Leadership has been the area of interest in the field of organization theory. In modern business, investors focus on understanding the manner in which business leaders affect the performance of leaders and the way in which their relationship to achieving the set objectives or goals. As a result, leadership style is one of the essential factors which affect employees’ attitude from different dimensions which also affect the feeling and thoughts of the workers that is reflected through their performance. Communication competency serves as one of the essential factors that lead the main pillars that determine the individual’s ability to have a positive influence on the employees. From this view, leadership style and its impact could be seen as fundamental aspects that determine underlying dynamics that determine the level of job satisfaction. Consequently, it is crucial to analyze the various leadership styles and assesses their impacts on organizational communication.
Literature Review
The existing literature on the relationship between leadership styles and their impacts on communication in an organization focuses on understanding the various types of leadership and the effects on the employee’s performance. According to Coleman et al. (2000), coercive, democratic, authoritative, and autocratic leadership styles are mostly applied by leaders in an organization. In each case, there is an identification of the emotional response that each type of leadership exerts on the employees. The distinguishing characteristic of coercive leadership is that the leader focuses on bullying their juniors and do not recognize their contribution in achieving the organizational goals (James, 2005). In this case, there is an indication that a coercive form of leadership diminishes their contributions to incorporate in conducting regulatory activities. Despite the existence of different impacts that coercive leadership usually have on commanding the organizational goals to meet the corporate vision, mission, and value statements, there is an indication that such leadership styles generally have adverse effects on the level of productivity.
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The utmost key to successful leadership is the ability to possess exceptional communication skills (Bass, 1997). If an individual is selected to occupy a particular position in an organization, he or she plays an essential role in mentoring and guiding the employees even those who lack adequate skills to develop the knowledge they can apply in meeting individual, team, and organizational goals. Communicating becomes an essential aspect for employees because the mechanisms they use in motivating leaders determine the extent to which they meet the expected goals. Great leaders are believed to be first communicators, and they have the ability for setting values and missions and always focus on inculcating those values into others (Verba, 2015). Leaders differ in the manner in which they send information to workers, thus, resulting in different leadership skills exercised by managers. Despite the differences, there is little literature that discusses the effects of varying leadership skills on organizational communication.
Pirreglia (2018) also examined the effects of leadership styles on the organization. Based on the results, leadership styles have a significant impact not only on small business but also on the world’s largest corporations around the globe. The effects spread to everyone from the top management to the workers participating in the organization as interns. The central idea of this argument is that communication style creates an organizational culture that influences the company’s performance. Participative leadership commonly recognized as democratic leadership affects the manner in which management and stakeholders make decisions in a business. It appears to be one of the preferred leadership skills in any company. According to Foels et al. (2000), the management guides its groups and also considers their inputs in the decision-making process. In most cases, the democratic leadership style encourages workers to preserve their rights as decision makers, but they emphasize ideas, feedbacks, and suggestions from individual employees. The positive impact of this kind of leadership is that the management usually has more content to make decisions affecting employee’s output and organizational performance.
According to De Cremer (2003), performance is an achievement of doing particular tasks in a group or an organization. From this view, individual job performance is an achievement based on duties that a company prescribes to an individual, and various aspects determine the extent to which a person meets the set objectives. Attitude and mentality, motivation, discipline, and leadership management are some of the essential elements that determine the employees’ commitment to achieving the set targets. In any organization, the management team plays a critical role in communicating the organizational goals to the employees and the manner in which they pass the message remains an essential aspect in determining the employee performance.
According to Jaskyte (2004), job satisfaction is an essential aspect for determining employee performance in a business. As a result, a leadership style is a critical tool for assessing the manner in which workers perform their duties. In situations where an individual feels satisfied by working in a particular organization, there is an expectation that such people feel happy and work to meet the goals of a business. This argument is based on the assumption that happy employees will always feel satisfied and get committed to increasing their productivity. In situations where the management-employee interaction is negative, there is a possibility that employees will reduce their effectiveness in the business thus making it difficult to achieve the set objectives of a company (Ribelin, 2003). Based on this information, the manner in which leaders pass a message to workers depends on the type of leadership style exercised.
Several studies indicate that the communication competency of managers has significant impacts on the level of employees’ satisfaction. From this, the listening and negotiating skills that a leader demonstrates when handling organizational team significantly affects the manner in which people perceive the organization and the commitment they need to show in performing the assigned tasks. According to Rallis & Goldring (2000), managers need to show some level of collaboration with their employees in an attempt of creating two-way channels to create an opportunity for workers to internalize and work towards achieving the set mission and vision of a business.
According to Jurado et al. (2006), leadership is a social process which involves the relationship between an individual and another person or a group of people. For this relationship to persist, there must be an establishment of a communication process. Similarly, communication competence is an essential aspect for leadership meaning that there is a duo relationship between leadership style and communication. These findings indicate that a successful leader will always show higher interactive and collaborative skills that are essential in determining the performance of the team. Differences in communication styles among leaders originate from the fact that people usually demonstrate different leadership skills such as coercive, transformational, interactive, and individual-oriented leadership.
Communication that exists in an organization takes different patterns, and they have a significant impact on the organizational culture (Boies et al., 2015). For instance, communication may flow from the top to the bottom, upward, or diagonal flow. In the case of the verticle communication, there is a blanketing of the masses by the few who act as the managers for the business. This kind of information flow shows that there is always an employee information workload and reduces the effectiveness of workers in performing duties. This kind of communication means that workers are still receivers of guidelines and changes that occur in an organization from executives and they have little to comment or challenge the information. Instead, they have to act by the set rules to meet a particular goal.
On the other hand, upward communication is set in a manner such that information only flows from employees in the lower level to the executives (Coleman, 2000). This kind of connection is required in an organization because it ensures that there is an enhancement in credibility and status among employees. In such situations, employee performance is likely to improve since they become aware of the goals and mechanisms they can apply to achieve the set objectives. Upward communication indicates that leadership encourages people to share ideas, bring suggestions, and determine viable approaches for the ideas. In this case, managers make decisions that match the will of the majority of the workers.
Though the previous studies have investigated the different types of leadership styles and the effects of leadership communication in an organization, little has been studied regarding how leadership style affects the transmission of information from a leader to the employees or from workers to the manager. Most of the previous studies focus on showing the importance of communication to leaders, but they do not present any information related to different leadership styles and the effects they have on the discussion. For example, there have too much emphasized on the importance of communication in leadership, but they do not consider the possible effects that could result from a direction of flow of the information which is determined by the kind of communication styles used in a company (Northouse, 2018). The occupancy of a particular position in an organization requires an individual to make adjustments to fit in that position meaning that becoming a leader compels that person change and exercise some form of communication with fellow workers. Based on this information, the current literature on leadership does not answer the question, how leadership skills affect communication. Therefore, this research focuses on answering the question of whether leadership styles of managers change job satisfaction and if communication competency of leaders affects the type of communication that exists between leaders and subordinates in an organization. In an attempt of answering these questions, the focus will be on understanding the effects of transformation, coercive, interactive, and individual-oriented leadership on job satisfaction and communication in an organization.
Based on the information above, the following research hypothesis will be set forth to be tested in the research.
H1. Leadership style has a statistically significant relationship with the communication satisfaction of employees in the banking industry
H2: leadership has a statistically significant predictive effect on the communication satisfaction of employees in the banking industry
Methodology
Research Objective
In this paper, the aim is to identify the impact of leadership styles on a group of workers to provide a substantial claim on the hypothesis that leadership styles affect communication competency in an organization thus, determining the performance of workers in achieving organizational set objectives.
Participants and Sample Plan
The target population for the study is employees working in the banking industry in the United States. A total population of 60 employees will be collected from three different companies chosen for the survey study. The selection process consisted of different groups of employees such as senior managers, supervisors, and tellers who are directly affected by the leadership style exercised by the management. The selection method of the participant sample is compatible with the proposed research hypothesis because it focuses on employees work in banks in the United States.
Data Collection
Quantitative analysis will be used in conducting a survey among employees in the banking industry in the United States to ascertain the employees’ perception of the leadership styles. Quantitative analysis is applied because the study aims at investigating the employees’ perception of communication associated with each communication style. This method provides an opportunity for measuring variables, investigates the relationship between variables, tests method, and allows for the discovery of relationships with the basis for finding reliability and variability on the research project.
Research Instrument
Transformational leadership inventory will be used as the measuring instrument for identifying the effects of transformational leadership style on communication. The alpha reliability coefficient for the dimensions will be used in determining the relationship between leadership style and the sharing of information. Likert scale will also be used on measuring the information related to the employees’ perception of a particular type of leadership such as coercive and individual leadership on communication. Likert scale is an appropriate research instrument for the study because there is an assumption that the intensity of the experience is linear. Based on the five-point Likert scale, the survey participants will be required to answer survey questions on the perceptions they have on each leadership style on communication.
Communication satisfaction questionnaire will be applied in measuring the changes in the dependent variable communication which depends on the leadership style exercised on the employees. It is the appropriate approach because it measures the direction of flow of information both in a formal and informal setting. The communication questionnaires will provide adequate information related to the level of communication that employees are associated with each type of leadership.
Validity and Reliability of the research instrument
In measuring the consistency of the results obtained from the research instrument, there will be the use of Cronbach’s alpha which identifies the internal consistency of a questionnaire. The process will be applied in assessing the stability of the data collection instruments and the accuracy of the collected data. The reliability coefficient applied for Cronbach's alpha ranges from 0 to 1, but there is no lower limit for the factors. The closer the coefficient is to 1, the higher the level of stability and consistency of the results of the obtained results.
Proposed Data Analysis
The data obtained from the research will be analyzed using the Qualtrics software. The objective of using this approach is to ensure that there is an evaluation of the distribution of leadership styles in the sample and views given by the participants from which the sample was drawn. The descriptive statistics will include the frequency and the percentage of the frequency of all variables. Mean calculations will be used in measuring the central tendencies of the data, and standard deviations will be applied in understanding the average differences and variance from the mean. Multiple regression analysis will be used in measuring the predictive effects of leadership dimensions which are the independent variable on communication satisfactory which is the dependent variable. The results obtained from this analysis will be used in determining the predictive outcomes that employees usually have on a particular form of leadership.
Conclusion
Leadership styles affect the direction in which communication takes place in an organization which may have positive or adverse effects on the performance of workers in an organization. For example, both interactive and transformational kind of leadership encourages workers and managers to promote a decentralized type of communication (Levi, 2015). In this case, there is a two direction of information transmission and workers have an equal chance for bringing new ideas to the organization. Employees feel involved and well informed about the direction in which the business in moving thus having a positive impact on workers’ performance. On the other hand, coercive leadership changes the direction of communication to a one-way process. In this case, employees have to keep on receiving information from the managers, and they contribute little of the decisions made by leaders. In such an organization, communication between leaders and employees becomes the fundamental reason for poor performance in the company. It is, therefore, advisable for organizations to focus on creating democratic, transformational or any other kind of leadership style that encourages a decentralized type of communication as opposed to a situation where they use one-way communication.
References
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