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Effective Executive Journal

The Effectiveness of Leaders in Communicating Organizational Values

Article Details

Pub. Date	: Dec, 2020
Product Name	: Effective Executive
Product Type	: Coaching and Mentoring
Product Code	: EECM31220
Author Name	: Nkululeko Madonko and Kurt A April
Availability	: YES
Subject/Domain	: Management
Download Format	: PDF Format
No. of Pages	: 17

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Abstract

Organizations are increasingly being required to transform their cultures. Leaders are regularly confronted by the need to communicate and inculcate a core set of values and associated behaviors that an organization and its executive/senior leaders aspire to. However, leaders may lack the communicative competence, tools and/or frameworks to effectively communicate an organization's core values, which results in employees not experiencing a transformed culture, in which they feel involved, respected and connected-where the richness of ideas, backgrounds, perspectives and behaviors are not fully leveraged to create business value. The primary aim of this research was to assess the effectiveness of leaders in communicating organizational values. The research philosophy that was adopted was one of ontology, encapsulated in the theoretical perspective of epistemological interpretivism. The methodology employed was a phenomenological inductive approach. The outcome of the analysis of the data was a set of five themes and six thought groupings that portrayed an intricate understanding of communication, ultimately yielding a two-winged communications model.

Description

The aim of this research was to deepen the understanding of the effectiveness of leaders in communicating values in an organization as a leadership practice. CEOs and other senior executives in a majority of organizations regularly list effective communication skills among the most critical qualities necessary for organizational success, and claim to spend between 80-90% of their time communicating every day. Studies on relationships between leaders and followers outline that communication is linked to member commitment and overall organizational productivity, and research on leaders' conversations and dialog depict how interactions contribute to shape the organizational culture (Fairhurst, 2007). Yet there is limited discussion and practical frameworks on how leaders' communicative competences could be developed to effectively communicate values. This research sought to identify and formulate such a framework through researching the main question: How effective are leaders in communicating organizational values? A number of subsidiary, focused questions were also initially identified to help unpack the above main research question. What communicative behaviors are critical to leaders effectively communicating values? To what extent does the ability of a leader to internalize a set of values impact their communication of those values?