Communication and Leadership Style - Essay Example

Informal communication occurs between employees and it is closely related to motivation and job satisfaction at the workplace. It enhances collaboration among employees especially when they relate positively to obtain and share ideas. Motivation refers to the internal condition that activates individual behaviour and establishes goal-oriented behaviour and makes a person behave in a certain manner. One of the strategies of motivating employees is information availability and communication. Mentoring is one way used to motivate employees during informal communication and this will increase their performance (Schniederjans & LeGrand, 2012). Managers can stimulate motivation by giving relevant information, and by sharing information, workers tend to compete with each other. Generally, job satisfaction is determined by income, working conditions, supervision, and co-workers, that is, being satisfied involves a good salary, favourable working environment, necessary supervision and supportive colleagues. People will feel satisfied with their job when there is effective informal communication and positive relationship between them.
Additionally, informal communication is very important in explaining job satisfaction and other organizational outcomes. Effective communication brings people together to form a workplace. Organizational communication is very important in promoting better relationships within an organization, transmitting valuable information, enhancing cooperation among individuals, and also helping in understanding and coordinating work. Most importantly, communication increases overall workplace satisfaction as well as individual job satisfaction. Motivating workers involve job enrichment and encouraging employees’ opinions. Indeed, there is a positive relationship between effective informal communication, workers motivation, and job satisfaction.
Monitoring Communication
To ensure that there is increased performance and growth in an organization, it is very important to control and monitor communication especially confidential information which can cause a scandal when said publicly. Certain information or ideas are very critical and can ruin the organization's name or lead to poor performance especially when the competitors learn the secrets and weaknesses of these organizations. Moreover, sharing information concerning the customers is illegal and is strictly monitored especially in healthcare settings. There are many ways which the management can use in order to control information flow in an organization as well as discussion about confidential sources. Introducing laws to the protection of confidential information is one way to ensure that no one discusses any valuable information. Secondly, the management should restrict access to secrets especially to the staff who seek to know the information. Furthermore, the organization can check the employees’ phone calls, or emails so as to monitor their conversation with the client.
In healthcare settings, sharing information about the patient with co-workers who are not directly involved with the patient’s care is prohibited. In some cases, the employee can be terminated when found spreading confidential information about a patient. This approach can as well be effective and useful in other organizations where some employees discuss confidential information with others. Apart from healthcare institutions, other organizations need to keep some information about the organization, employers or employees confidential. All companies have secrets that they have to protect and should not be disclosed, therefore, restricting and monitoring communication will be necessary. Company ideas and secrets can only be safe from competitors by prohibiting the staff from discussing any confidential information. However, it may also be ineffective, for instance, in law, “any information exchanged between the client and the attorney disclosed to a third party is considered confidential” (Edwards et al., 2011).
Transformational Leadership Style
Transformational leadership is where leaders and subordinates assist each other to reach a higher level of morale and motivation, as these leaders seek to transform and change their subordinates (Horsford, 2010). Transformational leadership is recognized for enhancing the motivation and performance of both leaders and workers in an organization. As transactional leaders employ disciplinary power and incentives to motivate employees to perform and deliver the best, transformational leaders set goals and incentives so as to motivate their subordinates to increase their performance and productivity since their main aim is to change and transform employees and motivate them through their idealized influence (Horsford, 2010). In addition, transactional leadership is based on a ‘give and take’ relationship but transformational leadership is based on the leader’s personality, attributes and ability to make a change by setting a good example and respecting other people’s opinions.
Furthermore, transformational leadership focuses on changing the business culture whereas transactional leadership tends to maintain the normal operations of a given business (Horsford, 2010).  Read More