Communication Skills in Leadership

In the corporate world communication and leadership are two attributes that are necessary to achieve business success. It is important to always have the lines of communication open between the employees and the managerial staff. The managers of an organization are responsible for the performance of the entire staff. It is imperative for managers to have good leadership skills. Leadership can be defined as a special case of interpersonal influence that gets an individual or group to do what the leader wants done (Shermerhorn & Hunt & Osborn, 2003). The purpose of this paper is to discuss and analyze communication and leadership in the workplace. The communication process involves interchanging messages between the source and the receiver. The source is the person that sends the information, while the receiver is the person that listens to other person talking. Maintaining good communication between the employees of a company is important because doing so can help a firm improve its productivity. Managers that maintain good communication are able to gain the trust of the employees. For communication to be effective in the workplace it must follow the proper communication channels. The communication channels are the pathways used to transmit information. Some examples of communication channels are emails, telephone, cellular phones, written letters, memos, and face to face meetings. A good mechanism that often enhances the communication process is feedback. Feedback is a reaction or response to something another person has done or said (Dictionary, 2012). A popular method of feedback that is often used in the corporate world is 360-degree feedback. This method forces different people including peers and supervisors to evaluate the performance of an employee. Communication can be either verbal or non-verbal. Talking to another person is a form of verbal communication. Three examples of non-verbal communication are body gestures, facial expressions, and eye

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