have communicated with different levels of leadership. I have had several opportunities in these settings to practice what is discussed in this book. However, a couple of the examples fall outside of that context, yet involve communicating with leadership. I have applied these concepts in communications with company leadership in my position as a customer, for example. You also will see the concepts applied in business-to-business settings.

Each chapter includes a scenario for you to consider and decide how you might approach it. This activity hopefully will encourage critical thinking about the concepts and how to use them to create an effective message in response to a problem posed in a given situation.

I cannot guarantee the success of your own application of the concepts to your situation; a message that moves one person may not move another. Much depends on the audience’s disposition. Again, while science is involved, much makes communication an art form.

Why Is It Important to Consider Neuroscience within Managerial and Leadership Communication?

People are affected by their cultural upbringing, and this influence is manifested in one’s neurons. Neurons are part of your brain; they help facilitate connections between parts of the brain involved in perception, cognition, and decision making. Your fears, values, and perceptions of the world evolve through social interactions that affect biological phenomena associated with neurons. Indeed, the social experience affects the biological development.

The purpose of a message and its audience are intertwined. A message must consider the audience’s disposition to be most effective. This is echoed not only in scholarship related to rhetoric but in leadership and executive-oriented articles as well, as observed with the several references to articles published in business-related journals including the Harvard Business Review. The smaller the audience, the more able one is to meet that task. However, if a large group of people is involved as an audience and you can ascertain that the people in that group share common attributes such as values or experiences, a message should make an appeal to those common elements.

This book focuses on messages addressed to relatively small audiences—not much more than a handful of people. Consequently, it allows for a better understanding of the audience’s disposition than attempting to understand the disposition of each person in a larger audience—10 or more, for example. This disposition may be relative to social disposition or biological or physical disposition. Aristotle notes that this disposition likely involves an audience that may have “limited intellectual scope and limited capacity to follow an extended chain of reasoning.”⁷ Drucker observes that management, “is deeply embedded in culture.”⁸ So, social disposition is just as important as physical disposition. An audience’s general attitude toward their work also is an important consideration.

Managers learn about McGregor’s (1960) management theories—“Theory X” and “Theory Y” management styles.⁹ These styles are relative to employee attitude about work. Very broadly, Theory X characterizes employees as not liking work, preferring to be directed, and motivated by job security or the threat of losing their job. The Theory X management style requires management to be authoritarian. Theory Y characterizes employees as motivated to work, wanting to exercise independent thinking skills and creativity, and willing to exceed expectations if they recognize a reasonable reward is offered. The Theory Y management style encourages management to offer employees latitude for creative thinking and flexibility to define their responsibilities, understanding that the employee wants responsibility.

I would argue that the X/Y philosophy is not an “either/or” binary distinction; it should be represented as a spectrum or line, with “Heavily Theory X” (requiring considerable supervision or direction and having very little motivation beyond the minimum required to keep their job) at one end and “Heavily Theory Y” (having strong independent and creative thinking skills, ambitious, desiring more responsibilities) at the other end. Each employee exists somewhere along that spectrum, and each requires a different message to encourage them to do a given task. For some, getting the boss’s approval is enough reward, knowing it means they will keep their job. For some others, that approval may be recognized as a “notch” toward helping them get a promotion or salary increase. For still others, the reward must be acknowledged prior to their being motivated to do the task itself. Each one falls at a different point along that X/Y spectrum.

A message must be conveyed in a way that suits the audience’s background, perceptions of the world, motivations, and practices—according to their capacity for cognition.

Scholarship in rhetoric draws on studies from the social science and humanities disciplines of cognitive neuroscience—social psychology, for example. Rhetoric is certainly a social dynamic, as it attempts to facilitate a desired response from an audience. Scholarship in neuroscience helps to explain scientifically some of the findings reported in scholarship in rhetoric.

Scholarship in cognitive neuroscience involves five general disciplines: cognitive psychology, philosophy, linguistics, biology, and chemistry. These represent a cross among humanities and scientific fields. The field of cognitive neuroscience devotes much attention to understanding how one processes information toward cognition.

Humanities scholars tend to examine how language and social interactions affect our understanding of the world. Indeed, Hutchins¹⁰ and Pinker¹¹ for example, describe cognition as a series of developmental processes affected by historical dynamics as well as previous social experiences related to certain tasks. In each case, research in cognitive neuroscience has found that cognition is a multisensory process. Multiple senses are involved in any social interaction—visual, aural, and spatial orientation, as well as gesture, touch, and smell, depending on the environment in which the interaction occurs. Likewise, language is generally recognized as being aural or oral or visual—print-linguistic text is a visual representation.

This appreciation of the senses is important, because it may be better to communicate directly with someone in person than via e-mail, for example. Meaning and effect can be lost or misunderstood when conveyed only in writing. An in-person meeting will eliminate a lot of potential confusion. It also may have a more powerful effect than writing because of neuroscience-related dynamics. Again, most of this book pertains to written communication, but I allude a few times to situations when an in-person meeting will be more effective than an e-mail message. One may, for example, compose a script of the message prior to a meeting or presentation, using that phrasing in an in-person meeting that integrates other visual and auditory cues to enhance the effect of the message.

A number of visual dynamics come into play with an in-person meeting (e.g., color of dress, facial expressions, smell of cologne or perfume, posture, and even a handshake), and I discuss some of these dynamics in this book.

Cognitive Neuroscience and Managerial and Leadership Communication

This chapter includes an overview of several concepts related to neuroscience and rhetoric as applied to managerial communication. This is the “theory” behind the applications provided and discussed. Again, we will avoid technical jargon.

Managerial and leadership communication encompass a range of communication practices found in a variety of correspondence and reports—oral and written. These include informational messages, persuasive messages, and instructional messages. I focused on the neuroscience of certain kinds of instructional messages in How the Brain Processes Multimodal Technical Instructions (2015) and the neuroscience of certain kinds of persuasive messages in The Neuroscience of Multimodal Persuasive Messages (2017). Persuasion involves different neural dynamics than cognition related to instruction does.^{12, 13, 14} So, it is important to distinguish the dynamics relative to the message and situation.

However, persuasion is involved in some respect even in informational and instructional messages. For example, while the purpose of this book is instructional, my educational background may influence (or persuade) a reader to believe my statements in this book more than if I had very little education. Even in an informational message, I may need to convince the audience implicitly that a statement is accurate, unless the audience already knew of the statement’s accuracy. An executive who is communicating the implementation of a new business strategy can state that the transition will go smoothly, but what has he or she done to earn the audience’s trust? In order for the message to be effective (believed), the audience must trust the messenger. Just as an executive looks for evidence of results by reviewing financial data, the affected audience looks for evidence of trustworthiness before it is persuaded that the statement is true.

Your belief system and values strongly influence how you may be persuaded to do something. One who does not value money, for example, will not be persuaded by an economic reward such as a bonus or raise to do something. The general focus of persuasion is to change one’s attitude or beliefs about a given topic or issue or to elicit a stronger conviction in belief or attitude about that topic or issue. Managerial and leadership communication often involves communicating change to employees: changing a policy, procedure, or the way people perceive a situation toward helping improve efficiency and operations. Understanding the audience’s background with variables that could influence a decision, such as culture, motivations, and values, will enable the communicator to affect neural activity to moving the audience a certain way.

For example, one concept of neuroscience we will consider in this book is that of the “mirror neurons.” Mirror neurons are involved in helping us understand how to mirror an activity we are watching someone else do or an attribute that we value in another person. This mirroring can include sharing a perception (shared emotion) as well as with copying or imitating action. As Pillay notes, “…our brains can mirror not only actions, but intentions as well.”¹⁵ Members of the team you lead will perceive a situation in ways similar to how they think a manager perceives it, as their brain mirrors the supervisor’s perception of the situation.

Persuasion

It is important to understand some concepts of persuasion, because they provide much of the basic communication-related components linking persuasion and neuroscience. Aristotle introduced the primary foundation of persuasion, and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca modified that foundation to account for less scientific aspects of reasoning.¹⁶

A basic premise of persuasion is that the audience is willing to change their perception of a given issue. If people hold to a given position with considerable conviction, it is almost impossible to change their minds. For example, I received a mailing from an auto dealership announcing a promotion to buy a car from them a short time after I had purchased a new car. I was not in the market to buy another new car; almost no sales pitch or car commercial would have been able to motivate me to buy a new car. If the pitch or commercial is to have any real effect, one needs to be willing to consider such a purchase. A challenge for managers and leaders may be that employees do not think a change is needed, until they are made aware of the problem.

One can, also, use a variety of approaches to persuade an audience: these include logos (reason or logic), ethos (speaker’s or writer’s credibility), and pathos (appeal to emotion). For the most part, scholarship finds that a combination of approaches works best. For example, a physician who is trained in treatments of cancers states that many studies find a link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer; the audience understands the physician to be trained in what causes cancers and trusts that the physician is speaking the truth (ethos: we trust the physician because of her training and expertise; we believe her to be a credible source). Further, because the physician indicates that many studies that are reported in reputable journals find that link, it is reasonable to make the conclusion about cause (smoking cigarettes) and effect (lung cancer)—(logos: if multiple studies that experts in the physician’s profession believe used good research approaches reached the same conclusions, the conclusions about the link must be accurate). That message combines ethos and logos.

One’s perception of a speaker or writer is influenced by culture and experience, both of which affect neurons in certain ways. Speakers who share cultural values or experiences with an audience may be able to convey a message more persuasively than a speaker who does not share an experience or value. Similarly, an audience that does not share an attitude about something with a speaker will not respond to a message that emphasizes that attitude.

A wealthy person who spent a night on a street and did not eat for 2 days may, for example, claim to understand the experience of poverty and homelessness. One person may believe that, never having experienced a night on the street or hunger from not eating for 2 days. Someone who has lived in poverty and been homeless for some time may not believe that statement, though. The wealthy person knew the experience was only for a short time and would be able to return home and eat whenever she wanted to.

Managerial Communication and Science

Neurons help to process messages and experiences generally toward helping us understand them. However, biological attributes of cognition are almost never considered in the discussion of business communication. An understanding of the processes the brain experiences can help to design more effective messages.

An executive may be most concerned with the product or outcome of a project, especially if he is trying to encourage some autonomy and independent thinking among his employees. However, the executive may want to know how the person or team “got it done” effectively afterwards; so, they understand an approach that worked well. While the product was the material outcome of the work or process of solving the problem, the process itself becomes valuable to understand for future reference because it was successful.

In this book, I use neurobiological terminology to explain why certain messages work well. The literature review related to these terms provided here avoids thick descriptions of these studies. For example, while I describe relevant concepts such as “mirror neurons” (to which I alluded earlier in this chapter), I do not refer to specialized terms given to neuron types or those of a particular region of the brain such as “F5 neurons.” You do not need to be a biologist to understand how to use an understanding of neuroscience to convey messages effectively.

Four specific concepts connected to neurobiology and linked to business communication are: 1) multimodality of neurons, 2) “reward neurons,” 3) “mirror neurons,” and 4) neural plasticity. Further, another important term is the Colavita visual dominance effect, a concept prominently studied in neuroscience scholarship. Neurophysiologists also recognize the important role of previous experience and knowledge in cognition and perception as well as how information is presented relative to modes involved and timing of presentation, as Moreno & Mayer found.¹⁷ These ideas are associated with the concepts of plasticity and multimodality of neurons.

Multimodality of Neurons

Neurobiologists identify two kinds of neurons relative to modal attributes: unimodal and multimodal. Unimodal neurons carry information relative to a single modality. For example, a unimodal auditory neuron can process only one kind of sensory information—sound. When someone reads an e-mail message or a letter, only visual information is processed. Multimodal neurons can carry information related to more than one mode; for example, visual and auditory. Those attending a meeting, for example, experience the speaker’s voice as well as visual, nonverbal dynamics that may affect the impact of the message.

Understanding the existence of such neurons helps to understand how to use certain communication tools in different settings; an oral presentation, for example, involves visual, auditory, and spatial sensory stimuli. People in an audience see the presenter’s facial expressions, body movement, and visual aids; they also hear the presenter speaking, including any changes in tone, pace, and volume; and they observe how the presenter uses the space in the room. Neurons are processing all of this information; some neurons are able to process all three stimuli while others focus on certain stimuli.

Studies related to multimodal neurons also suggest that certain kinds of information can be processed at different rates by such neurons, suggesting an optimal combination integrating various modes.^{18, 19} For example, neurobiologists have studied the Colavita visual dominance effect considerably. Specifically, this phenomenon finds that information presented visually (through graphics or demonstration, for example) is processed more quickly than other kinds of delivery (text, spoken word, for example). Many scholars in cognitive psychology recognize value in presenting information both visually and aurally (see, for example, Moreno and Meyer 1999 and Mayer 2001). The combination involves multiple modes of representation that reinforce each other. Multimodal neurons can facilitate processing of information presented in the combination.

Visual-Dominance Effect

While neurons can process information from a variety of sensory modalities—vision, auditory, haptic (touch), smell—visual information is acquired the fastest; that is, the brain senses visually provided information faster than it perceives any other kind of source. Most people tend to prefer visual representations over other modalities; given a choice between watching an event on television or listening to it on the radio, most people would choose watching it on television. People can process the information about what is happening much more easily when they watch the event than when hearing someone describe it. It takes much too long to describe the entire action verbally.

Neuroscience scholarship finds that vision is the dominant sense in humans.^{20, 21, 22} Colavita found in a series of four experiments that subjects responded to visual stimuli before they responded to any other sensory stimulus. Further, he notes that scholarship generally recognizes that people “do not respond as effectively to two simultaneously presented stimuli as to the same two stimuli presented in succession.”²³ However, Spence, Parise, and Chen suggest that this effect is attributable to the fact that the visual information is received, generally, before any other information—auditory or touch, for example.²⁴ Since vision often is the first sense that receives information it, naturally, is engaged immediately; however, auditory information is processed faster than visual information.

Neuroscience recognizes the value of visual representations in facilitating cognition. This book deals with visual representations in business communication through the written word. Writing is involved in generating visual aids for oral presentations as well as in print exchanges of communication such as e-mail, letters, and reports. The visual is also involved, of course, in oral presentations and in-person meetings outside of writing; a person’s presence engages visual information. A speaker’s dress and physical demeanor can influence perception. Some messages are better presented in-person than in writing. We will consider some such instances later in the book.

Reward Neurons

Certain neurons are stimulated when one perceives a reward or a reason to do something. These neurons enhance the audience’s attention by conveying motivation to act a certain way. This is why advertisers often integrate sex into commercials; it activates reward neurons. People pay closer attention when those neurons are activated. Reward neurons are involved in persuasive messages when a speaker acknowledges some benefit the audience may experience.

Rewards can take many forms. For example, I may receive some financial benefit—a bonus; or I may feel that I am even more a part of a certain social group; or I may feel good about helping someone else. These motivate me to act a certain way, because I perceive I will be rewarded somehow. Further, the perception of these as rewards are affected by my culture and upbringing.

Mirror Neurons

As I mentioned before, mirror neurons facilitate much of the cognition associated with watching someone do something and doing it yourself. When you went through training at your workplace or an internship, you watched others doing certain tasks. Your mirror neurons were active as you observed this activity. Eventually, you began to mirror those actions or behaviors. However, mirror neurons also are involved in persuasion. An audience wants to mirror some aspect of the speaker, or the speaker may want to reflect some quality of the audience to assimilate with it more. As such, mirror neurons behave differently in persuasive exchanges than they do in instructional exchanges. As I noted before in the brief description of mirror neurons, they help facilitate a shared experience between speaker and audience.²⁵

Neural Plasticity

“Neural plasticity pertains to the ability of neurons to change their composition and behaviors relative to the information they process and experiences.”²⁶ Through our various experiences, our neurons change to help us understand how to respond to various situations we encounter. These experiences not only change us cognitively; they change us biologically. Our neurons grow and change with these experiences, facilitating transmission of information we have learned.

Two parts of the brain closely connected to plasticity are the amygdala and the hippocampus. I describe more about these later.

Humanities scholars such as Gee, Pinker, and Mayer recognize that experience plays a role in learning about information and values.^{27, 28, 29} Neurobiologists understand this link as well. Berlucchi and Buchtel define neural plasticity as:

The brain can process information more quickly as it learns more about information. With each experience individuals have with a given problem or setting, they adapt their behavior such that they eventually act on that problem or situation without thinking about it.

Because plasticity is affected by social interaction over time, culture also impacts persuasive communication. As mentioned earlier, a particular message may have a better persuasive effect in one culture but not another merely because of social expectations and perceptions of rewards or attributes of the product itself. There is a special connection between culture and perception because of how our brain responds to cultural influences. However, some of our responses are simply natural.

Hippocampus

The hippocampus in our brains stores information about our experiences. Was the experience positive or negative? How did we react? Did we react appropriately? Did something good happen from the way we reacted? If not, how can we change our reaction so when we experience it again we know to respond that way? Our responses are culturally determined through previous social experiences. Each time I do something somewhat new at work and receive positive feedback from my supervisors or peers (whose feedback I value), I understand that my response to the new situation was appropriate. Over time, then, I respond that same way in similar situations.

Amygdala

We have a very basic desire for self-preservation. This desire impacts responses to people or events that we do not understand or that we did not like. Certain people and events invoke fear in us, dissuading us from doing them in the future. This fear helps to preserve us by discouraging us from doing something that may harm us.

The amygdala is part of the brain that monitors and facilitates responses related to these basic desires. The amygdala helps us to stay alive—self-preservation. When we encounter something new that may be dangerous to us, the amygdala sends signals to the brain. Consider how many children younger than 4 years old, for example, become upset when they sit on Santa’s lap at a store. They cling to the parent, not wanting to leave the safety of their parent’s touch while being placed on a stranger’s lap. The child responds with fear, grabbing what it knows will protect it. Plasticity is part of this dynamic. As we experience events that affected us negatively, we remember the situation and our response; and we try to avoid them in the future. Just as plasticity helps to reinforce positive experiences, it reinforces negative ones as well. Our neurons associate that event or person with fear.

Medial Prefrontal Cortex

The prefrontal cortex is involved in complex cognitive functions such as decision making. Several of the concepts listed here are integrated into dynamics that occur within the prefrontal cortex (PFC). One that is important but not considered in many communication texts is trust. Stimuli connected to trust between two people have been found to be processed in the medial prefrontal cortex. Zach reported on studies that identify links between trust, neuroscience, and action.³¹ A few of the recommendations he makes to link management and trust are included in the considerations I formulate in this book. Indeed, as indicated earlier in this chapter, how an audience perceives the communicator affects their perception of the message itself. In rhetoric scholarship, this is called “ethos,” or the speaker’s credibility. In other words, an audience will consider how trustworthy the speaker conveying the message is. The more trustworthy the audience perceives the communicator, the more the message itself will be valued.

A Useful Formula for Integrating Neuroscience into Messages

So, how can we use this information to develop effective messages? Much of it revolves around getting to know your audience better than you have been encouraged to do before. Talk more with each employee to understand his concerns and values, for example. Apply the various concepts of neuroscience more explicitly to your consideration of the audience as you plan a message. You understand the situation and how you want your audience to respond to it. Consider your audience’s needs—not just in terms of information (which has been the focus of audience analysis) but in terms of motivations, mirroring, fears, and delivery of the message.

There is a fifth element—“me.” “Me” would be the speaker or writer of the message; it is embedded in the other four elements implicitly. That is, the situation is based on your perception of it as are the audience’s needs and the message itself. The desired response or outcome is relative to your own perception of a desirable response or outcome. You can try to consider the situation and others as objectively as possible, but all are affected by your perception. This perception is explicitly integrated in the “audience’s needs,” for example. Another attribute of “me” is your own concerns about a situation and fears associated with it and the audience’s response to your message. These affect what information you decide to include—and what not to include.

Any information associated with the situation and your own concerns that is irrelevant to or would negatively impact the desired response of the audience should be omitted. A problem many undergraduate business students have is that, when given a scenario to which they must respond with a message, they try to integrate as many of the details as possible, even when some of those details will negatively affect the message. Business students and managers at all levels need to learn what information is irrelevant as well as what information may hurt the impact of the message. I address some of these issues later in this book.

From the consideration of these attributes; the message is not just a set of words written or spoken, either. The message is the entirety of the presentation—including the delivery.

Table 1.1 Questions for assessing audience needs

Rewards: What will motivate this person to respond a certain way (What reward can I offer?)? How can I phrase the message so that reward is explicitly stated?	Mirroring: What does the audience think of me (including my trustworthiness)? What of my attributes or qualities does the audience value or admire? How can I appeal to that perception? What attributes or qualities of my audience do I value or admire? How can I integrate those into my message? What terms can I use that my audience values and will get their attention?
Fears: What about this situation may invoke fear in my audience? Do I want to raise fear to provide some kind of motivation toward action? How can I defuse or minimize that fear for my audience? To what from their experiences might my audience compare this situation, and how can I help them overcome that fear or the fear they experienced before?	Mode of Delivery: How can I best deliver this message to get the desired response from my audience? Writing—letter or e-mail? [print-linguistic text only] Phone call? [aural only] In person? [multimodal]

Table 1.1 summarizes questions to ask in regard to audience needs.

Specific responses to these questions will depend considerably on the specific context and audience. Indeed, a context may not need to involve all of these questions; many will involve asking only a few.

Application

At the beginning of the chapter, we considered a case about an exchange between you as a manager and an employee. Let’s consider some additional factors that would impact the desirable outcome. The employee responded favorably to your message, largely because you integrated elements associated with rewards, mirroring, fears, and mode of delivery.

The exchange occurred via e-mail largely because the employee usually works a different schedule than yours and made the query via e-mail. Much communication between you and the employee occurred via e-mail in that setting. You could not expect the employee to be able to meet with you, so you responded via e-mail, though an in-person meeting would have worked just as well or better.

In the response, you described the link between the objective of efficiency and grading performance. The “penalty” for violating the standard seemed to be what prompted the employee’s message; so, you addressed it. You acknowledged that the work could be performed very well using the stated approach, which is shown to be more efficient. Then, you linked the “rule” about efficiency to leadership. You stated:

This passage integrates the reward concept as well as the fear concept. The reward is learning when to break rules and when not to; the fear element is in breaking them the wrong way or at the wrong time. It also integrates some element of mirroring. You acknowledge your own familiarity with leadership development books. You have leadership training as does the employee; you and the employee are somewhat equal in that sense. You even suggest an appropriate way to have “broken the rules” without violating the standard of efficiency. Just after this passage, you acknowledged your own leadership training experience. This furthers the mirroring. As one aspiring to become a leader, the employee values your leadership development experience.

The employee acknowledged in his message that, had he known his actions would negatively affect his performance review he would have made an effort to stay with the stated approach. Later in your message you ask a few questions pertaining to why the employee decided to break the rules if he could have made the effort to stay within the parameters in the first place. Finally, linking the questions to leadership, you state:

Again, this engages the mirroring concept of what leadership training includes and encourages. The employee comes away from your message feeling as though he is on equal terms with you while you have also been able to “mentor” the aspiring leader regarding leadership lessons. This is the desired response, brought about by applying the concepts associated with the formula and guiding questions about audience.

The following chapters describe how the formula and concepts apply to various principles of business communication, particularly written communication, and how the reader can apply them to a variety of situations. Many of these principles echo principles of lean communication—optimizing conciseness, clarity, and effect of the message. In the following chapter, I link the formula and concepts to basic principles of business writing. In subsequent chapters, we will consider specific applications of this formula in specific contexts, especially regarding the audience consideration questions, and extend the application to other similar situations you may face.