Ethical communication is rather vital and fundamental for being able to think responsibly, make thoughtful decisions, develop and nurture relationships, and build communities across and within cultures, contexts, media, and channels. Also, ethical communication requires accepting responsibility for the conveyed messages, estimating all their possible future consequences, and making the information truthful, meaningful, and consistent with the speaker’s and the listeners’ value systems (Haque & Ahmad, 2017). Hence, delivering a message that is not truthful or tolerant and misleading the listeners is the opposite of ethical communication.
Moreover, it is essential to choose the right environment and language for delivering the message since the wrong ones may limit how the information is received and perceived (Haque & Ahmad, 2017). Since the contemporary environment is fast-paced, people may forget about being nice and lose sight of what is right and what hurts others. When the person is not communicating ethically, his or her listeners may doubt that what is said is true. Hence, the lack of ethical communication may lead to questioning the person’s personal and professional integrity, and the listeners can start wondering if they can rely on the provided information. Also, there are people who stop paying attention if the communicator is not ethical, so the information fails to be accepted properly. That is why ethics is rather valuable for delivering accurate and balanced communications.
It is hard to disagree that ethical communication is the most vital and critical element of the success of the company. Ethical communication is necessary for delivering consistent and clear messages to the workforce and has to be the main priority for the leaders of the company when addressing all stakeholders. There are some situations that illustrate the necessity of communication being ethical. For example, the president of the company assures its employees that it will remain family-owned no matter what. However, a year later, he announces without any explanation that a major conglomerate is now the owner of the company as it has bought the business. Because of this unethical behavior of not keeping the promise and not explaining anything, the president loses the trust of the company’s workers.
Another example may be the situation when there is a working conference, and its audience mainly consists of hearing-impaired and deaf employees. If the organizers want the communication to be ethical, they should invite a sign-language interpreter so that all of the visitors to the conference may understand and receive the information. This will also show that the event’s organizers and the leaders of the company care about the employees and their comfort.
The concepts of empathy, compassion, and sympathy are crucial communication skills that help people to understand each other’s feelings, emotions, thoughts, and worries (Roy, 2016). Usually, while communicating with one’s interlocutor, it is rather important not only to listen to them but also to feel their words or situation. Moreover, empathy and compassion are necessary for creating certain communication efforts to support culturally diverse audiences and ensure comprehension. When people are from various cultures, it may happen that they do not understand all the given information and feel uncomfortable, so it has to be thought through while organizing any events with culturally diverse audiences.
An example of the necessity of empathy and compassion in creating specific communication efforts in support of culturally diverse audiences to ensure comprehension is Evening Urgant (or Vecherniy Urgant), a rather popular Russian talk show. Its host, Ivan Urgant, invites many famous American and European celebrities for a one-on-one interview and discusses their movies or music. The show is taped in the Russian language, but there are special people who translate everything to foreign guests. The only disadvantage of this show is that most of the Urgant’s jokes may be understood only by Russian people as they are connected with their culture and language. Although all the jokes are also translated to the guests, they may not be able to get them because of the cultural diversity and thus become confused.
There are also leaders and organizations that do not follow ethical norms in the communication messages and cause public scandals. For example, when the Tesla company got under scrutiny for the mistreatment of employees, its factory conditions, and nearing bankruptcy in order to meet production demands, Elon Musk’s actions confused his investors, staff, and ordinary people. He was not pleased about the company getting under scrutiny, and his responses were rather unethical: he started tweeting angry and sarcastic retorts. Also, as a joke, he announced that Tesla Motors bankrupted and made the company’s investors think that they lost all their money (Dishman, 2018). His communication may be considered unethical, childish, and offensive as leaders and organizations should not do such things and have to control their emotions. To correct this situation, it would be right to recommend Elon Musk to give an ethical message with apologies and promises to change the situation for the best.
Another example of unethical communication happened in April 2018, at a Philadelphia Starbucks when two African-American men were arrested after being racially profiled by a white manager who called the police. The manager did not let them use the Starbucks bathroom without ordering anything as this was against the rules. When the two men decided to stay inside the café but did not buy anything, the manager called the police; the African-Americans were arrested for trespassing (Dishman, 2018). As ethics were not considered in the manager’s communication messages and behavior, the two men suffered and got arrested for nothing. Probably the manager should have either politely explain to the visitors the rules of the cafe and offer to buy an inexpensive drink or allow them to use the toilet as an exception. It is entirely possible that then the two men would buy coffee or something else in gratitude.
Reference
Dishman, L. (2018). These are the best and worst leaders of 2018. Fast Company. Web.
Haque, Md., & Ahmad, J. (2017). Ethics in public relations and responsible advocacy theory. Journal Komunikasi: Malaysian Journal of Communication, 33, 147-157.
Roy, A. (2016). Cultivating compassion in communication studies. Journal of Communication and Religion, 39(1), 84-96.