Introduction
Organisations bring together people from different backgrounds. To ensure that diverse groups of people working in an organisation are organised such that they work towards common aims and goals, communication is an essential skill for any leader. Organisational leaders select various communications strategies depending on the situations that they encountered in their work environments.
Communication strategies are crucial in organisations, particularly in the information age. Organisations are growing into immense complexities and are constantly looking for mechanisms of becoming competitive.
One of the ways of gaining competitive advantage is by “discovering and implementing a communications strategy that supports company business objectives for its customers, workforce and partners” (Perry & Bodkin, 2000, p.89). Good communication strategies have multiple benefits for an organisation ranging from enhancing workforce motivations to the creation of additional customers and retention of the existing clientele.
The main aim of this paper is to provide an outline of communication skills and discuss its benefits. It also discusses how managers can deploy communication skills to make their work efficient and effective.
The discussions of the paper are based on the existing literature of the roles of organisational communication in enhancing the success of organisations and on the understanding of the roles of communication in organisations developed over the semester.
Thus, an opportunity is seized to offer authors personal opinion on the development of communication skills, propose an action plan for learning and utilisation of the communication skill in the future. Communication is selected for discussion as a managerial skill that is essential in an organisation since its incorporation or its negation in an organisation determines the extent of effectiveness of organisational leadership.
The benefits of good communication
Communication refers to exchange of information, either verbally or non-verbally. Verbal communication entails the transfer of meaning through sounds and words. Non-verbal communication entangles transfer of meaning, intentionally or unintentionally, via symbols or actions.
In organisational settings, communication refers to exchange of information between organisational leaders and employees and or from employees to employees (McShane, Olekalns & Travaglione, 2010, p.54). It also entails the transfer of information from the organisations to the customers and the owners (shareholders).
Organisations’ leaders encounter various pressures to comply with various demands raised by a myriad of organisational stakeholders while still ensuring that an organisation remains competitive in the short and long run. Ensuring compliance to these dual anticipations, organisational managers have to design and execute various business strategies (Fernstrom, Reed, Rahavi & Doohe, 2012: Malina & Selto, 2001).
Although failure of such strategies may initiate at the design phase, many of business strategies, irrespective of how well they have been designed, have more failure rates at the implementation and execution phases (Kaplan & Norton, 2004). In the implementation and the execution phase, communication is of great paramount.
Philport and Arbittier (2007) agrees with this assertion and further adds, “MBA- trained managers know a lot about how to decide a plan and very little about how to carry it out” (p.69). Consequently, when leaders have communication challenges, showcased by inadequate expertise in execution of communication strategies within an organisation, harmonious operation of all organisational stakeholder may be impaired.
The benefits of good communication in an organisation may be studied from the paradigm of the challenges that organisations encounter when leaders in an organisation fail to embrace effective communication strategies.
The effects of poor organisational communication, a key indicator of lack of possession of good organisational communication skills are reflected in a research conducted by McFarlin, Sweeney and Cotton (2003), in which 197 management executives for 197 companies were surveyed to unveil their anticipations for success of their communication strategies.
The research findings indicated that only 63 percent of all the surveyed executives had expectations for their strategies of communication to succeed.
Considering that 37 percent of the surveyed executives were not sure whether their communication strategies would succeed, the researchers concluded, “much of expectation and performance failures were a failure to execute the company’s strategy effectively” (McFarlin, Sweeney & Cotton, 2003, p.380).
Strategies are implemented through the collective effort of all people who must work to attain given goals and missions for which an organisation is established to accomplish. For coherency in operation of all these stakeholders, effective communication is important.
A leader who endeavours to develop business strategies that would succeed requires ardent communication at all hierarchical structures of business administration. Such an effort in incredibly important since the implementation of new business strategies often involves change (Williams & Seaman, 2001).
People are normally reluctant to change. Consequently, it is important that leaders within an organisation effectively communicate the benefits that employees would gains once they embrace proposed organisational change. Poor communication often results to resistance to change especially where the persons working in an organisation consider the changes being implemented as threats to their jobs and personal excellence.
For instance, while personnel at the headquarters of an organisation may be fighting for standardisation of products produced by an organisation to ease supply chain and logistics challenges, personnel at departmental levels for various products may be opposed to such an endeavour.
In such a situation, a leader deserves to portray assertive communication skills to ensure that things are done in a manner that would of benefits to an organisation.
How leaders should use communication
Communication is the tool that enables leaders within an organisation to articulate their ideas to the employees and/ or employees to articulate their ideas to the leaders. Wok and Hashima (2013) argue that good communication is essential in fostering morale of workers.
This means that leaders in an organisation should deploy communication as a tool for breaking down communication barrier channels to enhance free interaction between the leaders and employees or employees and their fellow workers.
When leaders communicate effectively, employees get satisfied with their jobs. Since job satisfaction is correlated to employees’ retention, it implies that leaders can utilise communication as a tool for dealing effectively with issues of employees’ turnover. This suggests leaders who are effective communicators experience low incidences of turnover.
Leaders deserve to plan and design effective formal and informal communication strategies to take into consideration mechanisms of handling negative perceptions about an organisation in the effort to boost strategic initiatives for re-claiming and or acquiring new market. Wal-Mart is perhaps one of the best organisations whose focus on effective communication led to success of the company.
For instance, the company was in 2010 incredibly criticised for labour practices that were highly questionable. Critics claimed that the company pursued policies that encouraged gender discrimination, low wages incommensurate to the efforts of the employees and even mistreatment of employees. The organisation was also challenged for putting small retailers out of business through her pricing strategies.
Wal-Mart also encountered situations in which her organisational culture failed to measure up to the cultures of new possible profitable markets. Faced with these challenges, the organisation’s leaders focused on deployment of communications as the tool for clearing the negative profiling coupled with provisions of employees with clear channels of articulating their issues with the Wal-Mart leadership.
Borrowing from the case of Wal-Mart, it is evident that leaders needs to put in place strategies for ensuring that people are free to expresses themselves whenever certain issues they perceive as having negative implications on their work or where conflicts between personal needs and work requirement emerge. This underlines the significance of open communication in an organisation.
Impediments to communication lead to low workforce productivity through reduced work morale and job satisfaction. In fact, according to Dasgupta, Suar and Singh (2013) communication is an essential tool for resolving work force conflicts. This implies that when leaders are effective communicators, communication is used in management of employees’ conflicts.
One of the noble roles of managers in an organisation is to monitor and control processes and the manner of execution of job elements allocated to different people. Consequently, communication is the means by which managers are able to get information from the employees on work progress and possible impediments to successful completion of the job facets.
Workgroups are composed of people who have different opinions and levels of innovation and creativity. To turn around these diversities into organisational success, managers should deploy communication to garner information of the workforce talents and capabilities, which are essential in successful realisation of organisational aims, goals and objectives.
Understanding how to effectively communicate with employees and other organisational stakeholders call for managers to have an understanding of issues that may hinder their capacity to communicate effectively. Such hindrances encompass barriers to effective communication in an organisation.
They include information filtering, selective perception, emotions, information overloads, language barrier and communication comprehension (Robbins et al., 2011). Zeng, Anh and Matsui claim that management has the noble role of identifying hindrances to effective communication and looking for strategies for resolving them (2013, p.457).
Additionally, management also needs to resolve the problem of gender and cultural barriers to effective communication Robbins et al. (2011), effective managers seek for ways of overcoming barriers to effective communication by enhancing interpersonal and intrapersonal communication.
This provides an amicable opportunity for an organisation to achieve its aims, objectives and goals. This suggests that communication is used in an organisation to eliminate ineffective communication created by communication barriers.
My development for communication skills this semester
At the beginning of the semester, I had very poor communication skills. As an introverted person, I encounter challenges in opening to people with whom I am not well acquitted. Faced with this challenge, I have the perception that it would influence my effectiveness in the work environment where I expect to pursue a career as an organisational leader.
Possession of good communications skill is essential in helping a leader to succeed in his or her work involving planning, directing, controlling and monitoring the process of execution of tasks within an organisation through people.
Based on these cognitions, which has been developed in the course of my university education, I consider communication skills as essential skills to develop. In fact, the skills are required in aiding leaders to create channels for open communication in an organisation.
On the successful development of the learning contract at the beginning of the semester, I considered developing the goals that I would work towards in the course of the semester. This was critical in availing means of evaluating the learning outcomes. I maintained a journal for tracking various experiences coupled with the outcomes of efforts of improving my communication skills.
In the process of development of the communication skills, I chose to read widely from the university library on how communication skills can be developed and implemented.
This was followed by actualisation of the skills by engaging in practical implementation of the acquired knowledge in the university settings. My focus was on face-to-face communication. I realised I had challenges in articulating information through words and non-verbal forms of communication.
Making a strategic decision to implement communication skills in a university setting introduced the need to develop the ability to deal with people from cross-cultural environments. This is because a university is an institution that brings people from different cultures and different demographic characteristics. In my case, I am an international student from the Middle East.
I have challenges in communicating well in English since it is not my native language. This underlines the significance of developing effective communication skills when dealing with people from mixed backgrounds due to challenges of the language barrier and proper articulation of information to create the desired meaning.
In the effort to determine whether I have developed communication skills, I had several goals that I intended to achieve. The first goal was to improve my performance in the workgroups’ assessments in all the subjects that I take in the university. This goal was essential in measuring my success in development of communication skills. Effective communication of ideas is necessary in answering questions correctly.
Language barrier is also an important aspect, which may contribute to poor understanding of questions. Secondly, I would like to have improved peer relationships in both class setting and the whole university at large. This goal is crucial since communication skill is essential in helping to break down peer conflicts. I also want to develop good relationships with sports’ teams, which I encounter during sports competitions.
As an introverted person, I also find it difficult to communicate well with people, even those who are close to me, including my family members. Hence, my goal is to create better channels for communication with family members and friends. Ability to communicate effectively is a function of having good listening skills.
Thus, my last goal was to develop better listening skills. In a short time basis, for the period that I was engaged with the learning contract, I believe that these goals are crucial preliminary steps that I can deploy to enhance good organisational communication in the future.
Evidence of skills
Over the period of 9 weeks, I maintained a journal where I was recording the success details for my process of development of communication skills. In the journal, I was recording the changes in my grades since I enrolled for the learning contract. Therefore, my analysis of success in the contract is essentially quantitative.
The evidence derived from the analysis of the data entered in the journal indicates that I have attained a lot in term of performance improvements, although having spent a lot of time in extra tasks involving development of communication skills. This made me to minimise time required in studying other subjects. In terms of performance, my grades have been steadily improving since I decided to develop communication skills.
They have charged from credits to distinctions for the subjects that have involved group work discussion and collective group work challenges. This achievement is attributed to the effort that I made as the group leader to enhance active involvement of all members and tracking the group members’ ability to understand the subject matter under discussion.
I also made an effort to ensure that whenever a group is formed, the first task was the creation of avenues for a good group communication by allowing adequate time for members to introduce themselves to one another. This was crucial in eliminating possible hindrances to group communication articulated to fear. One of the groups had two domestic students and two international students.
This gives room for development of crosses cultural communication skills. In the group, effort was made at the initial phase to lay down the anticipated outcomes, setting periods when the outcomes would be achieved and the contribution of each member in the realisation of the anticipations.
This was essential in ensuring that all group members were at the same knowledge levels, which was essential in creating the synergies required for the improved grades.
At the beginning of the semester, it was incredibly difficult for me to create friendships. Following the initiative for creating open communication with other students amid their diversity differences, I have managed to create close and effective personal relationships with other people.
These friendships have survived even after I finished the assessment for the capacity to develop effective communications skills upon taking the learning contract. During my interaction processes, I am likely to call people with whom I have had group work experiences. This suggests my efforts for creating open communication and trusting relationships yielded fruits.
On the extracurricular activities platforms, I play soccer. For a long time, I felt that there are some important ideas that the team would implement to enhance its performance. Unfortunately, before taking the initiatives to develop communication skills, I was too afraid to speak about them. Through the creation of open communication channels, am now able to deal with the inhibitors to communication in the team.
This has changed me from being a passive team member to an active member. Through the ideas that I have been able to articulate in the team, I have been made the assistant –captain. Additionally, I have also managed to develop better interaction processes with the team members. Indeed, some team members come seeking my opinion and advice on some issues affecting our team.
This did not happen before. Despite the communication skills learning contract helping me to communicate effectively, listening skills have been instrumental in gathering information from the team members on areas where strategic initiatives need being developed.
Without the listening skills, it is problematic to interpret the issues that affect the team performance. This opening up of the group to engage every team members in the decision-making process has seen the team register improved performance in all games.
My friends and family members have noted the effort that I have been making to communicate better with them. They are to the opinion that the efforts that I have made over the last nine weeks were incredible in aiding them to communicate better with me. The arguments that I have been engaged with friends and family members have also been based on open communications. This has reduced incidence of conflicts.
How I will use these skills in the future
Currently, I have managed to develop good communication skills, which have proved to be effective. The main concerns are how to utilise these skills in the future in the work environment. The lessons, skills and knowledge developed during the semester are important in enabling me to resolve work conflicts through effective communication.
The plan is to continue developing the skills so that I can also incorporate various issues that may make communication strategies in a work environment different from the communication strategies required in the university settings with peers and/or with family members.
Conclusion
Leaders in a dynamic operational environment for an organisation require having good communication skills for them to have the capacity to win the confidence of all employees and other organisational stakeholders. Communication is an important aspect of an organisation, which helps to facilitate the transfer of information from one person to another within the organisation.
In the course of the last nine weeks, I had been learning communication skills via experience. The results indicated that I had realised positive outcomes. The plan is continue with this learning spirit to become an effective.
Reference List
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