Communication skill is essential for Effective Management

The importance of effective communication for mangers can't be overemphasized for one specific reason: Everything a manager does involve communicating. Not some thing, but everything!

What's management, what's management effectiveness?
Management could be defined as different functions, roles, skills or other facets of this science. In 1910s, the French industrialist Henri Fayol began to give the five element functions of management: planning, organization, commanding, coordinating and controlling. The two main measurements of a successful management are efficiency and effectiveness. To be simplified, efficiency refers to getting the most output from the least amount of inputs. In academic field, the study of efficiency involves more in economics rather than management. On the other side, the terminology effectiveness could be described as 'doing the right things', which means that the management activities will help the organization reach its goals. [2] According to different organizations, the effectiveness would be measured by the execution, the leadership, the delegation and the return on investment.

What's communication and what's communication skill?
In an organization under management, the communication refers to the transfer and understanding of meaning. The transferring could be interpersonal, intragroup, or both and it would be done in personal speaking, writing, an organized meeting or any other forms. Communication skills are essential for both of the transferring and understanding steps.
In different environments, the requirements of communication skills are not the same. When in public speaking, what one should pay attention to are organizing a presentation, telling the right stories, speaking with confidence, clarity, enthusiasm and vitality, and most important, being persuasive. When in a written form, the communication skills referred are mostly like using proper grammar and spelling, preparing written reports, brochures, memos, and also organizing those documents for high impact. When in a management meeting, relevant communication skills are more like leading brainstorming sessions, analyzing and commenting on the direction of the group process, clarifying expectations of group members, and also creating consensus within the team. It is impossible to list all the communication skills required under numerous t environments, but due to the definition of effectiveness of management above, we can go through every aspects of the effectiveness to see how important those relevant communication skills are.

The Execution ? communication for accountabilities
Generally speaking, the execution of management could be explained as how well management's plans are carried out by members of organization. In this process, the managers could explain their ideas and plans to the staff ? the first step, and then the staff could carry out the manger's plans. Here, communication is critical in changing plans in mangers' brain to the results of the whole organization. Failures in communication often happened during this process as staffs sometimes don't get a clear view of the plans. Thus, they begin their work without a goal-orientation and the framework of the whole project. It leads to confusion and cause a good plan to fail. Another disastrous failure might occur if the staffs totallymisunderstand the plans and more unfortunately, they don't submit future inquiry on it. However, what's an effective management would perform in this communication? The most important thing to ensure accountabilities, making both sides of the communication knows clearly what goal they should achieve and what they should pay attention to during the whole work. In such a communicating way, self-responsibility could be built at the beginning of the work. What's more, the manager's communication skill of encouraging questions and idea would be great helpful in this situation when staffs might hesitate to ask for more information even they don't fully understand. A successful manger is always aware of erasing communicating barriers between him/her and the staffs, adding wording like 'you can call me anytime if you have any question on this plan'. On the contrary, managers who lack this kind of communication skills just expect the staff initiatively give inquiry if they really face some problem and if they don't, it is regarded as no problem appears. The initiative encouraging skill of communication could easily sweep out this kind of failure in management.

The leadership ? communication for inspiration
Leadership is how effectively management communicates and translates the vision and strategy of the organization to the members. As every one knows, leadership is an essential quality of managers. The translation of vision and strategy of the organization to the members would do a lot of good to the management and also the whole organization. The common staffs of the organization would be more goal-oriented and enthusiastic for the success of the organization if this communication and translation process could be done properly. This kind of communication requires many managers to be skillful in this area. First, be persuasive! Being persuasive is a core skill in interpersonal communication and also the most critical one. In what a way could the manager communicate so that the members can feel his own career path is part of the organizational vision? Furthermore, in what a way could the manager communication so that the vision of the organization could stimulate the members to be enthusiastic to achieve the vision? Besides coaching, coordinating, counseling and evaluating as a supervisor, the manager should also perform persuading and inspiring as a leader. The personal quality that matters here is communication skill. When communicating as a leader, a successful manager could easily and quickly build mutual trust and then begin to give vision and strategy to his/her fellow members. In communication, the manager considers from the member's point of view and gives evidences to persuade the members. He/She would speak genuinely and frankly to the members of the organization and communicate with them on the manager's own belief on the organization. Most of the time, actions speaks better than words. Would any one doubt that the effectiveness of management could be greatly enhanced if every member of the organization is encouraged to be enthusiastic and inspiring? Communication skill is the chain of understanding that integrates the members of an organization from top to bottom, bottom to top, and side to side.

The delegation ? communication for responsibility
Delegation is how well management gives assignments and communicates instructions to members of the organization. The management, known as supervisor in a typicaldelegation model and the staff, known as agents in the typicaldelegation model, are said to struggle for resource allocation in most economic textbooks. Economists are always walking about agency cost, information asymmetrical and optimal equilibrium. Although there are many kinds of delegation communication models due to the variety of organization structure, the communication skill itself would definitely work in any situation. The basic requirement of communication in a delegation scenario is giving assignment and instruction in a clear and detailed way. During the assignment period, all the instruction and explanations for contingencies should be given, for added-in constraints would cause suspicions of nonconfidence and distrust. A failure in communicating with agents in a delegation scenario will cause misunderstanding of the delegation rights and constraints of the two sides. An ambiguity of responsibilities then comes in and leaves future dissensions of each other. However, if there are many delegation agents, the non-cooperative ambience will also affect other staffs. This kind of delegation would be a trouble-maker inside the organization and is also very hard to adapt to the changing environment. However, a skillful communication emphasizes on the maintenance of the mutual trust with careful attention. Managers mastering the communication skills know that maintaining a trust is always easy than recapturing. They will communicate with their staff on the allocation of responsibilities, the very detail of delegation articles. In this situation, their communications recognize consistency and never replace substance with glitz. In such way, a consistent communication is establishes and when environment changes, it is easy for the management to alter delegations with staffs.

Return on investment ? communication for feedback
When you know something, say what you know. When you don't know something, say that you don't know. That is knowledge.
- Confucius
Communication is a two-way dialogue. The managers should not only care about what they execute and assign, but also the feedbacks from the staff and the behavior of the organization. In the lower level of the organizational structure, a good feedback should be evaluative, interpretive, supportive, probing and understanding. The process of communication is reverse against that in the assigning period, because the managers getting feedbacks are receivers of information. When facing those feedbacks from fellow staff, managers should master the communication skills of understanding feedbacks. What do these feedbacks mean? How could I react to the feedbacks?　What else can I do to foster the staff to give more feedbacks? All of these questions should be considered carefully by managers in order to build a feasible feedback system which is also important for the effectiveness of management. In the organizational level, the feedback appears on the balance sheet and income statement, where the return on investment is communicated in a numeric way. This imposes requirements on mangers' understanding on financial statements and other relevant financial analysis. The non-verbal communication skill needs both the comprehension of communication process and profound professional understanding on corporate finance.

Communication is essential for 'Doing the right thing'
A good management will always ensure the right thing being doing and the goal be achieved. Without excellent communication skills, how, otherwise, is management to explain its plans and ideas, to translate the organization's visions and strategies, to give assignments and instructions, and to understand feedbacks. An effective management could firstly be communicating skillfully and then could be 'doing the right thing'.


References:
Butler, Gillian, Ph.D. and Hope, Tony, M.D. (1996). Managing Your Mind. New York: Oxford University Press

Stephen P. Robbins, Mary Coulter, Management

John B. Miner, The Management Process: Theory, Research, and Practice, The Macmillan Company, New York

Eric J Walton, Sarah Dawson ,'Managers' Perceptions of Criteria of Organizational Effectiveness', Journal of Management Studies, Volume 38, Issue 2, Page 173-200, Mar 2001

Eero Vaara, Janne Tienari, Rebecca Piekkari and Risto Säntti, Language and the Circuits of Power in a Merging Multinational Corporation, Journal of Management Studies,Volume 42 Issue 3 Page 595 - May 2005,doi:10.1111/j.1467-6486.2005.00510.x

Antoine Faure-Grimaud, Jean-Jacques Laffont and David Martimort, Collusion, Delegation and Supervision with Soft Information, Journal of Management Studies,Volume 42 Issue 3 Page 595 - May 2005,doi:10.1111/j.1467-6486.2005.00510.x

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_effectiveness

http://www.ivysea.com/pages/organizationalcomms_portal.html

http://www.uwgb.edu/clampitp/Communication%20skills.htm

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcom.html

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com
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