Question

Gloria Zhang is 29 years old and is a Project Manager in Refits & Refurbishments, a local company based in Singapore. The company specialises in leasing and renovating office and shop space to corporate and retail clients.

One of her clients is DSB Banking, a German Bank, which is opening its first office and branch in Singapore in three months. The bank’s main activities are in the areas of Foreign Exchange and Money Market Trading and the provision of Investment Services and advice to high net-worth clients. DSB has agreed to lease two floors in a new prestigious office tower. Gloria has been assigned to help the bank renovate the space.

Gloria had her first meeting with the client yesterday from 2pm to 3pm. The meeting was arranged a week ago and the client specifically mentioned that they were busy and could afford only one hour for the meeting.

Gloria noted the client’s request but was busy the whole week and did not give much thought to the meeting. The client was expecting her to send them an agenda which she did not do.

Nonetheless, three representatives from DSB Banking, attended the meeting:

• Mr. Klaus Schmidt, 45 years old, a German who would be the CEO for the Singapore Operations
• Mr. Kenneth Wong, 40 years old, Senior Manager of Client Liaison Services in Germany
• Mr Raymond Li, 33 years old, Senior Manager of Procurement in Germany

This is Gloria’s first big project for a large international bank. She was nervous before the meeting and the introductions were awkward. Gloria just said “Hello” to them and did not shake their hands. Mr Klaus went up to Gloria, shook her hand and gave her a warm hug. Gloria shrugged at this gesture because she was not used to it.

They took a seat and Mr Klaus asked for the plan for the meeting. Gloria told him there was no specific plan. She said she would start with a presentation of the plans and ideas that her department had for the DSB renovation, in terms of layout, furniture, decor, associated costings and the timeline proposed for the project. Mr Klaus nodded his head and Gloria started her presentation.

Gloria’s presentation did not go well. During the presentation, Gloria kept reading from her slides and stumbled many times during the presentation. She did not maintain eye contact with the audience.   Halfway through the presentation, her laptop crashed. She quickly got her colleague to set up another laptop for her. She searched frantically for her USB stick and remembered that she had left it at home in the rush. She suggested that her client take a five-minute break while she got things sorted out. Her colleague helped her load an earlier draft version of the presentation, which included a different decor which had been rejected by the client before.

During the presentation, the client showed a lot of negative nonverbal communication which Gloria did not notice as she was so preoccupied with getting her act together. Both Kenneth and Mr. Schmidt were shaking their heads, frowning, and looking at each other in a puzzled way and their watches from time to time, Raymond had his arms crossed, was leaning back in his chair, and yawned at least three times.   They were all silently saying, ‘what is going on here!’

Added to these issues associated with negative nonverbal communication, Gloria’s mobile phone, which had a cheesy pop tune as its ring tone, rang halfway through the second part of the presentation, and the air conditioning in the room was turned on too high making the room very uncomfortable. Two members of the office team had a short-heated argument right outside the door to the meeting room that was clearly audible inside the room and a major distraction.

Before Gloria could finish her presentation, her colleague walked into the meeting room to ask her to sign an invoice for another client. Kenneth started tapping his foot on the ground. He told Gloria that they had another meeting to attend and asked her to move on to the project costing, the proposed timeline and to show them the draft contract. The draft version of the presentation which Gloria was using did not have the costings and proposed timeline. Gloria had also not prepared the draft contract. As soon as Gloria signalled that she had finished and asked if anyone had any questions, Kenneth stood up and said angrily, ‘Sorry Gloria but Mr. Schmidt and I need to rush off to another meeting’. They left the room almost instantly.

Gloria sat down in one of the empty chairs, hunched over the boardroom table, put her face in her open palms and sobbed ‘what a disaster, what have I done’.

Q2.

1. Identify FOUR non-verbal communication problems in the case study. For each problem identified, suggest what could have been done to better manage it.

Answer 1

The non-verbal communication problems we can identify from the passage are as follows. They have been provided with how they could've managed well:

• Lack of proper eye contact. A strong eye contact means that the presenter is confident and this energizes the room in manifolds. This is followed an insightful presentation session which might attract the client. Well, to avoid this Gloria should have had a proper eye contact and the hand gestures should be in coordination with what she wishes to express. Rather than reading from the slides which the Bankers could have done, a insightful explanation regarding the project is what they are looking for.
• Facial expression conveying contempt. Well it's natural when things get delayed unwantedly, especially for people who value time like Gloria's clients. Gloria has managed the day poorly, forgetting the USB port was just some fuel into the fire. This frowning and expression of puzzled could've been avoided had Gloria prepared for this client meeting well in advance. She took it too easily and that back fired on the D day.
• Tapping of foot by Kenneth. This symbolizes that the listener is not in a very good mood to listen further and wants to wind up the presentation as quickly as possible. One way this could be avoided is by clear articulation, which Gloria lacked. When the listeners are interested to listen to Gloria, then certainly this wouldn't have happened. Their focus would've been on what Gloria says rather than showing changes in body language.
• Physical environment issues: A cheesy pop up tune and an uncomfortable air conditioning doesn't help for an effective communication, and in fact translates to different meanings. An average person knows that one needs to keep their mobile in Silent mode while in a meeting. And of course the ambience need to be maintained. Excessive air conditioning allows the listeners to shift their focus from Gloria and they concentrate on comforting them instead. Simply these could be avoided by commonsense. Gloria lost her nerves, so her thinking capacity and the readiness for the meeting was not up to the mark.

Hope this helps. Do hit the thumbs up. Cheers!