Role of communication in organizations
Discuss about the Leadership Management Organisational Development.
In any organisation communication plays a very essential role. An effective communication always helps a company in bringing smoothness to its operations (Ulmer, Sellnow & Seeger, 2017). Apart from this it also ensures that there is no confusion that gets created at various levels within an organisation due improper flow of information at various levels of the organisation. In the modern day organisation team culture which is highly essential for the firms is not possible without having a good communication medium (Hackman & Johnson, 2013). The better the communication architecture a medium within an organisation the better is the chances that a firm can achieve its target within the specified time. There are several types of factors that are responsible for making any communication successful and effective as well as there is certain factors that makes it ineffective. This report highlights the example of successful and unsuccessful communication. It also illustrates about the factors that are responsible for making effective and ineffective.
There are many examples of effective communication in the modern day firms. These real life examples help to understand the reasons for a successful organisational communication. One real life examples is as follows:
This social media management company is known for using transparency in their communication. Such kind of transparency in their communication mediums have made organisation more efficient as their work process got clear (Schwantes, 2018). This company publishes every details of their like their revenue, financials, the way money is present or the salaries. This helps the company in building trust in their stakeholders. This is also necessary for maintaining positive environment at the firm which is highly necessary for achieving higher productivity as due to such transparency team culture is promoted. This is the company that operates with the open door policy which has helped in maintaining healthy communications at the company. This helped them in boosting the morale of the employees which assisted them in ensuring the long term growth. One people share the information with others to take note of all interested candidates. This has helped them in reducing the amount of confusions that creates due to informal sources of communication. Discussing everything also helped them in arranging resources as per the right place at the required time. This company shares all the information regarding the company to every new and old employee (Ruck & Welch, 2012). This helped them in maintaining smoothness at the work place and staffs started feeling confident. Due to its communication mechanism company has been able to lead in competition. It has assisted the company in bringing higher employee satisfaction. It has helped the firm in coming at the top as the motivated employees always have higher productivity. It acted as a communication vehicle for the company as well as the learning tool that illustrates the ways in which senior people learns and grows. It supports more detailed thinking that reduces the chances of politics at the workplace (Cooper, 2015). This also helps the company in making decisions that is best for the company. This has helped the company in removing all the disputes that are confronting their business (Andriof, Waddock, Husted & Rahman, 2017). It had also helped the company in increasing the motivational level of the employees as their problems are heard by the senior officials.
Real-life examples of effective communication
There are several factors that are present within an organisation and act as a facilitator of effective communication (Bolden, 2016). Some of these factors are as follows:
- Organisational structure: An effective communication is always promoted by the type of organisational structure a company has adopted (Palttala & Vos, 2012). If a company has a flat structure then there is better chance that employees can communicate with each other. This is the reason that it makes the flow of information more formalised and everybody understands the ways they must adopt so as to communicate with each other. It also clarifies the ways in which employees of the organisations will interact i.e. through formal or informal means. Buffer has an organisational structure that supported effective communication at the workplace.
- Communication mediums: One of the most important facilitator of effective communication is communication medium used inside the firm. The better the communication mediums within the organisation the better is the chances that it will have effective communication. It also depends on the mode of communication being selected. Some of the most common modes are e-mails, direct verbal or non-verbal communication mediums. In the modern IT era it is important for the organisation to take use of the internet mediums as well as other forms of communication medium like the video chatting apps. This can be highly beneficial for the leaders who want to communicate with their employees while sitting in the next corners of the world (Pettit, Raymond, Bryan & Lewis, 2011). Buffer has installed one of the best possible communication mediums that are capable of delivering messages at soon as possible.
- Positive leadership approach: Effective communication within Buffer is directly dependent on the approach that leaders have towards communication. If the leaders have positive approach then the chances of making effective communication can increases. The policies and the strategies made by the leaders for the communication and other things promote effective communication within an organisation (Habermas, 2015). If a leader makes healthy employee relations with his workers then it always contributes in making the whole communication process more effective. This promotes workers to give feedbacks on the various issues which are beneficial for the two way communication and hence making it effective. The major reason for the success of Buffer was this positive approach of leadership.
There are some examples all around the world that shows ineffective organisational communication. These examples explain the reason of ineffective organisational communication. One of them is as follows:
British petroleum’s oil spill case in the year 2010 was one of the best examples of how ineffective communication lead to disaster for the company. This company did not had the effective mechanism where very one can discuss the problems that was going on at the workstation. The employees of the partners companies were at the last position to put their view point which was later understood to be the problem for the company. This created lack of trust between the employees of two companies which finally resulted in a blast and company has to bear heavy loses. Such communication where one company takes decision and then informed to others always results in demoralising the employees of other company (Grossman, 2014). In such type of communication employee does not feel themselves to be important. For British Petroleum it resulted in the reduction of their efficiency and productivity. After this issue BP has to think about the new policies for in-office operations of the company. Due to such kind of communication company has faced loses that was estimated. Apart from this it also affected other stakeholders of the society. In this case it was later evaluated that employees and the management present there did not have a formal interaction regarding the earlier science of faults. Everything was presumed to be ok as the floor managers were busy in some kind of inspection going on. Due to this communication gap the pre-evaluation of the situation was not done properly.
Apart from this it was also seen in this case that the senior most leadership did not listened to the junior level staffs regarding the measures that could have taken at the floor for preventing such kind of situation. The procedures for tackling such kind of issues were also not communicated by the management to the staffs at the operational area in a better way. Later in the investigation it was evaluated that there was series of communication failure in the taking place of that incidents. This was also an example for the others companies of this scale to take care of the communication at ground levels or it may result in such a big loss.
Factors facilitating effective communication
It is important for any organisation to understand the factors that leads to ineffective communication (Silverstone, 2017). There are many factors that act as a barrier for effective communication. These factors caused failure of communication. Ineffective communication always acts as an obstacle in the growth of any firm and hence these factors need to be clearly understood. Some of such factors are as follows:
- Negative leadership approach: If the approach of leadership is negative regarding the communication that is followed within the British petroleum then there is sure chance that it will fail. If the strategies made by the leaders do not promote communication then there is a huge chance that it may fail (Grunig, 2013). If the leader is himself not a good communicator then the chances of communication failure increases. This is also due to the fact that there is lack of trust between the leadership and lower level workers. The lack of care towards the words of the junior level staffs resulted in such an oil spill case.
- Cultural difference: In most of the organisations there are many people that coming from different cultural backgrounds especially in the multinational firms. This kind of cultural difference always inhibits effective communication within an organisation and leads to failure of the communication (Nancarrow, Booth, Ariss, Smith, Enderby & Roots, 2013). This is sometimes due to language barriers or body language that a person has while interacting with other people from other cultural backgrounds. This is also due to the reason that everyone has a different set of understand over anything.
- Self-esteem: How a person sees himself and others always becomes one of the primary reasons why any communication fails. If a leader understands him to be superior to others then it leads to communication gap between them. This leads to failure in communication. Lack of team spirit always leads to such situations where one people hesitate to interact with others. In the case of BP this was clearly visible as employees of bigger company were not listening to the employees of smaller company.
- Lack of trust: One of the prime causes of communication failure is lack of trust between the two individuals. If in any organisation there is conflict between the employees at two levels or at the same level then there is a sure chance of communication failure. If one employee does not have trust on others then such situations arise (Sundaray, 2011).
- Inefficient mediums of communication: If the organisation has not adopted best of the communication mediums within an organisation then there is chance that there will be communication failure. In the modern day organisations it is crucial to use IT devices for communication without which there is always a chance that ineffective communication will perceive.
- Lack of management skills: In any organisation if there is lack of management skills in most of the employees then there will be chances that people will not be ready for having discussion on any things. This leads to some unclear situation which may lead to communication failure (Broadbent, 2013). This depends on the employees and their behaviour. It is also related to the communication skills present in employees. If there is more number of people with improper communication skills then there is sure chance that whole communication mechanism may fail.
Conclusion
From the above report it can be concluded that communication is a very integral part of any organisation. Every company has their own way of communication channels and companies need to make sure that they have incorporated best of modes for communication. There are many factors that make communication effective or ineffective. There are many real life examples where it can be seen that due to several reasons communication becomes effective or ineffective. It is the role of the senior officials to understand the causes of ineffective communication and remove it as soon as possible. Otherwise it may have a direct impact on the operations of the firm.
Reference
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Bolden, R. (2016). Leadership, management and organisational development. In Gower handbook of leadership and management development (pp. 143-158). Routledge.
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Grunig, J. E. (2013). Excellence in public relations and communication management . Routledge.
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Nancarrow, S. A., Booth, A., Ariss, S., Smith, T., Enderby, P., & Roots, A. (2013). Ten principles of good interdisciplinary team work. Human resources for Health, 11(1), 19.
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Ruck, K., & Welch, M. (2012). Valuing internal communication; management and employee perspectives. Public Relations Review, 38(2), 294-302.
Schwantes, M., (2018) 6 Companies That Teach Us What It Takes to Communicate Exceptionally Well. [Online]. Retrieved from: https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/6-companies-that-teach-us-what-it-takes-to-communicate-exceptionally-well.html.
Silverstone, R. (Ed.). (2017). Media, technology and everyday life in Europe: From information to communication. Routledge.
Sundaray, B. K. (2011). Employee engagement: a driver of organizational effectiveness. European Journal of Business and Management, 3(8), 53-59.
Ulmer, R. R., Sellnow, T. L., & Seeger, M. W. (2017). Effective crisis communication: Moving from crisis to opportunity. Sage Publications.
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