Importance of Communication Skills for Managers | Assignment Help
How important is communication for managers? What current trends in communication are impacting management?
Great management comes with great communication skills; managers involved on a higher level in any organization play multiple roles. Managers nowadays are not only responsible for the basic responsibilities allocated to them, their performance or effectiveness can be judged by analyzing how well their multiple roles are played (Khandwalla. P, 2004)[1]. In last few years’ organizational communication have been influenced due to the technological advancements. How such changes in the technology is affecting the organizational communication will be examined with the help of different models that explains how managers are adopting these communication technologies. Over the last few years the number of communication technologies that’s been introduced to the workplace are just mind-boggling (Miller. K, 2009)[2].
Over the last few years in almost all areas of work and other domains that are related to work, technology has become the primary source of communication in organizations. Taylor, Fieldman and Altman (2008) argues that one of the main reasons for the use of such technology in business is its cost effective, easy to use and facilitating networking[3]. From the management perspective, the use of technology has definitely eased their life at work, as more work can be accomplished in less time and more messages can be conveyed easily to a large audience with the help of technology (Drucker. P, 2004).[4]
For managers or executives to be effective they have to make sure that both their plans and other requirements are delivered to their colleagues, superiors and peers, this can only be achieve through proper use of communication technologies (4 Drucker. P, 2004). According to Drucker. P, 2004, good managers are good communicators and poor managers are mostly poor communicators, mainly because of the reason that management is considered as a process of work activities that needs to be completed effectively with the help of other people. Corporate communication traditionally provides an umbrella for various forms and formats that includes but not limited to public speeches, press releases, customer relationship and most importantly stockholder communication (Sanchez Y, 2005)
From the management perspective, effective communication is generally considered as a major challenge for managers mainly because of the reason that managers are responsible for providing information that directly result in efficient and effective performance of the organization (Sanchez. Y, 2005)[5].
On frequent basis managers need to play their role of bringing in the change that is required for the organization, in order to play this role effectively managers need to possess several competencies that consist of planning, organizing, leading and controlling. (Lecture notes)
The process of communication is important because it exchange thoughts, ideas, and emotions and create understanding between both sender and receiver that is how communication and management are related to each other. The manager’s role is not only to manage subordinates but also the manager has to operate within the constraints that are imposed on him by the nature of the organizations business. (Khandwalla. P, 2004)
It is not only important for managers to adapt the new form of technology available to them but it is also important for organizations to make effective use of such communication technologies, as more and more time sensitive information available to organizations, the overall acquisition, interpretation and the transformation of such information and communicating them is very important to stay competitive in the market (Barker. R, 1998)[6].
Various technologies are already available in the market; still many people are not comfortable in adapting such knowledge. Various models were presented on the basis of which organizations prefer a particular use of media.
Media Richness Model: was introduced in order to understand the choice that an organization make related to the use of communication media. Why one organization prefers to use one channel as compare to other, what are the main motives for a particular preference? Due to the ambiguity of the tasks, many managers prefer to use media richness models, as they believe that more effectiveness can be achieved with the help of this model unless if the task is not complex. (Miller. K, 2009)
Talking about the social information-processing model is all about computer-mediated communication; many believe that the overall communication process between staff members affects the media usage. Due to the difference in the experience and knowledge of staff members, cultural differences and other objective characteristics, the use of communication technology is not easy (Miller. K, 2009). The social information-processing model also suggests that whatever communication pattern is used, it does have an influence on the mode of technology adaption.
Dual capacity model was proposed as another alternative to media richness theory; the dual capacity model suggests that every organization has the ability to carry out two kinds of messages. According to the dual capacity model, for organizations the choice to use a particular communication channel will depend on the data carrying capacity and the symbol carrying capacity, though it will heavily be based on the context of the message (Taylor, Fieldman, Altman, 2008).
All the three discussed models have their advantages and disadvantages that impact the management communication strategy in different ways. According to the theory suggested by media richness model, the management will decide the richness of the medium based on the complexity of the task, whereas on the other hand both the other models dual capacity and social information processing model have their own preferences.
The effects of a particular technology either positive or negative will be heavily based on its features and how such features are used by the users, at the same time the effects of such advancements in the technology to help the management in their communication can take up to several years, mainly because of the fact that in order to be able to make it work properly every single individual has to be trained properly (Miller. K, 2009). Such models have enabled many organizations to understand the attitudes of its employees using technologies in the workplace.
With the help of communication media, it filter out cues that might be present in face to face communication, one rich example can be considered in the case where management communicates through email or text messages rather than face to face, in such situation many non-verbal cues are unavailable in the interaction (Miller. K, 2009). Management communication is a sum of behaviors that are composed of acts, interacts and double interacts that needs to be combined together in order to be able to reach conversational goals. According to Keyton. J, (2013)[7], communication competence is communication effectiveness, which can easily be achieved with the proper use of communication technologies.
Such models have also highlighted the impact of communication technologies on the various patterns of communication styles within the organization. With the advent of new technologies more and more communication is taking place and more data is been transferred within organizations Miller. K, (2009). One disturbing fact is that many managers believes that they sometimes are drowned with data, as they are constantly besieged with various information through e-mail, pagers, cell phones, the web and other social media sources. Many individuals at top management levels often spend most of their times in responding to their emails affecting their organizational productivity Miller. K (2009). However at the same time few of the obvious advantages of using emails as the preferred medium of communication including other forms of electronic communication have created a large number of opportunities related to work, such as negotiating, advising customers, exchanging documents has now become a lot easier Taylor. H (2008).
