Managerial Communication INterview Paper

Managerial Communication
University of Phoenix
COM/350 Organizational Communications
Vandye Forrester
February 18, 2009 Managerial Communication Interview Paper Communication is best described as the imparting or interchanging of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing or signs. (Dictionary.com). Communication is the corner stone of today’s organization. Communication has made many companies successful and poor communication has destroyed many organizations. The purpose of this paper is to describe the common breakdown of communication within an organization. I will discuss the internal process breakdowns, decision making breakdowns and breakdown in communication among the organizations leadership team.

Communication Breakdowns in Internal Politics
Internal Politics

Organizations are successful for different reasons but organizations that suffer do to some sort of dysfunction in the experience of the Director I interviewed was due to poor organizational performance is not the lack of business knowledge, but rather internal politics.

Mark Lipe states in his online blog that organizations can develop bad internal politics and unproductive work habits which will eventually lead to declining performance. My research agrees with this statement, although larger organizations are more susceptible to the breakdown of communication, the development of clicks and misalignments smaller organizations suffer from the same problem. When management tends to focus so much on one and has no time to manage the internal organization challenges, dysfunction creeps in and takes hold (M. Lipe 2008).

Christian Kuhn, the Director of Integrated Marketing for a well known organization has to deal with a great deal of internal politics in supervising his team. Although Christian sees himself as a fair and judicious supervisor who shares everything with his team, he has at some point been told to reframe from including his staff in all the politics that help make up the organization. An example of this is his group was targeted for reorganization, Christian was told that he could not disclose the information given to him about how the reorganization was going to happen and who exactly it was going to affect. Christian stated that this part of the organization internal politics truly does not set well with him because he prides himself to be an honest and trusting person. Although Christian states that he did what was asked of him by not sharing with his staff other departments did not do the same and this of course, caused a great deal of problems within the organization. Quite frankly as Christian states “my staff was unnerved because I had not disclosed this information to them” and this type of breakdown in communication can truly bring the morale down within an organization and a team.

Resolving the breakdown of Internal Politics

Resolving the communication can be done if everyone involved can admit that there is truly a problem. In this situation Christian should have been open with his staff, I say this because every organization has a rumor mill, and even if Christian would have disclosed some of the information to his team, the part that was not disclosed would have come up in another conversation with someone else. Beth Urlrich (2007) states that when managers have open conversations with their team the likely hood of hurt feelings and low morale tends to vanish. Open conversation whether good or bad is required especially in situations where people’s livelihoods are being threatened. Christian stated that had he went against the internal politics and shared what he knew with his staff he would have eliminated months of hurt and betrayed feelings from his staff.

Communication breakdowns in Decision Making
Decision Making Decision making within an organization requires the help of many people with different titles and experience. Christian states that when it comes to decision making within the organization, the organization states that everyone involved in a certain project has a equal part in the decision making process. This of course, is not true; everyone being equal is just a myth. Most people involved in the decision making process is looking for an advantage. Using things like titles, their tenure, age and even economic status that allow them to feel inferior or superior to everyone involved in the decision making process. The lack of equality robs a group of the diversity that exists among people and this confusion ultimately breaks down the communication process when one or more persons are trying to make a decision. In interviewing Christian and speaking with him about this situation it appeared to me that the breakdown in communication within the teams that he has been apart and the organization is that everyone wants to be an individual instead of working as a team. Decision making becomes difficult when everyone on the team has his or her own personal agenda. The decision making process suffers less when everyone on the team takes time to listen to everything that is being presented and respect the thoughts and ideas of others. Christian gave a very good example he stated dealing with the employees and the Leadership team within the organization was much like dealing with his children. Everyone wants to be correct, no one wants to share and they all want all the attention to be on them. Dealing with these people he states is much different from his children, he stated that the breakdown in communication often comes from everyone wanting so badly to be the savior of the situation that they fail to listen. Listening is the biggest factor in communication. Christian stated that although everyone has the organizations best interest in hand they all want to see things done their way and they are not willing to give a little in how things are done they want all or nothing and it saddens him to watch this organization run this way because as Christian state “we lose a lot of valuable time helping others when we as an organization can’t seem to adequately communicate with one another in order to produce work that will greatly affect others.”

Interviewing Christian was a joy, I learned a great deal about the organizations policies and I was able to view the organization through the eyes of one of the Leadership Team members and in doing so I learned that communication is the foundation of our organization and without proper use it can cause a great deal of internal commotion within an organization.

References
Dictionary.com. (2008). Communication. Dictionary.com. Retrieved February 15, 2009 from www.dictionary.com.

Lipe, M. (2008). Internal Politics and the Political Power Plays. HRGuru. Retrieved February 15, 2009 from www.hrguru.com/topics/791-internal-politics-and-the-political-power-plays/posts

Ulrich. B. (2007). Improving Communications Yields Positive results. Nephrology Nursing Journal, (1), 265. Retrieved February 15, 2009, from Gale Group database.