Leadership and Communication Management

Leadership and Communication Management We all know how the computer system works: Without the talented operator or appropriate software, even if it is equipped with the most advanced hardware, the computer itself will not achieve any results. If we compare the computer system as Enterprise, leadership is the operator and communication management is one of the most efficient software. When these two important elements combine in a cohesive manner, the Enterprise should expect the best performance. R Inc. is a leading third party logistics company. It offers freight transportation logistics, outsource solutions, produce sourcing, and information services among many other services. As an employee with five years of service, I feel fortune enough to work for a company with 100 years of history that continually shows strong growth. As a non-assets company, a majority of the business is executed through communication, and it exists in every aspect of R culture. Any individual within the company will spend a majority of their day communicating with customers, vendors, carriers, and co-workers, so Communication management definitely plays a critical role within R company. In R, branches are small independent organizations under the corporate enterprise, and each branch has its own communication system. Within the different leaderships, the style of communication varies. With my experience of having had three different branch managers in five years, I realize that leadership plays a critical role with communication management for the whole enterprise, and I would like to explore it more with my findings. Firstly, whether or not the leadership uses communication management to link employees to the company strategy could make a huge difference with the future of the enterprise. A majority of the employees will enjoy making achievements and receiving recognitions from their hard work. As a leader, if you do not show employees the company’s vision, explain the contexts, and share the strategy, it will not be easy for employees to be self-motivated and to opt into the company’s strategy. They could get lost in the routine and sometimes mundane nature of their work and not put forth their best efforts. How many times have you heard people say: â€Å"I just do the work and go home? † If you are the leader, don’t you want to make a difference for both the company and people you serve so that each is getting the best out of the ther? I can honestly say that I was one of those who got lost after working for 3 years without any managed communication from leadership. One day, I woke up and decided I needed to make a change. I wanted to learn something new, and I knew I didn’t feel fulfilled with the same old. I chose to switch to a new branch. The new manager managed well the communication and linked my career path with the company strategy. I know I trust this leader as much as he trusts me, and I do perform better with a vision. I found management does exist in the enterprise; it isn’t a legend found only in textbooks. This Manager introduced S. M. A. R. T goals to create the link between company goals and the employees. â€Å"S. M. A. R. T† means specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. With the smart goal, employees could work toward their own goal which is also linked to company strategy. We confidently know that we will be rewarded through hard work with job satisfaction, bonuses, raises, improved benefits, higher positions, and employee recognition. We also know that we will have all the support needed to get there. What’s the difference? Employees are linked to the company strategy sharing the mutual dream. Who makes the difference? The Leadership! How can they make the difference? Use the proper communication management. Secondly, communication management from leadership can influence employees on how they make their decisions which will affect the business. Employees would judge and select the most important information from leadership to make their decisions, and these decisions could affect the business in direct or indirect ways later. With poor communication management, leaders could deliver improper information which will impact negatively on employee decisions. Undoubtedly, as a return, the decision could negatively affect the business. To connect employee’s decision tightly toward company’s strategy, it requires leadership to manage the communication system in the right manner. Here is one negative example that could prove my point: In my old branch, information wasn’t shared well on a regular basis. Sometimes, we were given two or three conflicting instructions from different team leads on the same task. Because the communication from leadership wasn’t well managed, we would decide individually on what we thought we were told to do or what we thought that was the easiest and best way to do. Will our decisions fit the company’s strategy or benefit the best? We did not know, we were not empowered with the vision, and we could not tell whether the decision we just made was right for the company. If leadership had managed the communication, employees could have followed the vision and made the proper decision for the company. When all of these employees’ decisions are added together, it will decide the future of the company. With or without communication management from leadership to help those decisions be determined will make a big difference in the company’s future. Thirdly, Leadership has the greatest influence inside the company, and with well managed communication, it would deliver the best results for the company. I learned the sentence â€Å"Monkey does as Monkey sees† from our 6 year old daughter. People all have the strong capability of imitation and it is very easy to follow the trend. Inside Enterprise, employees look up to the leadership, and any action from the leadership is actually a communication to employees. How does the leader use their time? How does the leader reward the employee? All of their actions will be followed closely by employees. You will feel like going to work early when you see your leader go to office at 7am every morning and work in the action area; but you won’t feel like going at all if your leader comes to office no earlier than 9:30 am and always being surrounded by his/her favorite subordinate in the locked office? You would like to make your best efforts at work when you know your leader always rewards the hard workers, but you might not feel like contributing when the reward only belongs to the ones who would surround him/ her in the locked office. I have experience with both kinds of leaders. Their style of the communication management affected business loudly in different directions. As leadership, you have to put forth efforts to manage the communication, because leadership will influence employees through their communications. To impact an employee in good or bad way, depends on how the leadership designs the communication management. Admittedly, some branches in R do not have the best designed communication management so far, some leaders have started adopting this software for their own use to optimize the system and management. Also, at the corporate level, R has a well-designed company structure to ensure the success of the business; it has built solid policies, procedures, and created a great working environment, and it ensures the platform for communication management ready for all branches. I believe that communication management will be very well established at R through leadership efforts soon, and with its steady growth, it should continue to be one of their building blocks for success.