Preliminary analysis
In Advanced Writing for the Sciences, our class has been given the opportunity to take a closer look at the rhetorical approach writers take when producing a scientific text. In this style of writing, knowledge and process take priority over all other writing components, as it is critical the author knows what he is discussing, but also has the ability to portray this knowledge to his audience. Also, science writing heavily emphasizes the ability to provide a rhetorical analysis, which measures the overall persuasiveness of an author’s text. As a student of Roger Williams University, however, I pertain to the school of business which entitles different writing canons and styles for a more diverse audience. For example, the standard form of reports that the business school requires consists of memorandums and concise reports, where-as scientific discourse demands the standard form of IMRAD. Outside specific fields in science such as biology, chemistry, physics, my interests pertain to the functions with the school of business, specifically organizational behavior. Organizational behavior can be defined as monitoring the habits of people and how they generally react in a workplace; specially, I’m interested in how employees within an organization react to factors such as leadership, moods, relationships and emotions. For this preliminary analysis, I aimed to incorporate both scientific discourse and knowledge from my own discourse community of business all in order to answer one question: What genres could CEO’s use to effectively communicate to an activity system (their employees/staff) and how does it affect them in their everyday work?
In scientific discourse, we use genres to identify and distinguish how people communicate within a specialized social group. Within this discourse community of Advanced Writing, our goal is to understand the rhetorical situation that an author creates in order to determine how persuasive their text truly is. To measure persuasiveness, we analyze texts by identifying genres such as speech acts, appeals, and canons.
Speech acts can be defined as verbal expressions that are used to get a point across to various audiences. In a business type setting, speech acts such motivational speeches or even providing specific instructions for peers are critical from CEOs. Motivation itself plays a major factor within business rhetoric, as it is defined as “what a person does (direction), how hard a person works (intensity) and how long a person works (persistence) (Scandura, 2016). When motivating employees, it is crucial that a leader reaches them on a collective level, as the goal is to drive individuals to accomplish Organizational goals. When incorporating speech acts in motivation, CEO’s must keep in mind that the only way to relate to his/her employees is to connect with them at their level. For example, in writing, every author needs to possess an understand about their audience in order to write to them; the same applies to a CEO with their employees. In Jack Selzer’s “Rhetorical Analysis: Understanding How Texts Persuade Readers”, the literary element of rhetoric is the main theme to his article, as he aims to distinguish what makes a writing influential. On page 281, Selzer states “rhetorical analysis or rhetorical criticism can be understood as an effort to understand how people within a specific social situations attempted to influence others through language” (Selzer, ?) By CEO’s using speech acts behind motivation to speak to their employees, they will successfully be able to drive the company to specific goals more influentially. Also through speech acts, CEOs can provide constructive feedback to workers as this can be seen as a motivation tactic itself. When using rhetoric in a business atmosphere, you need to consider your delivery and style, as both employees and members of other discourse communities need to have an understanding of the manner of your topic.
The second genre that CEO’s can use when communicate to their activity systems is by incorporating the use of canons. As part of rhetorical science, canons can simply be defined as a person’s ability to communicate through effective means of persuasion. The five types cannons that can be used to increase ones means of persuasion are: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. As previously mentioned, CEOs may need communicate to a large number of employees all at once and incorporating these cannons would not only increase persuasiveness, but additionally infuse pathos into their tone in order to continue motivating the company. The first component, invention, can be defined as process or even coming up with an idea, but the requirement is that it must communicated within a group. As a business is designed to run from the top down, problems will usually occur at the CEO level, and then will be addressed back down through the roots of the company. Through this process, the CEO will take control of the problem in a specific mannor, as the goal is to never single out an employee for a mistake, as this may discourage them and directly lead to a decrease in desire to perform. In this process, a CEO could adjust their delivery and style on how he intends to bring up the mistake he/she made that affected the company. By adjusting the delivery, the CEO has the capability of varying the magnitude of the conflict and can ensure this mistake doesn’t reoccur. As for style, the tone and demeanor again depends on the magnitude of the conflict, so it can be adjusted in order to persuade employees that this mistake doesn’t reoccur.
Through an outside interview with a reputable source, I was able to gather additional information based on the types of genres CEO’s could employ in their everyday tasks to impact their activity systems in a possible way. When I asked professor Knight, (areas of expertise in executive physiology, leadership personalities and strategic leadership) my exact question of focus, his answer was eye-opening and provided a whole new vision to my research. When presenting the question what genres could CEO’s use to effectively communicate to an activity system, he stated “the goal for a leader is to give his employees a reason to abandon their self-interests and gather together to form a team. Together, the team wins and loses together, but possessing a true collective identity is the goal to success.” From a former leader’s standpoint, genres in an organization can be used in order to unite an organization in a time of need, as a leader’s verbal expression, tone, and use of pathos are the true determinates behind a persuasive individual. A follow-up question that I asked to the prior question stated “We use cannons within scientific discourse to amplify our message; how could a CEO incorporate these cannons into a meeting or conference?” To this, professor Knight responded by stating “The biggest determinate behind an effective speech or not is the persuasiveness the deliver uses. Practice makes perfect when delivering speeches, but it is crucial that you connect with your audience and appeal at their level. Also with your employees (audience), you must understand them and realize what tone to use and the drive you want to put behind you message; the more you connect the more they will understand and be motivated. Finally, discussing shared expectations and ideas is critical and could be used as a basepoint for a speech, as this is a topic that can be easily discussed from top to bottom within a company”. With this being said, genres have the potential to play a tremendous role in a business atmosphere, the only determinate is the way it’s used in, and the manner it is applied too.
Outside of using scientific rhetoric to influence genre systems, leaders of companies can adopt different styles that will enable them to excel in leading their organization. Two leadership techniques that leaders can adopt in order to influence their genre systems are by using positive leadership styles, and providing constant feedback. In Organizational Behavior, a positive leadership style can be defined as any form of leadership that is focused on the people before then company and making sure the company works for the greater good. In Organizational Behavior, one positive leadership style is called transactional leadership which is “the behaviors that motivate followers (employees) through rewards and corrective actions” (Scandura, 2016). When using this technique, leaders tend to implement reward systems as this may motivate production and work ethic throughout the organization. Types of rewards that many organizations offer consist of vacation days, bonuses, additional benefits and sometimes promotions. When implementing reward systems, the goal is to make these achievements long-term; you want your employees to earn their reward and go above and beyond for the sake of the company. A second form of positive leadership that a CEO could potentially adopt is called Transformational Leadership, which can be defined as “behaviors that mobilize extra effort from followers through emphasis on change through articulating a new vision for the organization. Transformation Leadership tends to be less likely implemented in organizations as it primarily focuses on overall change or shift in leadership, but it is used if the company needs to shift direction of sight occasionally. The second genre style that CEOs can enforce to make their overall leadership more influential is to provide feedback. Feedback can be defined as any form of a response or constructive criticism from a higher level executive to an employee in order to provide guidance and improve an individual’s work ethic. When providing feedback, the goal is to not single out employees but to point out how the individual in perspective can make adjustments to their work style in order to benefit the organization as a whole. Also, according to a Snap Survey study, feedback not only improves performance, but it also is a tool for continuous learning. When you invest time into developing and rounding employee skills, you’re providing overall training which can create a chain effect for that individual to lead others around him (DeFranzo, 2016). Overall, feedback is used globally to not only improve decision making, work ethic, and style, but to open the door for further opportunity and growth for all employees.
As CEOs have the ability to enhance their leadership by including appeals, cannons and speech acts into their everyday tasks, how can we evaluate the impressions these genres leave on activity systems? Referring back to my interview, I also presented this exact question, emphasizing that CEOs need to periodically check on employees to see if they are fulfilling their role to the company, as well as growing/developing. When presenting this, professor Knight responded with “one way we can measure the effectiveness of employees within an organization is to go to our peers and co-workers for advice. One feedback method that many companies use today is called 360 Degree feedback in which a CEO goes gets feedback from all employees about a certain someone so that you have a better chance of hearing “the good and the bad”. With this technique, we get a sense of how an individual is performing overall, and most importantly, the impact they are creating on the organization whether it is positive or negative.” 360-degree feedback is a very powerful review tool within organizations as it uses a variety of perspectives in order to gather information about individuals. When using this mechanism, CEOs and other high-level executives will question co-workers and other staff members about their opinions on specific workers, as they are the ones who truly work with each other day in and day out. Concerns have been raised recently however that peers tend to be extremely lenient and don’t want to give a bad review about their co-workers. To counter this, companies have provided a reward system in this field of business as well, for multiple peers giving a truthful review of a coworker. A second way the CEOs can measure the effectiveness of their activity systems is by using a grading scale called BARS, which grades an employee’s overall performance against 5-6 specific behaviors/outcomes. For example, if you had the criteria of flexibility, acceptance, communication and development, you would rate an employee in those categories by providing a number ranking of 1-5 and then explaining why you choose this on the scale. As both 360-degree and BARS are both extremely effective in the workforce, it is more likely to use 360-degree as again, it provides a large variety of response and CEOs are able to get a perspective from every co-worker.
As CEO possess limitless power in their companies, questions have been raised as to whether or not the genres CEOs implement and follow uses can derail a company, ultimately putting them in jeopardy. To answer this question, I want to refer to the Enron Crisis of 2001. A U.S energy company who was on top of the world came to a non-stop crash in a matter of days due to the corrupt genres that CEO Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, (two CEOs during crisis) implemented on their company. One internal way that can be directly related to the fall of Enron Corporation was due to the competitive employee review system on their genre systems. Within Enron, CEO Ken Lay used incorporated a genre called “Rank and Yank”, which basically meant that employees would get a numerical value based on the performance of sales and generation of company profit. At the end of each quarter, the bottom 5% with the worst rank would get fired from the company as Enron wanted to ensure they could always be the best. The work environment that these CEOs created was so hostile and competitive that it was no longer an internal collaborative effort; it was about who could make the most money by looking out for themselves. As this system generated fear for employees, fraud began to rise as employees began to fake numbers and sabotage co-workers in to order to ensure safety.
In Advanced Writing for the Sciences, our class has been given the opportunity to take a closer look at the rhetorical approach writers take when producing a scientific text. In this style of writing, knowledge and, process take priority over all other writing components, as it is critical the author knows what he is discussing, but also has the ability to portray this knowledge to his audience. Through genres such as speech acts, cannons and, appeals, it is crucial to keep your audience in mind as they are the ones you are ultimately trying to motivate and influence. Whether it is a business workplace or in a scientific text, the goal is to be as persuasive as possible by including, and connecting with your audience as effectively and fluently as could be.
References
Scandura, T. A. (2016). Essentials of Organizational Behavior: an evidence-based approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Need citation for Selzer Rhetorical analysis chapter 10
DeFranzo, E. Susan (2015). 5 Reasons Why Feedback is Important. (2017, January 26). Retrieved February 28, 2018, from https://www.snapsurveys.com/blog/5-reasons-feedback-important/
In scientific discourse, we use genres to identify and distinguish how people communicate within a specialized social group. Within this discourse community of Advanced Writing, our goal is to understand the rhetorical situation that an author creates in order to determine how persuasive their text truly is. To measure persuasiveness, we analyze texts by identifying genres such as speech acts, appeals, and canons.
Speech acts can be defined as verbal expressions that are used to get a point across to various audiences. In a business type setting, speech acts such motivational speeches or even providing specific instructions for peers are critical from CEOs. Motivation itself plays a major factor within business rhetoric, as it is defined as “what a person does (direction), how hard a person works (intensity) and how long a person works (persistence) (Scandura, 2016). When motivating employees, it is crucial that a leader reaches them on a collective level, as the goal is to drive individuals to accomplish Organizational goals. When incorporating speech acts in motivation, CEO’s must keep in mind that the only way to relate to his/her employees is to connect with them at their level. For example, in writing, every author needs to possess an understand about their audience in order to write to them; the same applies to a CEO with their employees. In Jack Selzer’s “Rhetorical Analysis: Understanding How Texts Persuade Readers”, the literary element of rhetoric is the main theme to his article, as he aims to distinguish what makes a writing influential. On page 281, Selzer states “rhetorical analysis or rhetorical criticism can be understood as an effort to understand how people within a specific social situations attempted to influence others through language” (Selzer, ?) By CEO’s using speech acts behind motivation to speak to their employees, they will successfully be able to drive the company to specific goals more influentially. Also through speech acts, CEOs can provide constructive feedback to workers as this can be seen as a motivation tactic itself. When using rhetoric in a business atmosphere, you need to consider your delivery and style, as both employees and members of other discourse communities need to have an understanding of the manner of your topic.
The second genre that CEO’s can use when communicate to their activity systems is by incorporating the use of canons. As part of rhetorical science, canons can simply be defined as a person’s ability to communicate through effective means of persuasion. The five types cannons that can be used to increase ones means of persuasion are: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. As previously mentioned, CEOs may need communicate to a large number of employees all at once and incorporating these cannons would not only increase persuasiveness, but additionally infuse pathos into their tone in order to continue motivating the company. The first component, invention, can be defined as process or even coming up with an idea, but the requirement is that it must communicated within a group. As a business is designed to run from the top down, problems will usually occur at the CEO level, and then will be addressed back down through the roots of the company. Through this process, the CEO will take control of the problem in a specific mannor, as the goal is to never single out an employee for a mistake, as this may discourage them and directly lead to a decrease in desire to perform. In this process, a CEO could adjust their delivery and style on how he intends to bring up the mistake he/she made that affected the company. By adjusting the delivery, the CEO has the capability of varying the magnitude of the conflict and can ensure this mistake doesn’t reoccur. As for style, the tone and demeanor again depends on the magnitude of the conflict, so it can be adjusted in order to persuade employees that this mistake doesn’t reoccur.
Through an outside interview with a reputable source, I was able to gather additional information based on the types of genres CEO’s could employ in their everyday tasks to impact their activity systems in a possible way. When I asked professor Knight, (areas of expertise in executive physiology, leadership personalities and strategic leadership) my exact question of focus, his answer was eye-opening and provided a whole new vision to my research. When presenting the question what genres could CEO’s use to effectively communicate to an activity system, he stated “the goal for a leader is to give his employees a reason to abandon their self-interests and gather together to form a team. Together, the team wins and loses together, but possessing a true collective identity is the goal to success.” From a former leader’s standpoint, genres in an organization can be used in order to unite an organization in a time of need, as a leader’s verbal expression, tone, and use of pathos are the true determinates behind a persuasive individual. A follow-up question that I asked to the prior question stated “We use cannons within scientific discourse to amplify our message; how could a CEO incorporate these cannons into a meeting or conference?” To this, professor Knight responded by stating “The biggest determinate behind an effective speech or not is the persuasiveness the deliver uses. Practice makes perfect when delivering speeches, but it is crucial that you connect with your audience and appeal at their level. Also with your employees (audience), you must understand them and realize what tone to use and the drive you want to put behind you message; the more you connect the more they will understand and be motivated. Finally, discussing shared expectations and ideas is critical and could be used as a basepoint for a speech, as this is a topic that can be easily discussed from top to bottom within a company”. With this being said, genres have the potential to play a tremendous role in a business atmosphere, the only determinate is the way it’s used in, and the manner it is applied too.
Outside of using scientific rhetoric to influence genre systems, leaders of companies can adopt different styles that will enable them to excel in leading their organization. Two leadership techniques that leaders can adopt in order to influence their genre systems are by using positive leadership styles, and providing constant feedback. In Organizational Behavior, a positive leadership style can be defined as any form of leadership that is focused on the people before then company and making sure the company works for the greater good. In Organizational Behavior, one positive leadership style is called transactional leadership which is “the behaviors that motivate followers (employees) through rewards and corrective actions” (Scandura, 2016). When using this technique, leaders tend to implement reward systems as this may motivate production and work ethic throughout the organization. Types of rewards that many organizations offer consist of vacation days, bonuses, additional benefits and sometimes promotions. When implementing reward systems, the goal is to make these achievements long-term; you want your employees to earn their reward and go above and beyond for the sake of the company. A second form of positive leadership that a CEO could potentially adopt is called Transformational Leadership, which can be defined as “behaviors that mobilize extra effort from followers through emphasis on change through articulating a new vision for the organization. Transformation Leadership tends to be less likely implemented in organizations as it primarily focuses on overall change or shift in leadership, but it is used if the company needs to shift direction of sight occasionally. The second genre style that CEOs can enforce to make their overall leadership more influential is to provide feedback. Feedback can be defined as any form of a response or constructive criticism from a higher level executive to an employee in order to provide guidance and improve an individual’s work ethic. When providing feedback, the goal is to not single out employees but to point out how the individual in perspective can make adjustments to their work style in order to benefit the organization as a whole. Also, according to a Snap Survey study, feedback not only improves performance, but it also is a tool for continuous learning. When you invest time into developing and rounding employee skills, you’re providing overall training which can create a chain effect for that individual to lead others around him (DeFranzo, 2016). Overall, feedback is used globally to not only improve decision making, work ethic, and style, but to open the door for further opportunity and growth for all employees.
As CEOs have the ability to enhance their leadership by including appeals, cannons and speech acts into their everyday tasks, how can we evaluate the impressions these genres leave on activity systems? Referring back to my interview, I also presented this exact question, emphasizing that CEOs need to periodically check on employees to see if they are fulfilling their role to the company, as well as growing/developing. When presenting this, professor Knight responded with “one way we can measure the effectiveness of employees within an organization is to go to our peers and co-workers for advice. One feedback method that many companies use today is called 360 Degree feedback in which a CEO goes gets feedback from all employees about a certain someone so that you have a better chance of hearing “the good and the bad”. With this technique, we get a sense of how an individual is performing overall, and most importantly, the impact they are creating on the organization whether it is positive or negative.” 360-degree feedback is a very powerful review tool within organizations as it uses a variety of perspectives in order to gather information about individuals. When using this mechanism, CEOs and other high-level executives will question co-workers and other staff members about their opinions on specific workers, as they are the ones who truly work with each other day in and day out. Concerns have been raised recently however that peers tend to be extremely lenient and don’t want to give a bad review about their co-workers. To counter this, companies have provided a reward system in this field of business as well, for multiple peers giving a truthful review of a coworker. A second way the CEOs can measure the effectiveness of their activity systems is by using a grading scale called BARS, which grades an employee’s overall performance against 5-6 specific behaviors/outcomes. For example, if you had the criteria of flexibility, acceptance, communication and development, you would rate an employee in those categories by providing a number ranking of 1-5 and then explaining why you choose this on the scale. As both 360-degree and BARS are both extremely effective in the workforce, it is more likely to use 360-degree as again, it provides a large variety of response and CEOs are able to get a perspective from every co-worker.
As CEO possess limitless power in their companies, questions have been raised as to whether or not the genres CEOs implement and follow uses can derail a company, ultimately putting them in jeopardy. To answer this question, I want to refer to the Enron Crisis of 2001. A U.S energy company who was on top of the world came to a non-stop crash in a matter of days due to the corrupt genres that CEO Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, (two CEOs during crisis) implemented on their company. One internal way that can be directly related to the fall of Enron Corporation was due to the competitive employee review system on their genre systems. Within Enron, CEO Ken Lay used incorporated a genre called “Rank and Yank”, which basically meant that employees would get a numerical value based on the performance of sales and generation of company profit. At the end of each quarter, the bottom 5% with the worst rank would get fired from the company as Enron wanted to ensure they could always be the best. The work environment that these CEOs created was so hostile and competitive that it was no longer an internal collaborative effort; it was about who could make the most money by looking out for themselves. As this system generated fear for employees, fraud began to rise as employees began to fake numbers and sabotage co-workers in to order to ensure safety.
In Advanced Writing for the Sciences, our class has been given the opportunity to take a closer look at the rhetorical approach writers take when producing a scientific text. In this style of writing, knowledge and, process take priority over all other writing components, as it is critical the author knows what he is discussing, but also has the ability to portray this knowledge to his audience. Through genres such as speech acts, cannons and, appeals, it is crucial to keep your audience in mind as they are the ones you are ultimately trying to motivate and influence. Whether it is a business workplace or in a scientific text, the goal is to be as persuasive as possible by including, and connecting with your audience as effectively and fluently as could be.
References
Scandura, T. A. (2016). Essentials of Organizational Behavior: an evidence-based approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Need citation for Selzer Rhetorical analysis chapter 10
DeFranzo, E. Susan (2015). 5 Reasons Why Feedback is Important. (2017, January 26). Retrieved February 28, 2018, from https://www.snapsurveys.com/blog/5-reasons-feedback-important/