Background
Communication skills are generally regarded as some of the most valuable competencies for a leader. They help the leader persuade their followers to align with their vision and follow their directions toward the achievement of organizational goals. The successful superior’s ability to inspire and motivate their workers depends on them effectively conveying their ideas and emotions to others. They are also invaluable toward understanding the needs of subordinates and listening to their feedback, both positive and negative. A leader needs to use their followers’ knowledge and creativity to the fullest and acknowledge their mistakes instead of relying only on themselves to drive operations. The ability to perform the actions described above requires a number of different competencies from the individual. The purpose of this paper is to describe them in additional detail and explain how one may acquire and use them in practice.
Role of Communications in Leadership
Leaders are expected to regularly interact with other people, both their followers and equals or superiors. With both, they will need to both communicate information and receive it in a variety of settings. Examples of tasks in which different types of communication are needed are team meetings, project presentations, and communications over electronic messaging tools, both individual and group-based. Excellence in these types of situations improves the leaders and the organization’s competitiveness while also enhancing productivity (Okoro, Washington, & Thomas, 2017), especially in unfamiliar settings such as the mass shift to remote work during COVID-19 lockdowns. The specific benefits have been confirmed and elaborated upon numerous times in studies throughout the years. Conversely, the lack of necessary communication skills can both hurt one’s job prospects and negatively affect the organization as a whole.
References
Okoro, E., Washington, M. C., & Thomas, O. (2017). The impact of interpersonal communication skills on organizational effectiveness and social self-efficacy: A synthesis. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 4(3), 28-32.