Responses

As an employee, effective leadership communications when addressing an internal audience needs to be clear, concise, and relevant. This eliminates misunderstandings and builds trust through communicating proper and transparent information (CLIMB Professional Development and Training, 2019). Effective leadership communication also provides organizational direction through identifying expectations, responsibilities and objectives. (CLIMB Professional Development and Training, 2019).  This helps the different teams understand their part in the achievement of organizational goals. 

References

Abudi Consulting Group. (2016, August 16). Emotional Intelligence and Effective Communication Skills: Abudi Consulting Group, LLC. https://www.abudiconsulting.com/emotional-intelligence-and-effective-communication-skills/.

Cardon, P. W. (2021). Business communication: developing leaders for a networked world.

McGraw-Hill Education.

CLIMB Professional Development and Training. (2019, July 9). The 7 Benefits of Effective Communication in Personal and Professional Settings. https://climb.pcc.edu/blog/the-7-benefits-of-effective-communication-in-personal-and-professional-settings.

Leanne Discussion:

My role as an admission counselor is very consistent and I often times feel like I am on autopilot. In our role, it is important to keep us motivated and looking forward to each day and making a difference. We speak to all kinds of students every day, so our personal confidence and rapport building needs to be on top, which is sometimes hard to do. I have had the same manager for almost 3 years, and him and I have both grown as leaders, and of course butted heads as well!

One example I can think of where he has made a positive difference when it came time to guidance and improving was getting me out of my comfort zone. I was feeling a little run down with the continued repetitiveness of my daily routine. Someone who likes comfort and has a hard time with change embraced this because my production and numbers were good, but the motivation and growth was lacking. He helped me tap into my self-management and realize I was capable of more. There are so many leadership and development opportunities within the university outside of your daily role, so he encouraged me to become involved in these to spice up my workday and give me some self-awareness and self-motivation. It was somewhat of a difficult conversation for me to listen to because essentially I was doing my job the right way and nothing was wrong with my work performance, it was just that I needed a little boost to continue the success. My boss helped me with reassigning and refitting me with different aspects of the organization that would enhance my skill set. Performance goals and milestones helped hold myself accountable and see a tangible difference in my growth and leadership. People are not machines, and if that was the case, then him and I would not be having this discussion about performance, since I was technically doing my job just fine. This conversation gave me the boost I needed to tap into my personal leadership and skillset. By investing myself into other leadership opportunities, it gave me more of a chance to adapt to different environments and plan. In order for me to embrace this change, I needed to be motivated to feel that this would make a difference in myself and for others, and play a positive role in my growth (Ian McDonald, Catherine Burke, & Karl Stewart. 2006).

A leadership moment that I think we were all affected by was COVID. All of our staff moved to fully remote learning in March, and the future was and still is unclear on what the next steps will be. There were a lot of challenging moments between myself, my leader, and the team as a whole when it came to teamwork, getting on the same page, and communication. There was a big gap in lack of knowledge, recognition, and clarity. Because I thrive best when I am alone and left to my own devices, my production improved with remote work because I was limited to minor distractions and realized how many questions and problems I could solve on my own without relying on help. Because there was no way to really predict our environment or how to manage others and ourselves, it took a long time for the team to find their niche. My boss was consistently micromanaging because of the lack of personal outreach he was able to provide, and it was causing a huge gap in growth and professional development. The values of the team and the organization needed to be reevaluated in order to be successfully managed. The culture needed to be shifted to support remote learning and keep the focus on our students, while also making our mental health a priority. Being a mentor, it was also really hard for me to train and assist new hires from a virtual standpoint. It was important for us to be resilient to change and factor in the 6 values into our adapted workspace (Ian McDonald, Catherine Burke, & Karl Stewart. 2006).

Effective communication understands emotional intelligence, interpersonal relationships, realizing we are human beings and not machines, and remembering that although we might all have a common goal and have a common daily task, we might need to be managed differently. Self-awareness and self-management can also be used to balance out the emotions vs. the facts that you are trying to portray and delegate. Relationship management and time management gave us the opportunity to see what was and what wasn’t working in regards to communication. It took a lot of trial and error but eventually myself, my leader, and the overall team was able to come to an agreement about successful communication and teamwork (Cardon, P. W. 2021).

References:

Cardon, P. W. (2021). Chapter 1 : Establishing Credibility. In Business communication: Developing leaders for a networked world. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.