Analyzing Leadership Styles and Communication Barriers

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ACADEMIC AND PROFFESIONAL STUDIES
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Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................................3
Communication..............................................................................................................................4
Ways to improve communication...................................................................................................5
Styles of leadership.......................................................................................................................6
Barriers or problems of communication.........................................................................................7
Good discussion............................................................................................................................9
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................10
Reference List..............................................................................................................................11
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Introduction
Communication is a term that is used to exchange any information among two or more people
that can happen verbally or in written method. This process helps the people to exchange their
knowledge or views in the topic that is being discussed. The other term that will be discussed is
leadership. Leadership is an action that is performed by the leaders who leads a group of
people to perform well within the organisation. The assignment will consist of different
processes of communication and barriers to communications. These will make the use of
communication clear. The assignment will also consist of different leadership styles that are
generally used by different leaders. The assignment will consists of different processes through
which communication can be improved so that there are no barriers. The assignment will
consist of how good discussions can happen. These are some essential elements that will be
found in the report.
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Communication
The term communication stands for the exchange of knowledge or ideas among two or more
people. There are generally two processes that are being used to have proper communication.
These are verbal and written communication. These are essential for the people to understand
so that there is proper communication being held among the people. Communication can also
be formal and informal. Formal communications are such communications that are generally
pre-planned (Adler et al., 2016). These can also be termed as the meetings that are held within
the organisation to discuss some important thing. Informal communication is such a
communication that is generally no pre-planned. This kind of communication can start at any
given point of time. Proper communication sometimes helps people to plan organise, control
and lead people to perform different work. Communication is such a term that is used to
enhance coordination and cooperation among a group of people. A proper process is followed
in the whole system of communication. This must thing is to be followed by the people.
Figure 1: The process of communication
(Source: Barnlund, 2017)
The figure that is presented above shows the whole process of communication. This process
shows that there is a sender at one point and a receiver at the other point. There are different
points at the middle that consists of encoding, channel and decoding. There is always one
sender at any given point of time to have proper communication. There can be more than one
receiver who listens to the message that is sent. The message is send by the sender, which is
then encoded and passed through a channel. This channel can be anything like telephone,
mobiles, emails, messages, and face-to-face talks. The channel then decodes the message,
which is received by the receiver. To have proper communication, it is necessary to provide a
feedback. Without feedback, the communication cannot end and that cannot be called a proper
communication. This is the whole process of communication that is followed by both sender and
the receiver. There are noises that are found in the middle. These noises are termed as the
barriers. These will be learned in the other parts of the assignment.
There is a necessity for the leaders to have proper skills for communication that will be used by
them to commute well with his subordinates. These are essential to have proper and healthy
communication among the leaders and the members of the group. It is necessary for the
leaders and managers to have proper knowledge to communicate with their subordinates so
that they can make the subordinates work in a proper manner.
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Ways to improve communication
Communication is generally termed as a two way process as this includes a sender and a
receiver. This is always to be kept in mind that there can be only one sender who sends
message at a time but there can be more than one receiver who receives the message sent by
the sender. It is the responsibility for both the sender and the receiver to improve the process of
communication. To have proper communication there cannot be any kind of noise in between
that might distract the people. The ideas and knowledge of the people related to the message
needs to be clear in order to have improved communication among them (McQuail and Windahl,
2015). These are essential for the organisations and different people to perform communication
skills properly. The objectives of the message need to be clear and both the parties cannot
move from the objectives that they need to fulfil in one communication. There can be a lot of
other issues like interests, emotions and feelings within the process of communication that is
necessary for the parties to control to have improved ways of communication. These are
beneficial for the parties to have proper skills of communication so that there is improvement in
communication and nothing is affected in the whole process. These are essential for the parties
in conducting proper communication.
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Styles of leadership
Leadership is such an activity that enables the leaders to lead a group of people to perform a
specific work or project (Amanchukwu et al., 2015). There are different types of skills that are
present in different leaders. All the leaders do not lead in the same way; instead they have
different approaches towards their work. There can be one or more leaders within an
organisation who have different styles of leadership. The different leadership styles will be
elucidated below:
Authoritative style
In authoritative style, the leader has the sole power as to how the group will work. He is that
person who will not take any advice from any member of the group (Arnold et al., 2015). Rather
all the decisions will be forced on the members of the group to work on. This kind of leadership
is the worst in the business as the members of the group feels to be worthless, as they do not
have any say in the decisions taken by the leaders.
Participative style
In participative style, the leader takes decisions from the members of the group before doing
anything. The leader gives full priority to the members to share their views about anything that is
being spoken (Anderson and Sun, 2017). These are essential for the organisation as there is
proper communication that takes place within this leadership. In this kind of leadership, the
members of the group are given proper care.
Pragmatic style
In pragmatic style, the leaders motivate their members by inspiring them in a proper manner.
The leaders that follow this leadership style are generally transforming members to enhance
their performance with the help of motivation (Yahaya and Ebrahim, 2016). These help the
members and the organisation to grow at the same time. These are essential for the
organisation.
From the above discussion of different styles of leadership, it can be analysed that the best style
of leadership is the participative style. The reason behind this is that in this form of leadership,
the leaders mainly focus on the groups (Ricard et al., 2017). Any decisions that are taken are
done after discussing with the members of the group. The leaders that follow this style do not
force the members to follow their styles. These are essential and beneficial for the group as they
feel useful and their decisions are given proper honour. These motivate the employees that help
them to perform better for the group, which in turn brings in better performance for the
organisation. This is the reason having leaders with participative style are the best in the
organisation.
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Barriers or problems of communication
There are various barriers that affect proper communication to take place. These are necessary
to be identified in order to stop those from happening. These barriers harm the environment of
good communication. The barriers of communication will be elucidated below:
Office Politics
Office politics is one of the biggest barriers that are present within the organisation that do not
allow employees of the organisation to have healthy conversation with one another. There are
different cases where one employee deliberately complains wrong thing to the management so
that the management does not like the former and he faces lot of problems surviving in the
organisation. These are the worst barriers of communication that affects the organisations the
most.
Psychological Barriers
Psychological barriers generally affect communication when the background, perceptions,
expectations, needs and values of both the parties do not match. These are such kind of
barriers that affect communication among the parties (Gillespy et al., 2017). They do not mix
and moves away from the objectives of the communication. This generally creates confusion
between both the parties affecting the process of healthy communication.
Physical Barriers
Physical barriers are those problems that are caused due to the distance that is present
between the parties (Douglas et al., 2017). The communication in this case needs to be either a
telephonic conversation or by sending letters or mails. In the case of telephonic conversation
there might be issues of network that might affect the healthy flow of communication. In case of
messages or emails, it might so happen that the sender has said something in one perspective
and the reader reads the message in other perspective causing huge problems within the
parties.
Cultural Barriers
Cultural barriers are such problems that are caused when there is no match of culture among
the two parties. These are such barriers that cause huge problems within the organisations.
This kind of barriers affects smooth process of communication.
Language Barriers
Language barriers are such problems that are caused when the language of both the parties do
not match (Baker and Warren, 2015). These are seen in the organisations where people of two
different areas meet and they do not have a common language. This also causes problems in
discussing many things within the organisation.
The barriers that are provided above cause huge problems to have proper communication
within the parties. These are necessary to be removed to have healthy communication among
the parties. The leaders of the organisation need to have proper skills of communication and
they needs to know as to how the barriers of communication can be removed to have proper
communication within the organisation. These are essential for the management of the
organisation as well to have proper skills of communication so that there is no politics of the
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office that affects the working of any employee. There should always be a healthy
communication as well as the parties should not move from the objectives set by the parties for
their communication.
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Good discussion
A good discussion is something where at a time there is one sender and one or more than one
receiver in the whole process. A good discussion should also consist of feedback so that the
process of communication can be complete. A good discussion should needs to be free from
any kind of barriers so that there is a healthy communication that takes place. These are
necessary for the organisations so that there is proper discussion that takes place within the
organisation (Mullins et al., 2016). Sometimes there is a necessity for the management of the
organisation to have a one to one conversation so that they can take proper feedback from the
employees. Office politics should not be encouraged in order to have proper communication
within the employees and the management. Any type of miscommunication that takes place
among any party should be solved face to face without any kind of delay to reduce any kind of
problems within the business.
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Conclusion
The assignment consists of how communication takes place. The assignment also consists of
different barriers of communication that are necessary for the parties to omit. The assignment
also throws light on the different styles of leadership that are present and the best practised way
of leadership is also been discussed. These have helped any organisation to have proper
leaders who have communicated well within the organisation.
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Reference List
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10). Oxford University Press.
Amanchukwu, R.N., Stanley, G.J. and Ololube, N.P., 2015. A review of leadership theories,
principles and styles and their relevance to educational management. Management, 5(1), pp.6-
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Anderson, M.H. and Sun, P.Y., 2017. Reviewing leadership styles: Overlaps and the need for a
new ‘full‐range’theory. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19(1), pp.76-96.
Arnold, K.A., Connelly, C.E., Walsh, M.M. and Martin Ginis, K.A., 2015. Leadership styles,
emotion regulation, and burnout. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 20(4), p.481.
Asrar-ul-Haq, M. and Kuchinke, K.P., 2016. Impact of leadership styles on employees’ attitude
towards their leader and performance: Empirical evidence from Pakistani banks. Future
Business Journal, 2(1), pp.54-64.
Baker, T. and Warren, A., 2015. The Nine Common Barriers to Communication.
In Conversations at Work (pp. 54-74). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Barnlund, D.C., 2017. A transactional model of communication. In Communication theory (pp.
47-57). Routledge.
Douglas, S.L., De Souza, L.R. and Yudin, M.H., 2017. Identification of Patient-perceived
Barriers to Communication between Patients and Physicians. Fam Med Med Sci Res, 6(214),
p.2.
Gillespy, K., Dixon, M.D. and Pentz, R.D., 2017. Communication about immunotherapy: Barriers
and information to discuss.
McQuail, D. and Windahl, S., 2015. Communication models for the study of mass
communications. Routledge.
Mullins, J., Bliss, D.Z., Rolnick, S., Henre, C.A. and Jackson, J., 2016. Barriers to
communication with a healthcare provider and health literacy about incontinence among
informal caregivers of individuals with dementia. Journal of wound, ostomy, and continence
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Society/WOCN, 43(5), p.539.
Ricard, L.M., Klijn, E.H., Lewis, J.M. and Ysa, T., 2017. Assessing public leadership styles for
innovation: A comparison of Copenhagen, Rotterdam and Barcelona. Public Management
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Yahaya, R. and Ebrahim, F., 2016. Leadership styles and organizational commitment: literature
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