Managing Communication in the Post-Bureaucratic Era With Leadership

In the postbureaucratic period, effective communication management and management are both interdependent elements with a critical role. Whilst communication includes a multitude of channels for exchanging ideas, feelings and texts and information, modern businesses cannot succeed without adequate communication channels (Clegg, Kornberger and Pitsis 2012, p. 24). Communication between managers and subordinates is possible in the whole corporate structure either formally or informally through media. Thus far, various leadership styles are more likely to enhance the aspect of effective communication in the post-bureaucratic era, defined by independence, trust and the reliability of employees. Leadership in the post-bureaucratic era is not just about empowering employees to work, but also ensuring their optimum involvement in decision-making processes (Josserand, Teo and Clegg 2006, p. 57). This culminates into high productivity as well as corporate success.

One of the grandest responsibilities undertaken by corporate leadership is getting involved in proficient communication tools. This is pertinent when it comes to creating influence, inspiration and moving people in one direction towards realizing the company’s vision and mission. Modern technologies have also brought about increase consciousness, creativity, and novelty, as such, employees tend to rebel against autocratic leadership. Instead, employees desire participative leadership approaches that motivate and increase optimum job contentment. In the midst change, for instance, most managers embrace transformational leadership approaches. This has been the basis of not just effective leadership, but also guaranteeing a smooth transition of new processes and systems. This paper examines how leadership practices culminate into effective communication management in the post-bureaucratic era.

Communication styles and leadership practices

Based on research, there is a thin line between leadership practices and communication styles such as dominance and approachability. Although, modern firms concentrate on proficient communication styles, information management and sharing among teams has been a problem (Josserand, Teo and Clegg 2006, p. 55). To this effect, leaders tend to grapple with the issue of implementing a communication style that enhances subordinates to engage in effective communication that then underpins knowledge learning and sharing. Two leadership styles, namely task-oriented and people oriented leadership styles are discussed.

The task-oriented approach is embraced by autocratic leaders, who give instructions, offer supervision and ensure tasks are accomplished based on specifications. By and large, the task-oriented leadership is centered on getting is inclined towards ensuring the task is accomplished as opposed to inspiring people to enhance performance. Steve Jobs turned Apple Inc into a success story with this leadership approach.

On the other hand, the people-oriented leadership concentrates on motivation and empowerment. Moreover, this leadership approach ensures that employees are involved in all meaningful deliberations. Furthermore, the leader encourages not just a certain value system, integrity, and openness at work, but takes into consideration decisions after getting response other team players.

Nonetheless, both task-oriented and people oriented leadership approach embrace different communication styles. Autocratic leaders, for instance, believe in the telling and directing. In the telling communication style, the leader puts more emphasis on people and activities to be accomplished. Moreover, with this leadership style, the leader deliberates on the activity and the line of thinking to subordinates. The leadership also creates an environment where employees are then able to raise pertinent issues and shed light on them. At that point, communication is on a two-way basis.

Nonetheless, the people-oriented leader puts more emphasis managing people with less emphasis on activities. The people oriented leaders wait for the response and feedback from the entire team as opposed to providing responsibilities associated with accomplishing the activity. Decision making is done in consultation with team members with respect to proposals and ideas advanced by the group because teams are seen as an asset. As such, teams are empowered by way of delegating responsibilities and adopting their decisions (Clegg, Kornberger and Pitsis 2012, p. 21).

Experts have comprehensively the association between leadership practices and interpersonal communication approaches. They have demonstrated that the main tenets of employee performance are determined by good management of communication and effective leadership practices (Kotler 2000, p. 189). Nevertheless, effective communication is achieved by democratic leaderships that depend on structures and programs. Democratic leaders believe that to be recognized by followers it is necessary to provide them warm and being concerned.

Managing communication in the post-bureaucratic era

Leadership plays an important role in developing a shared vision and mission. Therefore, effective leadership practices greatly focus on communicating the shared vision and mission to the workers. The development the organizational structure relies on a two-way communication, commitment and trust may be attained by democratic leaders. Democratic leaders emphasize on listening to the views of workers while engaging them in decision making. Academic literature links charismatic and transformation leadership approaches to effective communication that focuses on specialist skills of discourse as well as content (Men 2014, p. 266). Moreover, charismatic leadership practices have been associated with the inspirational approach of oratory, which has considerably influenced followers. Evidence has demonstrated that there is a strong correlation between training conveyed by charismatic leaders on followers’ performance and attitude (Browning 2007, p. 184). The conventional leadership theories investigated behavioral elements of leaders. Nonetheless, in modern times, leadership practices have emerged and contributed towards effective communication and management of people. This means democratic leadership style involves effective use of dialogues in communication. In addition, democratic leadership style is very useful when it comes to change management. However, a number of workers tend to oppose the issue of change or even frustrate the process. This is the main challenge facing many corporate entities. Much as democratic leadership practice concentrates on negotiations and discussions, it can change the attitude of workers to embrace change in post-bureaucratic era. For that reason, effective leadership practices can lead to an effective transition to change in a given organization. Democratic leadership practices also guarantee that organizational objectives and requirements are met and simultaneously manage communication to empower workers to perform their duties in an effective way. However, the leader has to ensure there is a balance to make sure that communication assists in realizing objectives instead of reducing workforce performance (Browning 2007, p. 185).

In a post-bureaucratic era, leadership practices in a democratic environment foster most favorable engagement using efficient communication that involves the expression of tacit ideas and concepts in a discussion whilst converting conversations into experiments and practically implement these concepts. A good leader articulates ideas and vision and converts them in practice. Democratic leadership practices involve brainstorming, inquisition, and discussion session to successfully execute open channels of communication. Besides these practices are useful in making sure that there is a two-way communication that encourages followers to take part in the discussion. As a matter of fact, the two-way communication assists a leader to bring to light communication gaps, thus facilitate the realization of targets goals and objectives (Watson 1995, p. 11). Another leadership practice is servant leadership. This leader listens to followers propositions. Even though servant leaders attempt to determine the willingness of a team and clarify their intentions, they help the engaging listening as a component of communication (Dierendonck 2011, p. 1229). As such, in the post-bureaucratic era, leadership practices in servant leadership setting promotes reflective thinking and listening as fundamental components of informed decision making. While contemporary organizations have changed, servant leadership practices demonstrate work procedures for the successful participation of followers. The servant leadership style is appropriate in health care organizations and non-governmental entities where a leader attempts to achieve balance among different stakeholders through efficient management of communication (Dierendonck 2011, p. 1231).

Conclusion

In the post-bureaucratic period, Communication is an important tenet of good leadership. Good leadership practices focus on developing open channels of communication while ensuring that communication flows from top to low levels. Establishing open, two-way and interpersonal communication in a modern company is important when it comes to helping workers realize procedures and policies needed to realize organizational goals (Josserand, Teo and Clegg 2006, p. 60). Communication is also necessary for all phases of the firm such as formulation and execution of policy, change practices and organizational transition. In post-bureaucratic time, companies concentrate on communication to realize their objectives. The widely used leadership styles in the modern era include servant and democratic leadership. Nonetheless, leadership practices in charismatic leadership setting can be good in the post-bureaucratic period, in terms of motivating employees using excellent oration and communication skills.

Reflective Response

Argument: Based on the feedback, I need to ensure that my arguments are interconnected and seamless from one element to another. I also need to approach issues from a critical angle rather than presenting a description of leadership practices. In the second assignment, I was more analytical and also keen when it comes to ensuring that points revolved around leadership practice to manage communication in the post-bureaucratic period.

Organization and Structure: In the first assignment, the organization and structure of arguments were never articulate. I was simply jumping from one point to another. In addition, the assignment lacked headlines, an issue that made it hard to follow through. Therefore, in the second assignment, I structured the easy in an essay way to follow.

Critique: When it comes to the critique section, I did not score a high mark as I simply did a description of sorts. In the second assignment, I did my best to move away from this by being more analytical.

Understanding and Content: In this section, I scored high marks; I believe I have a good understanding of the readings as well as lectures. As such, in essay 2 I focused the arguments on the lecture and readings.

Academic English: In the first assignment, some sentences were not only long but also wobbly. This made it complex to follow through and understand with ease. However, in the second assignment, I was spot-on without complicating sentences.

References: In the first assignment, I was not well conversant with referencing style because of the inconsistency in the citation style. At one point, I would use the Harvard citation style, on the other, I would apply the APA citation method. Moreover, I failed to ensure that all citations should feature in the reference section. This disorientation was against the writing standards. Nevertheless, I was meticulous is the second essay. I did a background check on the various writing styles and ensured that my paper was written based on the Harvard referencing style.

Formatting and presentation: In the first essay, formatting was a big challenge I failed to adhere to the formatting guidelines. This is the reason I earned a low mark in this section. In the second essay, I went a notch higher to read and understand as required by the rubric. I was then able to follow the guidelines to the latter.

References

Browning, B, W. 2007. Leadership in Desperate Times:An Analysis of Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyagethrough the Lens of Leadership Theory. Advances in Developing Human Resources Vol. 9, No. 2 May 2007 183–198 DOI: 10.1177/1523422306298858

Clegg, S., Kornberger, M. & Pitsis, T. (2012). Managing & organizations: an introduction to theory and practice. London: Sage Publications.

Dierendonck, D. (2011). Servant leadership: a review and synthesis. Journal of Management, 37(4), 1228 – 1261.

Fayol, A., Emerson, G., Taylor, F. and Ford, H., 2002. Management–is science and art. Moscow: Unity.

Josserand, E., Teo, S. & Clegg, S. (2006). From bureaucratic to post-bureaucratic: the difficulties of transition. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 19(1), 54 – 64.

Kotler, P. (2000). Marketing management millenium edition. Marketing Management, 23(6), 188-193.

Men, L.R. (2014). Strategic internal communication: transformational leadership, communication channels, and employee satisfaction. Management Communication Quarterly, 28(2), 264-284.

Watson, T, J. 1995. Rhetoric, Discourse and Argument in Organizational Sense Making: A Reflexive Tale. Organization studies