Fundamentals of Organizational Communication Leadership and Management Communication Chapter Seven

Fundamentals of Organizational Communication

Leadership and Management Communication

Chapter Seven

The Importance of Leadership and Management Communication

• Leaders help guide individuals, groups, and entire organizations in establishing goals and sustaining action to support goals.

• Managers fulfill specific organizationally assigned roles designed to direct and evaluate the work of others.


• Leadership takes place through communication.

• Leadership - process for guiding individuals, groups, and entire organizations in establishing goals and sustaining action to support goals.


• People can be assigned the position of leader, but leadership occurs not from the assignment itself but through communication behaviors in interactions with others.


• Management - responsibility, specifically assigned by the organization, to direct and evaluate the work of others.

• Whether resulting in routine compliance or a desire for excellence, managerial influence occurs through human communication.


• Leadership and management communication are strongly related to both trust in individuals within the organization and overall organizational trust.

• Leadership becomes the vision of the organization that directs and redirects all organizational activity.


• Leadership and management communication is part of the sense-making activities of the organization. It helps members develop priorities and determine what is needed by the organization. It influences decision making, transmits communication rules, and contributes to the shared realities that become the organization’s culture.

Theories of Leadership and Management

• Trait approach - theory of leadership that assumed that leaders possessed innate traits that made them effective; commonly referred to as the “great man” theory.

• This approach has failed to define clearly a stable set of characteristics associated with effective leadership.

Trait Approach

• Leaders more than others are higher in intelligence, scholarship, responsibility, participation, and socioeconomic status.

• When we study group leaders who emerge on their own rather than being appointed or elected, we find relatively low communication apprehension and a willingness to participate verbally in group activities.

Trait Approach

• Despite the importance of intelligence, communication ability, and situational adaptation, the approach of identifying traits has generally failed to explain effective leadership. This approach simply does not provide a comprehensive explanation of how leaders interact with followers and meet the needs of specific circumstances.


• Style approach - theories which attempt to identify a range of general approaches leaders use to achieve goals. The approaches are thought to be based on the leader’s assumptions about what motivates people to accomplish goals.

Style Approach

• Autocratic - style of leader or manager who makes decisions with little influence from others.

• Democratic - style of leader or manager who involves followers in decision making.

Style Approach

• Laissez-faire - style of leader or manager who behaves as a nonleader. Individuals and groups are expected to make their own decisions based on a “hands off” approach from the leader.

Style Approach

• Robert Tannenbaum and Warren Schmidt (1958) have expanded the concept of the autocratic-to-democratic continuum by describing it in terms of the use of authority by the leader and the area of freedom for subordinates.

Style Approach

• The Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid® suggests that leadership styles or approaches are based on two central dimensions: concern for relationships with people and concern for task production.

Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid®

• Impoverished management - leadership style characterized by a low concern for interpersonal relationships and task accomplishment.


• Middle-of-the-road management - style of leader who balances task and people concerns; commonly referred to as compromise management or leadership.


• Country-club management - style of leader or manager who emphasizes interpersonal relationships at the expense of goal achievement.


• Task management - style of leader or manager who is concerned with goals or task achievement while exhibiting little concern for personal relationships; commonly referred to as autocratic leadership.


• Team management - team leadership or management is the theoretical ideal. Team leaders exhibit high concern for both task and interpersonal relationships by emphasizing goal accomplishment while supporting people.


• Situational approaches - leadership theories that explore how leaders interact with followers and the requirements of a particular environment.

Situational Approach

• Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership theory postulated that effectiveness of a particular leader was related to the leader’s selection of behavior appropriate to the maturity level of the follower group.

• Four general style of situational leadership: telling, selling, participating, and delegating.

Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership

• Telling: high task and low relationship is best used with immature followers.

• Selling: high task and higher relationship emphasis with the leader attempting to convince followers.

Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership

• Participating: low task and high relationship emphases to stimulate creativity in mature followers.

• Delegating: low task and low relationship emphases based on high follower maturity. Leader passes leadership to the group.


• Transformational approaches - leadership theories that explore how leaders motivate followers by personal example, through appeals to higher level needs, and by the establishment of vision.

Transformational Approaches

• Empowerment - process of giving employees the maximum amount of power to do a job as they see fit; includes both responsibility and accountability for work performed.

Transformational Approaches

• Dispersed leadership - leadership responsibilities broadly distributed throughout the organization.

• SuperLeadership - the process of leading others to lead themselves.

Key Terms

• Power bases - influence an individual has over another as a result of dependency on the powerful person. Power bases are commonly identified as legitimate, reward, coercive, referent, expert, and connection.

Key Terms

• Legitimate power - power emerging from the positions, titles, or roles people occupy.

• Reward power - power based on the leader’s control and distribution of tangible and intangible resources.

• Coercive power - power based on the sanctions or punishments within the control of the leader.

Key Terms

• Referent power - power based on others identifying with the leader.

• Expert/information power - power based on information the leader knows as a result of organizational interaction or areas of technical specialty.

Key Terms

• Connection power - power resulting from who the leader knows and the support he or she has from others in the organization.

Key Terms

• Principled leadership - leadership that provides a consistent message, has a perspective for unleashing talent, practices ego suppression, and creates leaders.

Fundamentals of Organizational Communication

Leadership and Management Communication

Chapter Seven

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Fundamentals of Organizational Communication Leadership and Management Communication Chapter Seven