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The world of the communicative manager

  • Chapter
Communication Skills for Effective Management

Abstract

The focus of this book is upon how communication in organisations can be improved. More particularly, it examines the pivotal communicative role of managers, who play a key part in maintaining effective information flow and promoting harmonious relationships within the workplace. Executives devote much of their time to interactions with staff. Manager-watching studies1 have revealed that they spend over 60 per cent of their working time in scheduled and unscheduled meetings with others, about 25 per cent doing desk-based work, some 7 per cent on the telephone and 3 per cent walking the job. Indeed, it has also been shown2 that ‘communication, especially oral skills, is a key component of success in the business world … executives who hire college graduates believe that the importance of oral communication skills for career success is going to increase’. The corollary of this is that today’s graduates arrive with increased demands of what they want from companies,3 not least of which is the expectation that communications will be two-way and cognisance will be taken of their views. Another example of the importance of communication was a survey4 in which 2600 UK employees clearly expressed the view that what was most de-motivating of all was lack of communication from managers, citing issues such as a complete absence of interaction, a general lack of feedback, or meetings taking place behind closed doors.

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Authors
  1. Owen Hargie
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  2. David Dickson
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  3. Dennis Tourish
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© 2004 Owen Hargie, David Dickson and Dennis Tourish

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Hargie, O., Dickson, D., Tourish, D. (2004). The world of the communicative manager. In: Communication Skills for Effective Management. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-3893-0_1

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