Professional Communication Definition and Issues

Professional Communication Definition and Issues The term professional communication refers to the various forms of speaking, listening, writing, and responding carried out both in and beyond the workplace, whether in person or electronically. From meetings and presentations to memos and emails to marketing materials and annual reports, in business communication, its essential to take a professional, formal, civil tone to make the best impression on your audience, whether its members be your colleagues, supervisors, or customers. Author Anne Eisenberg illustrates it this way:  What is good professional communication? It is writing or speaking that is accurate, complete, and understandable to its audience- that tells the truth about the data directly and clearly. Doing this takes research, analysis of the audience, and the mastering of the three interrelated elements of organization, language, and design and illustration. (Writing Well for the Technical Professions. Harper Row, 1989) Even if youre comfortable with your coworkers, you should still take the extra time to make your emails among them professional, correct, and clear. Becoming too lazy or informal in them (with grammar, punctuation, and spelling, for example) can reflect poorly on you if a message would happen to be forwarded to higher levels of the company or to human resources. Always keep them cordial, and reread for potential misunderstandings before you hit send. Social Media Reflects on Your Brand With a bevy of social media avenues representing your (and your companys) public face, its critical that the communications presented there represent you well.   Author  Matt Krumrie elaborates:  For professionals, their brand shows through on their LinkedIn photo and profile. It shows through with your e-mail signature. It shows on Twitter by what you tweet and through your profile description. Any form of professional communication, whether it’s intended to or not, reflects your personal brand. If you attend a networking event, how you present yourself is how people perceive you and your brand. (Can a Personal Brand Coach Help My Career?  Star Tribune  [Minneapolis], May 19, 2014) Remember that whats sent in an email or posted on the Internet is very tough to completely delete, and if its been saved by someone (such as in a forward or retweet), its possible it wont ever completely go away. Have others review what you plan to post, not only for typos and factual errors but for potential cultural  insensitivity. Even be careful of what you post on your personal sites and pages, as they can come back to haunt you professionally, especially if you deal with the public or customers in your job- or someday will want a job that does.   Intercultural Communication One issue in todays global, interconnected economy is the potential for miscommunication when dealing with people of other cultures if employees are not sensitive to the norms of people that they have to interact with- and a company doesnt have to be dealing with people across the globe for this to apply. Even people from across the United States have different ways of communicating. Someone from the South or Midwest might find the bluntness of a New Yorker off-putting, for example. Intercultural communication is communication between and among individuals and groups across national and ethnic boundaries, notes authors  Jennifer Waldeck, Patricia Kearney, and Tim Plax. It can also come up in rural vs. urban or generational divides. They continue: Intercultural communication can become especially problematic for business communicators when they begin to believe that the way people in their dominant culture communicate is the only or best way, or when they fail to learn and appreciate the cultural norms of people they do business with. (Business and Professional Communication in a Digital Age. Wadsworth, 2013) Fortunately, companies have a wealth of resources available to them under the umbrella of sensitivity training. Working with a diverse set of colleagues can help everyone understand others perspectives. Tap into your colleagues to learn their points of view and prevent gaffes in your communications before they happen.

The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Attempting to bring an earlier end to World War II, U.S. President Harry Truman made the fateful decision to drop a massive atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945, this atomic bomb, known as Little Boy, flattened the city, killing at least 70,000 people that day and tens of thousands more from radiation poisoning. While Japan  was still trying to comprehend this devastation, the United States dropped another atomic bomb. This bomb, nicknamed Fat Man, was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people immediately and another 20,000 to 40,000 in the months following the explosion. On August 15, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced an unconditional surrender, ending World War II. The Enola Gay Heads to Hiroshima At 2:45 a.m. on Monday, August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber  took off from Tinian, a North Pacific island in the Marianas, 1,500 miles south of Japan. The 12-man crew  was on board to make sure this secret mission went smoothly. Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot, nicknamed the B-29 the Enola Gay after his mother. Just before take-off, the planes nickname was painted on its side. The Enola Gay was a B-29 Superfortress  (aircraft 44-86292), part of the 509th Composite Group. In order to carry such a heavy load as an atomic bomb, the Enola Gay was modified: new propellers, stronger engines, and faster opening bomb bay doors. (Only 15 B-29s underwent this modification.) Even though it had been modified, the plane still had to use the full runway to gain the necessary speed, thus it did not lift off until very near the waters edge.1 The Enola Gay was escorted by two other bombers that carried cameras and a variety of measuring devices. Three other planes had left earlier in order to ascertain the weather conditions over the possible targets. The Atomic Bomb Known as Little Boy Is on Board On a hook in the ceiling of the plane, hung the ten-foot atomic bomb, Little Boy. Navy Captain William S. Parsons (Deak), chief of the Ordnance Division in the Manhattan Project, was the Enola Gays weaponeer. Since Parsons had been instrumental in the development of the bomb, he was now responsible for arming the bomb while in-flight. Approximately 15 minutes into the flight (3:00 a.m.), Parsons began to arm the atomic bomb; it took him 15 minutes. Parsons thought while arming Little Boy: I knew the Japs were in for it, but I felt no particular emotion about it.2 Little Boy was created using uranium-235, a radioactive isotope of uranium. This uranium-235 atomic bomb, a product of $2 billion of research, had never been tested. Nor had any atomic bomb yet been dropped from a plane. Some scientists and politicians pushed for not warning Japan of the bombing in order to save face in case the bomb malfunctioned. Clear Weather Over Hiroshima There had been four cities chosen as possible targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki, and Niigata (Kyoto was the first choice until it was removed from the list by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson). The cities were chosen because they had been relatively untouched during the war. The Target Committee wanted the first bomb to be sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it was released.3 On August 6, 1945, the first choice target, Hiroshima, was having clear weather. At 8:15 a.m. (local time), the Enola Gays door sprang open and dropped Little Boy. The bomb exploded 1,900 feet above the city and only missed the target, the Aioi Bridge, by approximately 800 feet. The Explosion at Hiroshima Staff Sergeant George Caron, the tail gunner, described what he saw: The mushroom cloud itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside. . . . It looked like lava or molasses covering a whole city. . . .4 The cloud is estimated to have reached a height of 40,000 feet. Captain Robert Lewis, the co-pilot, stated, Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could no longer see the city. We could see smoke and fires creeping up the sides of the mountains.5 Two-thirds of Hiroshima was destroyed. Within three miles of the explosion, 60,000 of the 90,000 buildings were demolished. Clay roof tiles had melted together. Shadows had imprinted on buildings and other hard surfaces. Metal and stone had melted. Unlike other bombing raids, the goal for this raid had not been a military installation but rather an entire city. The atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima killed civilian women and children in addition to soldiers. Hiroshimas population has been estimated at 350,000; approximately 70,000 died immediately from the explosion and another 70,000 died from radiation within five years. A survivor described the damage to people: The appearance of people was . . . well, they all had skin blackened by burns. . . . They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you couldnt tell whether you were looking at them from in front or in back. . . . They held their arms bent [forward] like this . . . and their skin - not only on their hands, but on their faces and bodies too - hung down. . . . If there had been only one or two such people . . . perhaps I would not have had such a strong impression. But wherever I walked I met these people. . . . Many of them died along the road - I can still picture them in my mind like walking ghosts. 6 The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki While the people of Japan tried to comprehend the devastation in Hiroshima, the United States was preparing a second bombing mission. The second run was not delayed in order to give Japan  time to surrender but was waiting only for a sufficient amount of plutonium-239 for the atomic bomb. On August 9, 1945, only three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, another B-29, Bocks Car, left Tinian at 3:49 a.m. The first choice target for this bombing run had been Kokura. Since the haze over Kokura prevented the sighting of the bombing target, Bocks Car continued on to its second target. At 11:02 a.m., the atomic bomb, Fat Man, was dropped over Nagasaki. The atomic bomb exploded 1,650 feet above the city. Fujie Urata Matsumoto, a survivor, shares one scene: The pumpkin field in front of the house was blown clean. Nothing was left of the whole thick crop, except that in place of the pumpkins there was a womans head. I looked at the face to see if I knew her. It was a woman of about forty. She must have been from another part of town I had never seen her around here. A gold tooth gleamed in the wide-open mouth. A handful of singed hair hung down from the left temple over her cheek, dangling in her mouth. Her eyelids were drawn up, showing black holes where the eyes had been burned out. . . . She had probably looked square into the flash and gotten her eyeballs burned. Approximately 40 percent of Nagasaki was destroyed. Luckily for many civilians  living in Nagasaki,  though this atomic bomb was considered much stronger than the one exploded over Hiroshima, the terrain of Nagasaki prevented the bomb from doing as much damage. The decimation, however, was still great. With a population of 270,000, approximately 40,000 people died immediately and another 30,000 by the end of the year. I saw the atom bomb. I was four then. I remember the cicadas chirping. The atom bomb was the last thing that happened in the war and no more bad things have happened since then, but I dont have my Mummy any more. So even if it isnt bad any more, Im not happy.- Kayano Nagai, survivor 8 Sources Notes 1. Dan Kurzman,  Day of the Bomb: Countdown to Hiroshima  (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1986) 410.2. William S. Parsons as quoted in Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima:  Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb  (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995) 43.3. Kurzman,  Day of the Bomb  394.4. George Caron as quoted in Takaki,  Hiroshima  44.5. Robert Lewis as quoted in Takaki,  Hiroshima  43.6. A survivor quoted in Robert Jay Lifton,  Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima  (New York: Random House, 1967) 27.7. Fujie Urata Matsumoto as quoted in Takashi  Nagai, We of Nagasaki: The Story of Survivors in an Atomic Wasteland  (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1964) 42.8. Kayano Nagai as quoted in  Nagai, We of Nagasaki  6. Bibliography Hersey, John.  Hiroshima. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Kurzman, Dan.  Day of the Bomb: Countdown to Hiroshima. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1986. Liebow, Averill A.  Encounter With Disaster: A Medical Diary of Hiroshima, 1945. New York: W. W. Norton Company, 1970. Lifton, Robert Jay.  Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima. New York: Random House, 1967. Nagai, Takashi.  We of Nagasaki: The Story of Survivors in an Atomic Wasteland. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1964. Takaki, Ronald.  Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995.