The link between leadership style, communicator competence nd employee satisfaction - Essay Example

Leadership style, communicator competence and  employee satisfaction The connection between leadership style, communicator competence and employee satisfaction within an organization can be best explored by the study of Paul Madlock in 2008. The study attempts to examine the influence of the communicator competence of a supervisor as well as the leadership style of the individual on the communication satisfaction of the employees working under his or her supervision along with their satisfaction from the job.

In the changing nature of the working environment the leaders or the supervisors are in the need for continued negotiations with the employees as they are generally more educated as well as intelligent and competent enough for their roles in the organizations much more than their preceding generations. Thus for the need of a proper negotiation the communication competence of the supervisors is something that is readily required. Before focusing on the main part of the study there is the need for the discussion of certain key terms of communicator competence, leadership, and communication satisfaction along with job satisfaction.

(Madlock, p 61) Communicator competence- The concept of communicator competence encompasses the elements of skills, knowledge, as well as behavior that are able in motivating individuals and prove its effectiveness. Maintenance of certain interpersonal norms along with conversational appropriateness forms the embedded part of competent interactions. (Madlock, p 62) Leadership- the quality of leadership has been best defined as the ability of an individual to influence and guide the team members in achieving the shared goals.

(Madlock, p 64) Communication Satisfaction- the satisfaction that an individual employee gains from the daily conversations occurring in that particular organization along with its various aspects is what is referred to as the communication satisfaction of the employee. (Madlock, p 65) Job Satisfaction- the satisfaction an employee of the organization gains from the type of the work, the working environment, from the emotional state of appraisal and also the influencing power of the supervisor are the revealing factors of job satisfaction.

(Madlock, p 65) Methodology- The study of Madlock was performed with 220 working adults from variety of organizations of Midwest, of 18 to 64 years of age. Among them there were 116 male and 104 female employees with work experience varying from 1 to 20 years. 112 of the employees were reported of working under female leaderships and the rest under male supervision with the age of the supervisors varied from 22 to 75 years. The study was performed through the issuance of questionnaires to the selected sample.

Aim-The study aimed in finding the relationships between the task leadership, relational leadership quality and the competence of communication of the supervisors on the communication and job satisfaction of the employees and which of the three qualities was a greater predictor. (Madlock, p 66) Results- the results of the Pearson correlation test established significant positive relationship between every variable considered. All the three desired qualities of the supervisors had positive impact on the communication and the job satisfaction of the employees with the varied values of the correlation coefficients implying different extent of influence of each.

Strong influence was established from communication competence, leadership quality as well as the task leadership quality of supervisors on communication satisfaction of the employees. However weak relationships of these variables were established with the job satisfaction of the employees. In order to study the comparative influence of relational leadership, task leadership and communication competence on the communication and the job satisfaction of the employees multiple regression was used.

The communication competences of the supervisors were found to have greater impact on the communication satisfaction of the employees than the other two. In case of their impact on the job satisfaction of the employees only the communication competence of the employers proved to have significant impact. (Madlock, pp 68-71) Thus from the study conducted it can be concluded that the communication competence of the supervisors had much more impact on the satisfaction level of the employees and their outcomes than the leadership style of the supervisors.

However it had the limitation of primarily being a correlation study and being based on Midwest there might be a restraint in generalization of the results. Reference Madlock, Paul, E, THE LINK BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLE, COMMUNICATOR COMPETENCE, AND EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION, Journal of Business Communication, (January 2008), 45.1, 61-78