Communication And Perceived Leadership

Abstract

Organizational change, as in  merger, is a situation  where  uncertainty is high. Employees  worried about  many things changes will affect them, especially regarding job security. In an educational institution that went through merger recently, 95 employees  mention that communication (29,55%)  is one of  the problems that  hinders the organization  from  effective  functioning.  This  includes  lack  of:  trust,  coordination,  open  communication,  role and job descriptions as well as policies clarity. Communication is an important  factor in effective  leadership especially during organizational change. One of the  qualities  of  an  effective  leader  is  the  ability  of  establishing  good  communication  with  the  environment, including  the  employees  or  people  within  the  organization.  Leader’s  success  depends  on  the  success  of  their subordinates  in  executing  the  job,  thus  the  leaders  need  to  establish  effective  communication  with  their subordinates. Transformational leadership is identified as the effective type of leadership in context of change. Survey  showed  that  78  structural  position  employees,  perceived  their  immediate  supervisor  in  the transformational  leadership  dimensions  as  follows:  challenging  the  process  (mean  19.69),  inspiring  shared vision (mean 20.96), enabling others to acts (mean 21.73), modeling the way (mean 20.3), encouraging the heart (mean 20.30). The survey told us that leaders, represented by immediate supervisor, need to communicate their leadership behavior more effectively to their subordinates. Factors perceived as hindrance and less effective perceived leadership behavior might be related to how daily communication is conducted in this organization: necessary information regarding any changes only disseminate after the emergence of triggering event (s), using policies or principles that need to be adhere by all the members of  organizations  when  confronted  with  rumors/conflicts,  only  certain  parties  have  the  information  which  are important  to  all  employees.  Thus  more  appropriate  communication  strategy  should  be  considered  to  improve more effective communication among leader (s) and employees. 

Keywords: merger, communication, perceived leadership, lecturers