Communication Strategies for Effective Leadership (Essay Sample)

Leadership
Student’s Name
Institution
Introduction
Long ago, in the biblical times, people set out to reach the heaven and meet the Lord. They planned on achieving this by building a tower i.e. the tower of Babel that would scale the skies and pierce through the heavens and finally reach the throne of the Lord. So they began building the tower. In unity, they worked day and night and with every dawn and every dusk, the tower grew high. On seeing this, the Lord got jealous and knew that the tower might soon reach the heavens. So the Lord devised a plan that would that would come between the people, break their unity and make them not to continue with the building of the tower. After thorough brainstorming, the Lord finally came with a plan. He made the people speak in different tongues. The construction site of the tower was a mess. The workers could not understand one another. When someone was asked for a hammer, he gave a shovel instead. The construction could not continue anymore and people left the site and went their separate ways.
From the story above, one lesson we can pick is the importance of communication in any organization. When two or more people are working together towards the achievement of certain goals or objectives, effective communication is paramount (Barrett, 2006). Communication play a critical role in such settings. People need to be constantly reminded of the objectives they are working towards achieving, they need to be motivated and motivate one another, they need to air their concerns and the management needs to share in any change of plans to the lower cadre employees. All this is facilitated by effective communication (Barrett, 2006). This essay, therefore, analyses the role of effective communication in leadership.
Communication Strategies for Effective Leadership
As we have seen above communication is an integral component of any organization. Therefore, leaders of such organizations need to know to manipulate communication in order to work in their favor. This manipulation of communication is what we refer to as communication strategies. But before we analyze what communication strategies are necessary for effective leadership, let us first know what effective leadership is. Effective leadership is the ability of an individual to motivate others to complete certain tasks using the available minimal resources in order to realize certain goals (Gamble & Gamble, 2013). An effective leader has the following characteristics: he/she is a risk taker, motivator, visionary, goal setter, team worker and above all he/she is an effective communicator (Corvirtus.com, 2015). There are for communication strategies that are synonymous with effective leadership. These are; collaboration, compromise, relationship building and straight forward communication (Corvirtus.com, 2015).
Since organizations involve team-directed work, a leader especially line managers need to get different perspectives from other people e.g. staff managers. For example, Ben Williams need to be in constant liaison with the heads of operation, finance, human resources and administration department. Through this liaison, Mr. Williams will be able to know what is happening in each department in order to communicate information based on facts and not hearsay. Collaborative communication will also enable people to share ideas and work together (Corvirtus.com, 2015). It also creates a large pool of solutions gathered from different employees, therefore, Mr. Williams can select the most appropriate and implement it.
When people interact with one another within the organization, there is bound to be disagreements and misunderstanding. Employees have their own individual objectives e.g. their career objectives which they pursue simultaneously with the organizational objectives. Employees, at most times, pursue their personal goals at the expense of organizational goals. Therefore, an effective leader should be able to communicate, through dialogue, with the employees how both goals i.e. organizational and employee can be achieved without making one better off while the other worse off. Effective leaders should therefore be able to compromise, in order to create harmonious environments.
Mr. Williams, through communication, should also be able to build relationships and promote team work. He should not wait to communicate to the employees when there is a problem or when effecting changing but should practice a culture of consistent communication through which he will motivate and encourage his subordinates. He can achieve this by openly praising the organization’s highly performing employees. Through communication he can also build connection and alliances not only internally but also externally with leaders of other organizations (Corvirtus.com, 2015).
Mr. Williams should also be able to communicate in a manner that the employees are aware of the message being passed across. The message should be direct, clear and concise. it should be free from any ambiguity that would hinder comprehension (Corvirtus.com, 2015). He should also be available to select the appropriate channel of communication that will be suitable for sending a message. For example, he should not send an email message when he can use face-to-face communication to pass across a message that needs persuasion (Corvirtus.com, 2015).
Methods of Effective Communication