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Theoretical concepts and effective management practices
Introduction
Several factors determine the overall performance and success of an organization. According to Drucker (1991) and Armstrong (2006), organizational effectiveness is highly connected to their management performance. The conclusion brings us to a level of need to understand what comprises an effective manager or rather the competencies or skill sets one ought to have to steer an organization to greater heights of performance.
Chun (2012) discusses in detail, the top ten management practices that make one an effective manager or leader. According to Chun (2012), the ability of a manager to effectively and communicate, build relationships with employees, and embrace the diversity of people within an organization makes the list of the top ten best management practices embodied by effective managers.
According to Barb (2008), one of the most difficult aspects of the business to master, yet a matter of necessity for managers is effective communication. Barb (2008) identifies the need to keep communication lines simple and open, understanding one’s diverse audience when communicating, and finally being a good listener as a critical recipe for effective communication. Work communications (n.d) emphasizes the significance of effective workplace communication, terming it as essential for a successful career and a pleasant workplace environment.
Inefficient communication lines within an organization often result in state disgruntlement in the workplace and lead to loss of promotion opportunities. According to Inc. Staff (2010), good staff communication is imperative to organizational success. Companies that effectively communicate with their employees indeed report lower turnover rates and high levels of employee engagement.
Communicating effectively with staff
Effective communication is a necessity in all organizations and a must-have skill for all managers and leaders in an organization. Denver (n.d) states that creating and encouraging an open communication workplace environment is an essential part of a manager’s job. What then are the essential skills that one ought to have to enhance effective communication in the workplace?
According to Denver (n.d), taking time to build relationships with your staff, learning the art of active listening, and giving effective feedback to your staff within the SMART spectrum are essential ingredients of effective communication. Further, Denver (n.d) highlights the importance of the art of learning when prudent to keep quiet, valuing audience diversity and empathizing as the next three other sets of ingredients that embody effective communication.
According to Inc. Staff (2010), ways in which people communicate are just as important as the substance of the communication. To ensure that one’s communication is understood effectively by the target audience, there is a need to evaluate one’s abilities, and sharpen the message to be communicated by keeping it short, precise, and to the point. People do not have all the time on earth to follow and understand lengthy communication; hence, there is a need for simplicity and precision.
In the simplest model, effective communication is two-way entailing give and take between the communicator and the audience. This model, therefore, calls for the communicator to use active, attentive, and reflective approaches to listening. To attain optimal gains from the art of listening, it is of the essence for the communicator to avoid major undoing of effective communication such as insensitive, pseudo, selective, and reactive listening approaches.
Understanding and working with diverse others
As a supervisor, one will be required to talk to a wider range of persons within the organization; with diverse backgrounds, cultures, personalities, and working styles. How well one adjusts communication approaches to appropriately meet the needs of the diverse audience is a measure of communication effectiveness. An effective communicator must attach significant value to the diversity of the audience and always treat everyone as an individual without stereotyping or creating assumptions.
Diversity is strength! This is perhaps a cliché that has been said by many for years. It is valuable for a manager when communicating to the organization’s employees to always consider and appreciate the worth of diversity and adjust accordingly, to communication skills that can result in greater levels of communication effectiveness.
Smith et al (n.d) suggests a need to remove major obstacles that may interfere with one’s diverse audience. Several strategies are suggested under this; including, learning to listen (listening skills are a critical ingredient for effective communication as they help the communicator to better understand the audience’s needs and feelings), need to learn to communicate clearly, and test for understanding through asking questions to ascertain whether the audience understood the message communicated. Smith et al (n.d) further suggests a need for one to adapt communication styles to fit the situation, use language that enhances trust and alliance, and need not misjudges people by their diverse backgrounds, believes and cultures, and personalities.
Conveying verbal messages accurately
Ainsworth (2009) defines verbal communication as talking to pass a message to another party and expect the other party to comprehend it precisely as the communicator intended. How then can one convey verbal messages accurately and effectively? Ainsworth (2009) suggests several strategies to enhance verbal communication’s accuracy and effectiveness.
The first strategy, as suggested by Ainsworth (2009), is ensuring precision in the message being communicated. The communicator should ensure that the message communicated is specific as opposed to general and vague. Secondly, the communicator should ensure the flow of communication, and give details slowly and sequentially. Thirdly, the communicator must give sufficient details to pass forth the message. Many times, the inadequacy of information leads to misinterpretation and lowers chances of accurate understanding, beating the essence of communication. Finally, the use of Concrete language and illustrations by example, to a greater extent, enhance the accuracy of verbal communication.
In support of views by Ainsworth (2009), Windle and Warren (n.d) state that brevity and conciseness of the message communicated enhance effective communication. Further, message organization and orderliness of the flow of communication ultimately affect the effectiveness levels. Lengthy and circuitous communications breed confusion, loss of concreteness, irrelevance, and boredom, greatly affecting the communication’s intended goal. According to Windle and Warren (n.d), one can enhance accuracy in conveying a verbal message by ensuring that the message is brief and to the point, concise and well organized to enhance orderly flow, free from jargon and lastly, the message is familiar to the audience.
Networking and Politicking
Huy (2011) and Bjorseth (2005) define networking as a relationship-building process. For a manager, it is the process of beginning and nurturing professional and personal relationships with employees and other stakeholders within the organization, to help one reach his targets. According to Huy (2011), networking enhances the chance to learn, gain goodwill from one’s colleagues, and finally enhance the accessibility of resources.
Huy (2011) defines politicking as using internal resources to move resources or favors towards a preferred destiny. Bjorseth (2005) identifies the short-term nature of politicking as its main pitfall when compared to networking that creates long-lasting bonds with others. However, Huy (2011) states that one’s ability to implement a politicking strategy in the right way demonstrates a greater sense of self-awareness and understanding of others. He adds that knowledge of an organization’s structure and culture will enhance effective politicking.
Bjorseth (2005) suggests several networking enhancing strategies that can be adopted by one in building and maintaining both personal and professional relationships. Firstly, one should promise to do only what he can be able to do and fulfill his promise at all costs. Secondly, a person should aim at assisting others without expecting favors in return for help. Lastly, one should consciously aim at improving interpersonal skills. Bjorseth (2005) introduces a new dimension to networking, a concept he refers to as value based networking that entails offering value for others first before you expect anything in return.
From the above review, it is agreeable that communication skills are essential for the modern leader or manager in getting the best out of the employees or the organization’s staff. Clarity and precision of communication are as important as the message to be communicated. My learning task 2 is an extension of learning task 1, whose main objective was to enhance my communication effectiveness. Below follows a detailed explanation of what I have managed to do and implement in the semester to attain my task 1 objective.
Action plan outcomes and measures of achievement
Introduction
Effective communication entails a host of skills that one ought to learn and practice. Arguably, learning and shaping up effective communication skills is a lifelong process. Guided by the time limitation of the semester and need to learn skills that meet the threshold of the SMART spectrum. I decided to narrow my areas of communication skills building seven skills, which agreeably are core ineffective communication.
Listening skill
Listening skills are essential for any manager or leader to discover the needs and expectations of their followers or teams. Listening skill is perhaps the umbrella of all communication skills, yet the least practiced in day to day activities. It may be of interest to note that not all needs of your teams will be visibly expressed; it takes the art of listening to denote these needs in the silent realms.
In boosting and improving this core communication skill as indicated in my learning contract/ action plan, I took the action of searching for more knowledge in books and other helpful materials and also sought one on one interviews with top executives to get more insights into how I can improve my listening skills. Over the semester too, I have had pilot discussions with my other colleagues and learned to apply my listening skills as learned from studied materials and executives interviewed. I am now working on a detailed thesis on core communications skills where listening skills have been extensively covered and I shall have my lecturer rate the level of my knowledge gained.
Networking skills/ connecting skills.
As discussed earlier, networking entails nurturing and building relationships and indeed is one of the must-have communication skills. It is more or less similar to connecting skills that entail establishing a personal or professional bond resulting in the rapport between the manager and the team. Over the semester, I have engaged myself in studying relevant materials on networking and communication skills and also observing how an expert in communication does things. To measure the extent that I have learned and gained in these two skill areas, I have performed role plays with my peers on the areas and now working on a thesis covering these areas among others to be presented to my instructor for ratings and evaluation.
Questioning skills
Questioning skill is among the core communication skills and aims at getting more information to aid in identifying your team’s salient needs and expectations. Over the semester, I have greatly grown around this skill and now I can gladly confirm that I know the true value of high impact questioning. I took substantial time to acquaint myself with knowledge around this area, through books, journals, and attended 2 seminars on effective communication skills.
This is a skill easily measured and I did opt for role play and debates as a way of gauging the much I have learned and had my peers rate my growth in this area of communication skills. Like the rest of the skills, I have extensively included this skill section in my thesis/research paper that I hope to give my course instructor to evaluate based on creative imagination, precision, and accuracy, and rate my work to validate the level to which I have developed in communication skills.
Encouraging skills
Encouraging skills aim at boosting the degree of interaction between the communicator and the recipients of the message. There are several ways that people express their encouraging skills and this includes; reinforcing, empathizing, and accepting. Like the other skills aforementioned, I have gained a lot from engaging knowledge materials around this area and also from my able mentor in the semester.
I did perform oral presentation to my peers in class and applied my learned skills of creating a rapport with my audience. The knowledge learned in this area is well covered in my detailed thesis on communication skills that I shall hand over to my instructor to validate and rate my skills based on comprehensiveness and precision.
Confirming and providing skills
Confirming skills enhance the explicit discussion progress leading to an agreement. Confirming skills comprise two parts; (a) Summarizing part; which entails pulling together related issues, rephrasing, and reviewing what the other party has said. (b) Checking; is a critical phase in communication, in which the communicator seeks to affirm that the audience understood your message. Providing skills, on the other hand, seeks to give information to the other communication parties.
To gain in-depth information on this communication skills area, I spent considerable efforts on studying materials and academic journals that relate to these skills area and honestly have gained immensely. I have had instances whereby I have piloted these skills with my colleagues and they are indeed impressed with my learning. Like the other skills, I am working on a very comprehensive research report on effective communication skills that I intend to have presented to my course lecturer for critique and evaluation.
Summary and Conclusion
My objectives as set out in the learning contract and action plan have been sufficiently met. I now adequately understand the value of diversity when I am communicating to my audience, unlike before, it is now easy to diagnose my audience with stereotyping and appropriately adjust my communication to fit situations. I have equally the power in listening; before this study, little did I know the great powers active listening has in communication.
Listening is the umbrella of perhaps all the core skills of effective communication and greatly allows one to tap into salient needs and expectations of the audience. Furthermore, my study and practice on effective communication skills have made me appreciate networking more than politicking. I now value high impact questioning skills as opposed to questioning for the sake of questioning as this skill helps me obtain know-how about situations, problems, and needs of my audience and address them adequately to ensure effective conveying of my verbal communication.
References
Ainsworth, C 2009, Effective Communication Skills For Today’s Managers – Life Lessons. Web.
Armstrong, M 2006, Performance management: Key strategies and practical guidelines, 3rd ed., Kogan Page, London.
Barb, J, 2008, Tips for Communicating With Your Staff. Web.
Bjorseth, LD 2005, Quit Politicking, Start Networking to Ensure Career and Business Success. Web.
Chun, J 2012, Top 10 management practices of effective leaders. Web.
Denver, n.d, Tips for Communicating Effectively with Your Employees. Web.
Drucker, PF 1991, Drucker in the Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business Review Publishing, Harvard.
Huy, LN 2011, Networking and Politicking. Web.
Inc. Staff, 2010, How to Communicate with Employees. Web.
Smith, B, Miller, AW, Archer, T & Hague, C, n.d, Working with Diverse Cultures. Web.
Windle, R & Warren, S, n.d, Communication Skills. Web.
Work Communication, n.d, Communicating Effectively in the Workplace. Web.
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