Introduction
Organizational behavior and success greatly depend on communication. The transfer of information makes it easier to run the daily operations in a workspace. Without communication, the management would have probably been without order. Additionally, communication is the foundation of understanding every surrounding. Every interaction made in the world involves using symbols, whether it is a body movement, spoken, or even written. There is a correlation between the words spoken in such interactions and their meanings, founded on communication between individuals (Warren, 2020). The paper explores the relationship between leadership style and communication competence to an employee’s commitment, job satisfaction, and motivation in the Canadian workplace.
Media Article
One of the critical lessons that people have learned from the recent COVID-19 pandemic is that humans are social species and can adapt. People had to quickly adopt the new models of communication that involved communication with only half of the face exposed. Facial expressions and social cues have been replaced by voice tones and the use of body language. The behavioral adaptation also meant resilience to job losses, separation and isolation, wearing masks, and the tectonic shifts of communication (CBC, 2021). At these strange times, people can sometimes try and provide explanations to make things easier and understandable because of the current situation in the world. So, restoring hope in the workplace has long-term effects on employee behavior and coping strategies. Therefore, organizations were encouraged to use their whole faces to communicate, such as nodding or waving, as the available pro-social gestures in combating the spread of the coronavirus.
Journal Article
Leadership style has a proven relationship with the result of the employee. Such consideration validates the importance of a leader’s behavior on the final results. Mikkelson et al. (2015) emphasized the importance of interpersonal communication and behaviors and how they influence the relationship and between employees and their supervisor in a working environment. How a supervisor communicates substantially affects an employee’s motivation, effectiveness, energy, productivity, and commitment in the workplace. The study recommends that future research focus on how more specific communication behaviors such as immediacy, listening, relational maintenance, and behaviors such as empathy and self-disclosure directly affect employees’ performance. Understanding negative behaviors, such as distributive conflict and unproductive arguments, and how they also affect employee performance is vital.
Discussion
Organizational communication serves to inform, control, motivate and express emotion. For such functionality, information being conveyed should be understood by others (Mikkelson et al., 2015). Transmitting a message that lacks meaning has been associated with conflict, confusion, and misunderstanding. The management should clarify the relationship between task performance and the representation of goals through effective communication. According to Mikkelson et al. (2015), managers spend approximately three-quarters of their time communicating with staff and clients. As an individual, realizing internal goals paves the way for active communication and psychological needs satisfaction. Motivations arise from setting and sharing clear goals with people (Gollwitzer, 2018). Therefore, people’s behavior is channeled towards a specific direction and comparison of their behavior with set down goals, making adjustments that are timely in achieving the set goals. Actively communicating with teams nurtures good behaviors for attaining the organization’s goals.
Employee performance can be enhanced by keeping the communication channels within the organization open. Such consideration constitutes the fundamental concept used to establish the behavior of communicating parties. Its basic idea is to understand the relationship between people, control behavior, and predict the same in human beings. Satisfaction of employee needs and their behavior are interconnected in that one has to understand them for the employees to exhibit the expected behavior and norms in a company (Rokeach, 2019). For instance, when employees believe in hard work as a proper performance, they are motivated to work extra hard to achieve the set objective. With exemplary performance, employees are guaranteed better results, both to the company and on an individual basis, as they believe organization rewards are directly proportional to good performance by employees. Using a good account as a reward tool motivates the employees to work hard on the manager’s side. Communicating better working conditions and proper guidance to employees meets the employees’ urgent needs, increasing their confidence to work effectively.
Effective communication enables people to achieve the set goals to perform or complete the set objectives. According to Mikkelson et al. (2015), having clear goals signifies one working towards achieving the goals, hence performance improvement. In situations where the goals are challenging to achieve, more effort is put by the ones intended to achieve therefore working an extra mile towards achieving the targets. Working extra hard improves performance in the long run. For instance, working in an upcoming organization makes it difficult to attain one set of objectives. However, with goal incentives, achieving the desired objectives through a transformative journey becomes easy hence achieving desired results.
The management plays an essential role in guiding junior staff and formulate policies to achieve collective stage goals. Whenever there are people in the organization with poor performance skills, proposing communication goals, levels, or plans is always a priority. Effective communication implies to the division of goals into parts when one is big. In such a situation, using phased communication plans makes an organization achieve smaller goals, which accumulate into bigger goals (Rubin, 2018). A proposal of every objective or goal derives its basis from the team’s reality, considering the possibilities in developing individual persons in an organization. Strengthening the process of target implementation by managers ensures that a given team gives timely feedback, thus, maintain team behavior on the right track.
The development of managerial skills is an essential component in an organization. Somech and Drach-Zahavy (2017) indicated that employee management is one of the topmost skills required in today’s workforce. Strategies aide at the improvement of management skills includes; strengthened decision-making processes by managers. Such a strategy involves the analysis of complex problems in business in the implementation of the way forward. Furthermore, cultivating self-awareness is essential for managers; building trust with employees with proper communication skills, establishing regular check-ins, and carving out time for reflection for both the managers and employees improves skills in a given organization or workplace (Rokeach, 2019). Problem-solving and making decisions are essential components in making critical skills in a given business. Decision-making and problem-solving are inter-connected, especially in management and leadership. The decision-making process involves defining and clarifying a problem, gathering information, understanding its causes, brainstorming potential alternatives, and solving problems.
Conclusion
Overall, one of the greatest lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic is the indisputable fact that human beings are social species that need to interact continuously. Australian organizations should promote more platforms for interactions for the management of employee behaviors. Facial expressions and social cues have been replaced by voice tones and the use of body language. Interpersonal communication and behaviors influence relationships between employees and their supervisors in a working environment. The paper shows a direct correlation between a supervisor’s leadership style and communication competence to an employee’s commitment to an organization, job satisfaction, and motivation in a workplace.
Reflection
I support that communication is more critical than decision-making in organizational management. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us to adapt to the new communication models, such as Zoom, or Google Meet. Communication is a valuable skill that you can have in any professional field. For instance, I agree that being a good communicator is always an added advantage in recruitment and selection processes. I have realized that communication complements our everyday experiences and adds meaning to the things people we experience. Without communication the world will be a different place, most probably more chaotic. By communicating, the worldwide basis of understanding our surroundings is improved. Every interaction revolves around using symbols that are either spoken, written, or expressed through body language. For instance, active communication allows stepwise consideration of tasks from the simplest to the most difficult, making an organization achieve its goals.
I believe there is a significant connection between the words and their meanings that allows effective managers to be good communicators. Employer-employee relationships greatly rely on how they communicate. Interaction forms the basis of all connections, and organizations need to involve their stakeholders. Ineffective communication may taint affairs because the parties are not delivering their message such that the other party does not understand the other entirely. Therefore, I suggest that it is essential to communicate clearly and consistently with employees to keep them empowered and engaged. Communication must remain effective such that it reinforces relationships among employees and maintains a good working environment that develops solid cultures in an organization. I support that communication is undoubtedly essential to the success of any organization.
Reference list
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CBC. (2021) Facial expressions and gestures: How communication has changed in masked times | CBC News. [online] Web.
Gollwitzer, P. M. (2018) ‘The goal concept: A helpful tool for theory development and testing in motivation science.’ Motivation Science, 4(3), 185-205.
Mikkelson, A., York, J. and Arritola, J. (2015) ‘Communication competence, leadership behaviors, and employee outcomes in supervisor-employee relationships.’ Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 78(3), pp.336-354.
Rokeach, M. (2019) ‘A theory of organization and change within value-attitude systems.’ Journal of Social Issues, 24(1), pp.13-33.
Rubin, E. (2018) ‘Assessing your leadership style to achieve organizational objectives.’ Global Business and Organizational Excellence, 32(6), pp.55-66.
Somech, A. and Drach-Zahavy, A. (2017) ‘Exploring organizational citizenship behavior from an organizational perspective: The relationship between organizational learning and organizational citizenship behavior.’ Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 77(3), pp.281-298.
Warren, J. (2020) ‘The nexus between background instructional supervisors’ characteristics and instructional supervisors’ competences in Kenya.’ Journal of Education and Practice, 12(1), pp.19-36.