Steps for Effective Communication

Clarity in idea.

The communicator should be quite clear about what he wants to communicate. Communication is a process starting with ideation, which includes generation of ideas, which are meant, for communication. This is the subject matter of communication and may include opinion, attitudes, feeling, views suggestion orders etc.

Purpose of Communication

Every communication has some purpose, the basic purpose of any communication being to get behavioural response from the receiver of the communication. However the ultimate objective may be extended further.

Empathy in Communication

The way for effective communication is to be sensitive towards receivers needs, feeling and perception. This is what psychologist called empathy in communication. When the sender of message looks at the problems from the receiver point of view, much of misunderstanding is avoided.

Two Way Communications

Communication is a two way process and this fact must be realized in communication. Two-way communication brings two minds together which is the basic core of any communication. It involves a continuous dialogue between the sender and the receiver of the message. Upward communication becomes a reality in the organization if this fact is recognized.

Appropriate Language

The subject matter of communication is transmitted by decoding into some symbols. Such symbols may be in the form of words, either spoken or written and gestures. If the words are used, the language used for communication should be such which is understandable by the receiver. Technical terminology and jargons though impressive creates trouble to the listener. One way of making communication simple is to use repetitive language, which the receiver is familiar with.

Supporting Words with Action

It is often said that action speaks louder than words. While communicating the sender may use the actions to emphasis a point. This enhances understanding as well as emphasis the important point in communication. Further the sender of message must also follow in action what he says to others. This will ensure seriousness in communication/

Credibility in Communication

One criterion for effective managerial communication is that it has credibility or believability. The subordinates obey the orders of the superior because he has demonstrated through his competence that he is worth of trust. He must also maintain his trust and credibility. Subordinates will follow thus any communication, which is based on this trust and credibility.

Good Listening

A communicator must be a good listener too. By this process he is not only giving chance to other to speak but he gathers useful information for further communication. By concentration on the speaker’s explicit and implicit meaning the manager can obtain a much better understanding of what is being said.

Qualities of a Leader

Leadership means the ability to influence the behaviour of others hence a leader should have certain traits to be able to exert his influence on the group around him. Leadership qualities can be divided into two classes.

1.     Personal traits

2.     Managerial traits

Personal Traits

            A successful leader should have the following personal qualities.

Dynamic Personality

            A leader should possess a charismatic, charming, cheerful and bubbling personality. He should have vitality. He should be strong, have good health, and have a cool temperament and an optimistic outlook. His behaviour should be decent and he should be able to communicate clearly.

Intellectual Capacity

            A leader should be able to think scientifically and logically. He should be able to analyse a situation. He should be able to interpret both data and human behaviour clearly and concisely. He should have an insight into business problems.

Initiative

            A successful leader must be able to visualize and take a correct sequence of actions. He should have a good sense of timing. He should be able to apply intrinsic ideas. He should be able to develop new ideas and formulate new methods of doing things. He should have great creative ability and initiative. He should be able to inspire teach and guide people. Only then will he get the voluntary co-operation of the employees around him.

Foresight

            A successful leader should be imaginative. He should be able to visualize potential trends and on the basis of these develop polices and programs logically.

Emotional Stability

            A leader should have a balanced temperament. He should be emotionally stable. He should be able to overcome his own personal disappointments. He should also be able to correct his won inconsistencies.

Flexibility

            A leader should be flexible and have an open mind. But the final decision should be his and should be based on various inputs, which should reach a balance in the final decision. He must always try to accommodate as many points of view as possible.

Sense of Responsibility

            A leader must always be responsible for his actions. He should bear the burden of his decisions. He should not try to escape by putting them on somebody else. He should always remember,

1. That he derives his authority from his followers and
2. Authority and responsibility are inter linked.

Character

            A leader should be a man of great character. He should always remember that he is a symbol for his followers hence he must carefully consider the effects of his actions on grounds of morality and efficiency.

Managerial Traits

            A successful leader should possess the following managerial trait.

Technical Knowledge

            A leader should know the technical details necessary in his field. He should know them minutely and be able to apply them in hands on situation. Only then will his followers respect him. A leader who instructs but cannot do will never be respected.

Organizing ability

            The main aim of every leader is to organize what others are doing. To be able to do this he should be able to divide the organisation into segments and use his technical knowledge and knowledge of his followers’ capacity to divide work, allocate responsibility, direct the action, set goals and produce results. He should be able to bring together the money, materials, men and machines.

Ability to deal with people

            A leader should be able to deal with the behaviour of his followers under normal conditions and in emotionally stressed conditions. He has to inspire and motivate people in both the situations

Ability to judge and decide promptly

            A leader should use all the abilities mentioned above to judge both people and situations. He should also be able to act decisively promptly and effectively so that the organization benefits from his decision with the minimum amount of effort for his followers.

Competencies/Skills Essential for Managers

Management Skills

Managers need certain skills in order to perform the duties and activities associated with various functions. Katz found that managers need three essential skills or competencies. They are technical sills, interpersonal skills and conceptual skills. It is reported that the relative importance of these skills varied according to the managers level with in the organization. As managers’ progresses from lower level to senior level, he is expected to acquire more of human relations and conceptual skills.

Managerial Skills

Technical skills

This refers to acquisition of knowledge and proficiency in a certain specialized fields. For example, mechanics work with tools, and their supervisors should have the ability to teach them how to use these tools. Similarly accountants apply specific techniques in doing their job.

First line manger, as well as middle level managers, is required to acquire mastery over the technical aspects of the organizational work operations. Technical skills include knowledge of and proficiency incertain specialized fields, such as engineering, computers, finance, manufacturing etc. Kanz proposed that technical skills becomes less important as manager moves into higher level of management, but even top managers need some proficiency in the organization’s specialty. For example, senior executives with an IT background are required to know the different types of operating systems and the current developments in the software industry to use their IT skills frequently in their position as managers when it comes to handling new projects.

Interpersonal Skills

It is ability to work with people; it is cooperative effort; it is team work; it is the creation of an environment in which people feel secure and free to express their opinions

Human or interpersonal skills represent the ability to work well with and understand others to build cooperative effort within a team to motivate and to manage conflict. These skills are important for manages at all levels. Managers need to be aware of their own attitudes, assumption and beliefs as well as being sensitive to their subordinate’s perceptions needs, and motivations.

It is important to note that theses skills are called as soft skills and it is proved that the organizations nurturing those soft skills within the organization are so successful in their business operations. Some of the important soft skills include communicating, motivating, and leading, delegating and negotiating skills. As managers deal directly with people within as well outside the organization, such types of interpersonal skills are crucial in maintaining effective interpersonal relations. Manager with good interpersonal skills are to get the best out of their people. They know how to communicate, motivate, lead and inspire enthusiasms and trust.

Conceptual Skills

It is the ability to see the ‘big picture’ to recognize significant elements in a situation to understand the relationships among the elements

Managers must also have the ability to conceptualize and to think about abstract situations. They must be able to see the organization as whole with holistic approach and able to see the big picture of he organization. The manager must understand the relationships among various subunits and to visualize how organizations fit into this broader environment. These abilities are essential to effective decision-making, and all managers must involve in making decisions. All managers at all levels need conceptual skills. Katz proposed that these skills become more important in top management positions. The reason for this is that the top management managers often deals with abstract ideas, where as lower-level manager normally spend more time dealing with observable technical day-to-day operational activities.

Organisational Behavioural Modification (OB Mod)

Companies have been forced to change their corporate cultures and their standards of operation. The change has been forced on them by globalization of markets and competition, growth of immediate digital information and communications, growth of the service-based economy and changes in rules affecting corporate governance and trade relationships. Organizational structures have trended from tall, hierarchical bureaucracies to flat, decentralized operations that encourage innovation. Such change doesn't happen automatically. Organizational behavior modification, called OB-mod, plays a key role.

OB Mod or Behavioral modification has its roots in modern behaviorism, which draws heavily on the work of B.F.Skinner. It is based on the operant conditioning approach to learning, which advocates that desirable behaviors should be reinforced. In simple word OB Mod represents the application of reinforcement theory to individuals in work setting. OB Mod uses these concepts to provide managers with a powerful means for changing the behaviour of employees.

In the words of Stephen Robbins “OB Mod is a programme where managers identify performance-related employee behaviour and then implement an intervention strategy to strengthen desirable behaviour and weaken undesirable behaviors”.

According to Schermerhor, Hunt and Osborn, “ OB Mod is the systematic reinforcement of desirable work behaviour and the non-reinforcement or punishment of unwanted work behaviour. It includes four basic reinforcement strategies: Positive reinforcement, Negative reinforcement, Punishment and Extinction

Steps in OB Mod

As suggested by Luthans and Kreitner, OB Mod in organization involve the following five steps.

Identification of Critical Behaviour. The manager should try to identify behaviors that are desirable and undesirable from the point of view of the organization. The critical behaviours that have significant impact on the employees performance must be given due attention because it gets repeated time again and again. If such behaviour are modified good results could be expected afterwards. Critical Behaviours may be identified through discussion with the particular employee and his immediate superior as both are closely intimated with the job behaviours. A Behavioural audit can also be carried on to identify such behaviour. Some of the behaviours, which greatly influence job performance, include absenteeism or attendance, tardiness or promptness, complaints or constructive criticism.

Measurement of Behaviours. This step requires the manager to develop some base line which allows the manager to determine his success in changing the subordinates behaviour. It may also provide insight into the circumstances associated with each critical behaviour.

Functional Analysis of Behaviour: It is necessary to analyse the patterns of continued behaviour that requires modification. This may require insight and evaluation of individual differences in behaviour. If through this process an inventory of positive reinforce can be developed, the next step of intervention is greatly simplified. Since only contingent consequences of behaviour have an impact on subsequent behaviour, functional analysis must make sure that contingent consequences are identified. Functional Analysis often reveals that there are many competing contingencies for every organizational behaviour.

Development of Intervention Strategy: For the successful implementation of OB Mod, this stage involves a) developing a strategy for changing the behaviour b) implementing the strategy and c) measuring the frequency of the resulting behaviour. A record is kept of how often the problem behaviour is repeated. There are several strategies that can be used at this stage. These include positive reinforcements, negative reinforcement, extinction and punishment. The use of a particular strategy will depend upon the type of situation faced as discussed in the previous chapter.

Evaluation: The purpose of evaluation of strategies of OB Mod is to know their effectiveness. This would reveal whether the undesirable behaviours have been substituted by desirable behaviours or not. This would also reveal if the employees have undergone a permanent change in behaviours. Lastly, the manager should appraise the improvement in performance which is the basic purpose of OB Mod measures like quality, turnover, absenteeism, grievances, tardiness etc. may be used to evaluate success of the OB Mod programme.

Various Definition of Management

There is no common agreement among its experts and practitioners about its precise definition. Although management as a discipline is more than 80 years old, many management experts have tried to define management. But, no definition of management has been universally accepted. Yet, a definition of management is necessary for its teaching and research, and also for improvement in its practice.

Some of the leading definitions of management: (In no specific Order)

Louis Allan, “Management is what a manager does.”

Peter F. Drucker defines, "management is an organ; organs can be described and defined only through their functions". The Principles of Management.

According to Terry, "Management is not people; it is an activity like walking, reading, swimming or running. People who perform Management can be designated as members, members of Management or executive leaders."

Ralph C. Davis has defined Management as, "Management is the function of executive leadership anywhere."

According to Mc Farland, "Management is defined for conceptual, theoretical and analytical purposes as that process by which managers create, direct, maintain and operate purposive organization through systematic, co-ordinated co-operative human effort."

Henry Fayol, "To manage is to forecast and plan, to organize, to compound, to co-ordinate and to control." Industrial and General Administration

Harold Koontz says, "Management is the art of getting things done through and within formally organized group." The Management Theory Jungle.

Howard M. Carlisle, "Management is defined as the process by which the elements of a group are integrated, coordinated and/or utilized so as to effectively and efficiently achieve organizational objectives."

William Spriegal, "Management is that function of an enterprise which concerns itself with direction and control of the various activities to attain business objectives. Management is essentially an executive function; it deals with the active direction of the human effort."

Kimball and Kimball, "Management embraces all duties and functions that pertain to the initiation of an enterprise, its financing, the establishment of all major policies, the provision of all necessary equipment, the outlining of the general form of organization under which the enterprise is to operate and the selection of the principal officers."

Sir Charles Reynold, "Management is the process of getting things done through the agency of a community. The functions of management are the handling of community with a view of fulfilling the purposes for which it exists."

E.F.L. Brech, "Management is concerned with seeing that the job gets done, its tasks all centre on planning and guiding the operations that are going on in the enterprise."

Koontz and O'Donnel, "Management is the creation and maintenance of an internal environment in an enterprise where individuals, working in groups, can perform efficiently and effectively toward the attainment of group goals. It is the art of getting the work done through and with people in formally organized groups."

James Lundy, "Management is principally a task of planning, coordinating, motivating and controlling the efforts of other towards a specific objective. It involves the combining of the traditional factors of production land, labour, capital in an optimum manner, paying due attention, of course, to the particular goals of the organization."

Wheeler, "Management is centered in the administrators or managers of the firm who integrate men, material and money into an effective operating limit."

Theo Haimann, "Management principles are universal. It may be applied to any kind of enterprises, where the human efforts are coordinated."

J.D. Mooney and A.C. Railey, "Management is the art of directing and inspiring people."

J.N. Schulze, "Management is the force which leads guides and directs an organization in the accomplishment of a pre-determined object."

Oliver Scheldon, "Management proper is the function in industry concerned in the execution of policy, within the limits set up by the administration and the employment of the organization for the particular objectives set before it."

Keith and Gubellini, "Management is the force that integrates men and physical plant into an effective operating unit."

Donald J. Clough, "Management is the art and science of decision-making and leadership".

Ralph, C. Davix, "Management is the function of executive leadership anywhere."

Association of Mechanical Engineers, U.S.A., "Management is the art and science of preparing, organizing and directing human efforts applied to control the forces and utilize the materials of nature for the benefit to man."

F.W. Taylor, "Management implies substitution of exact scientific investigation and knowledge for the old individual judgment or opinion, in all matters in the establishment."

Newman, summer and Warren, "The job of Management is to make co-operative endeavour to function properly. A manager is one who gets things done by working with people and other resources in order to reach an objective."

G.E. Milward, "Management is the process and the agency through which the execution of policy is planned and supervised."

Ordway Tead, "Management is the process and agency which directs and guides the operations of an organization in the realizing of established aims."

Mary Parker Follett defines management as the "art of getting things done through people". This definition calls attention to the fundamental difference between a manager and other personnel of an organization. A manager is one who contributes to the organization’s goals indirectly by directing the efforts of others – not by performing the task himself. On the other hand, a person who is not a manager makes his contribution to the organization’s goals directly by performing the task himself.

George R. Terry. He defines management as a distinct process "consisting of planning, organizing, actuating and controlling, performed to determine and accomplish the objectives by the use of people and other resources".

Emergence of E-Organization

E- Commerce: It refers to the business operations involving electronic mode of transactions. It encompasses presenting products on websites and filling order. The vast majority of articles and media attention given to using the Internet in business are directed at on-line shopping. In this process, the marketing and selling of goods and services are being carried out over the Internet. In e-commerce, the following activities are being taken place quite often - the tremendous numbers of people who are shopping on the Internet, business houses are setting up websites where they can sell goods, conducting the following transactions such as getting paid and fulfilling orders. It is a dramatic change in the way a company relates to its customers. At present e-commerce is exploding.

E-business: It refers to the full breadth of activities included in a successful Internet based enterprise. As such, e-commerce is a subset of e-business. E-business includes developing strategies for running Internet-based companies, creating integrated supply chains, collaborating with partners to electronically coordinate design and production, identifying a different kind of leader to run a ‘virtual’ business, finding skilled people to build and operate intranets and websites, and running the back room or the administrative side. E-business includes the creation of new markets and customers, but it’s also concerned with the optimum ways to combine Computers, the Web and Application Software. A sizeable number of multinational corporations are selling goods and services via the Internet.

Growth rate of e-business: The application of Internet operations are initially covers a small part of the business. At this point, their e-commerce operations are secondary to their traditional business. An increasingly popular application of e-business is merely using the Internet to better manage an ongoing business. Later, there are millions of firms that are now selling anything over the Internet, but they are using e-business applications to improve communications with internal and external stakeholders and to better perform traditional business functions. Some companies are putting maximum effort in improving its internal efficiency and providing support to its wide-reaching dealer network and to on-line sellers by crating a shared and integrated network. The companies wanted to make creasing

E-Organizations: This embraces e-commerce and e-business. State and central governments, municipal corporations are using the Internet for extending all the public utility services more efficiently through internet.

The growing use of the Internet, tablet devices, and smart phones coupled with larger consumer confidence will see that eCommerce will continue to evolve and expand.

OD INTERVENTIONS

It refers to various activities which consultant and client organisation perform for improving organisational functioning through enabling organisation members. FRENCH & BELL have defined OD Interventions, “as a set of structured activities in which selected organisation units engaged with the task or sequence of task where the task goals are related directly or indirectly to organisation improvement”

OD interventions that are targeted toward individuals, skills training, job redesign, role negotiation and career planning.

Sensitivity Training: Also called T- group training or laboratory training, sensitivity training is designed to help individuals understand how their behaviour affects others. Members are is brought together in a free open environment in which participants discuss themselves. The discussion is loosely directed by a professional behavioural scientist called “facilitator”. The facilitator intervenes only to help move the group forward. The objective of sensitivity training is to increase sensitivity toward others. The outcome of such training should, therefore, help employees understand others better, become aware of their own feelings and perceptions, and improve communication.

Skill Training :  Skill training refers to increasing the job knowledge, skills, and abilities that are necessary to do a job effectively. Skill training is aroused due to the rapid changes that organisations face. The job knowledge, therefore, needs to be continuously updated to keep pace with rapid change. The objective of training is to enable a worker to be more effective on the job. For example, while new workers can be trained to achieve levels of output attained by experienced older workers, existing workers can be retained to improve their output at par.

Job redesign : As an OD interventions, job redesign alters jobs to improve the fit between individual skills and the demands of the job. We have already discussed job redesign in chapter 10. examples of job design interventions include job enlargement, job enrichment, job realigning task demands and individual capabilities, or for redesigning jobs to fit new techniques or organisation structures better.

Role negotiation : Sometimes, group members have differing expectations of one another within the working relationship. Role negotiation is a simple technique whereby individuals meet and clarify their psychological contract. In doing this, the expectations of each party are clarified and negotiated. The outcome of role negotiation is improved understanding between the members.

Career Planning: Career Planning refers to matching an individual’s career aspirations with the opportunities available in the organisation. In other words, it involves activities offered by the organisation to individuals to identify strength, weaknesses, specific goals and they would like to occupy. Career planning activities benefit both 3/4 individual and organisations. Counseling sessions are held to help employees identify their skills and deficiencies in their skills. The organisation then can plan its training and development programmes based on this information to improve individual’s skills required for assuming higher responsibilities. Such a  process may help the organisation identify and also nurture the talented employees for potential promotion.

Management Development Training : Management development encompasses a host of techniques designed to enhance a manager’s skills on the job. Training for management development generally focuses on four types of learning : verbal information, intellectual skills, attitudes, and development is through the use of action learning, an integration of classroom learning with on-the-job experiences. Action learning enables managers to know about themselves through the challengers of comrades. Simulation, business games, role playing, and case studies are other techniques that provide active learning for the participants.

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Approaches To The Study Of Organisational Behaviour

The four approaches are – human resources approach, productivity approach, and systems approach. These are examined in the following paragraphs, it may be stated that all these approaches are interwoven .

 Human Resources Approach This approach recognizes the fact that people are the central resource in any organisation and that they should be developed towards higher levels of competency, creativity and fulfillment. People thus developed will contribute to the success of the organisation. The human resources approach is also called as the supportive approach in the sense that he manager’s role changes from control of employee to active support of their growth and performance. The supportive approach contrasts with the traditional management approach. In the traditional approach managers decided what employees should do and closely monitored their performance to ensure task accomplishment. In the human resources approach, role of managers changes, as was stated above, from structuring and controlling to supporting.
Contingency Approach The contingency approach (sometimes called the situational approach) is based on the premise that methods or behaviours which work effectively in one situation fail in another. OD programmes, for example, way work brilliantly in one situation but fail miserably in another situation. Results differ because situations differ, the manager’s task, therefore, is to identity which method will, in a particular situation, under particular circumstances, and at a particular time, best contribute to the attainment of organisation’s goals. The strength of the contingency approach lies in the fact it encourages analysis of each situation prior to action while at the same time discourages habitual practice of universal assumptions about methods and people. The contingency approach is also more interdisciplinary, more system – oriented and more research-oriented than14 in any other approach.

Productivity Approach Productivity which is the ratio of output to input, is a measure of an organisation’s effectiveness. It also reveals manager’s efficiency in optimizing resource utilization. The higher the numerical value of this ratio, the greater the efficiency. Productivity is generally measured in terms of economic inputs and outputs, but human and social inputs and outputs also are important. For example, if better organisational behaviour can improve job satisfaction, a human output or benefit occurs. In the same manner, when employee development programmes lead to a by product of better citizens in a community, a valuable social output occurs. Organisational behaviour decisions typically involve human, social, and / or economic issues, and so productivity usually a significant part of these decisions is recognized and discusses extensively in the literature on OB.

Systems Approach Systems approach to OB views the organisation as a united, purposeful system composed of interrelated parts. This approach gives managers a way of looking at the organisation as a whole, whole person, whole group, and the whole social system. In so doing, systems approach tells us that the activity of any segment of an organisation affects, in varying degrees the activity of every other segment. A systems view should be the concern of every person in an organisation. The clerk at a service counter, the machinist, and the man-ager-all work with the people and thereby influence the behavioural quality of life in an organisation and its inputs. Managers, however, tend to have larger responsibility, because they are the ones who make majority are people-oriented. The role of managers, then, is to use organisational behaviour to help build an organisation culture in which talents are utilized and further developed, people are motivated, teams become productive, organisations achieve their goals and society reaps the reward.