Question

As a manager and leader of your own organization,   discuss how you would establish a conducive communication climate. What are some of the communication channels would you use to improve the chances to implement your recommendations towards an organizational change? 600 words or more

Answer 1

As a manager and a leader, it is necessary to understand the value that communication holds in the successful working of a company. This is why it is necessary to be able to recognize the opportunities in establishing proper communication channels in the company in order to take full advantage of the benefits that it provides. The managers should start with keeping the communication channel as open as possible. It is important that the channels are formal when we follow the top to bottom or bottom to top dynamic of the hierarchy that is present in place in the company and therefore, every communication to and from this channel needs to be formal and should follow a set of rules and regulations in order to be able to effectively convey all the required information. This is however not the most appropriate implementation when we need to consider the interpersonal dynamics of the different workers in the company there must be an informal channel that needs to be setup between them in order to allow them to fully facilitate their communication as well as collaboration in order to be able to create the best results for the situation.

There is also a need to understand the requirement of an open communication and how it can be enforced organization-wide. This means that across all channels, structure and boundaries of the different hierarchies, it needs to be followed. This allows the manager to be clearly heard in all his decisions and not just followed by any rumours etc. Which could result in a problem if the implementation requires a specific set of values/data. It removes such bottlenecks from the implementation and allows for the best practices to be followed.

The communication channels need to be centralized that would allow the manager to best be able to manage all the necessary functions . essentially not having a linear structure will allow the manager to address the problem areas head on, not requiring any delays or wait time that would essentially create a bottleneck for the organization. Usually, this structure will provide a faster decision making process due to the nature of implementation which is basically created in the sense that it will provide the best implementation without having the need for a linear channel that would create the decisions. But, this approach can be a bad approach in the case of a big, complex organization that requires the intercommunication of the different departments, individuals without the use of supervision or direct involvement of the management and hence, a decentralized communication channel would best serve the purpose in this case. It depends upon the case of size, organizational structure, project situation, leadership style as well as the industry the organization is a part of.

There is a need to understand the capacity of the communication channels based on its richness and its use by the organization. In cases where face to face, one on one interaction is required, a high channel richness is observed and where letter and memos are required, a low channel richness needs to be observed. Middle channel richness however is not dependant on any factor and can be used without the actual implementation of any other such channel. This is why we need to be able to build upon the common goals and requirements of the organization and choose the best course of action which would allow the use of different channels on a case by case basis based on the need to emotionally connect with everybody in the sense of common goals and requirements.