Strengths and Weaknesses of the Communications Process Between Employee and Manager

A Journal on Communication

Chadd R. Castrilli

Southern New Hampshire University

Abstract

This paper will analyze and address the importance of effective communication from a leader to an employee. Specifically, it will identify the strengths and weaknesses of the communications process between manager and employee. Secondly, this paper will examine the impact of ineffective communication by company leaders and then determine what impact that ineffective communication may have on the entire organization. Finally, this paper will provide recommendations for best practices.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Communications Process Between Employee and Manager

Strengths

One of the greatest strengths of the communications process between employee and manager is the fact that they have an opportunity to form a deep and meaning bond. This direct communication mitigates misinterpretation or improper decoding in the communications processes. “The processing of messages in the form of encoding and decoding occurs continuously. One goal of interpersonal communication is to arrive at shared meaning – a situation in which people involved in interpersonal communication attain the same understanding about ide, thoughts, and feelings” (Cardon, 2018, p. 30). Employees and Managers have an opportunity to form many shared meanings.

Weaknesses

One of the greatest weaknesses of the communications process between employee and manager is non-verbal communication. “By various estimates, nonverbal communication accounts for 60-80 percent of meaning in various face-to-face business situations, including in conversations, meetings, and negotiations” (Cardon, 2018, p.47). Considering the amount of communication that takes place in the non-verbal sphere, its clear to see that challenges this presents to the communications process between employee and manager when we learn that, “most people are not consistently effective at decoding the nonverbal signals of others. In other words, nonverbal signals are always present and important in face-to-face communications, but few people can reliably interpret them” (Cardon, 2018, 47).

Impact of Ineffective Communications

Company Leaders to Subordinates

Ineffective communication is a serious challenge for a lot of organizations. It renders good ideas useless and innovations pointless. One of the impacts of ineffective communication by company leaders to subordinates is that the subordinates are put in a position where they are receiving conflicting information about goals, budgets, direction of the company, etc. The reason being, “leaders have a hard time making direct contact with their frontline employees, for example. Those serving as bridges between higher-ups and nonsupervisory employees, the middle managers, tend to face the most communication trouble, having to navigate different goals and desires from above and below” (Tishma, 2019).

Resulting Impact on Overall Company Goals and Strategies

In chronological order, there will be several negative side-effects from ineffective communication. First, there will be arguments and other relational breakdowns. When teammates are on different pages, especially when managers are on different pages, there tends to be breakdowns of large magnitudes. Secondly, this will cause low morale and high turn-over. People do not want to work for a company whose leadership appear to be disseminating contradictory information. While these two impacts are manifesting, the backlog of dissatisfied clients will start to surface. This will further increase the arguments and other relational breakdowns and will also increase the low moral and high turnover resulting in a run-away phenomenon.