KETRAMPILAN KOMUNIKASI KEPEMIMPINAN
Umar Farouk
Jurusan Administrasi Niaga, Politeknik Negeri Semarang
Jl. Prof. Sudarto, S.H., Tembalang,
Kotak Pos 619/SMS Semarang 50061
ABSTRACT
The effective
role of a leader in an organization to some extent is very much influenced by
communication skills. Communication
skills cover many aspects and
dimensions. The aspects of language mastery, the understanding of culture,
psychological side of human beings, the choice of communication media are some
examples. This article tries to learn
further the contributions of communication skills in improving the
effectiveness of leadership in view of some communication constraints and the
ways to give solutions.
Key words: communication skills, leadership,
communication media, communication constraints
INTRODUCTION
People say that if someone has
desire to be successful in his life, he must have the skills of communication.
Communication skills cover many aspects and dimensions such as language
mastery, cultural knowledge and
understanding, the understanding of psychological side of human beeings, and
the ability to utilize appropriate communication media. In terms of the
language mastery, communication skills consist of listening, speaking, reading,
and writing skills. Someone may have a
deep knowledge of management, art, music, psychology, medical treatment,
politics, economy and business, et
cetera but if he does not have the abiltiy to communicate his knowledge, for
instance for marketing, educational and political purposes, it will be almost
useless. The reason is that he cannot utilize his knowledge for the benefits of
others. This is if we discuss communication skills from the personal
perspective.
In institutional or organizational
perspective, communication skills give more important influence or
impacts. A manager who does not have
communication skills will have some problems in implementing the functions of
management. Planning, Organizing,
Actuating, and Controlling (POAC), will be impossible to be implemented
effectively without a good mastery of communication skills. This is because
when we run a management of a company we have to do with employees. We have to
talk with them. We have to know how to communicate with them in the most
persuassive and effective ways as communication is the fourth pillar of
management.
Many experts give their definitions
about communication. There are many and varied. As usual, they give those
definitions on the basis of their backgrounds of expertise. Keith Davis says
that communication is transfering understanding from someone to another.
Handoko says that communication is a process of transfering understanding or
information from somone to another verbally and non-verbally. Therefore, he
states that it is necessary that in communication, a communicator employs eye
contact, facial expression, and some other body languages. Another expert,
Judith Dwyer gives emphasis on the change of behaviour. If in
communication process there is no change
of behaviour, it can be said that there is no communication happening. It seems
that the above-mentioned definitions are respectively give contribution to our
understanding or comprehension about communication. What is stated by Dwyer
takes its ultimate goal of communication.
It can be postive or negative in line with a communicator’s
expectations.
Examples of
Change of Behaviour
(from negative
to positive)
|
No
|
Before
|
After
|
|
1
|
Ignorant
|
Attentive
|
|
2
|
Hate
|
Love
|
|
3
|
Angry
|
Friendly
|
|
4
|
Refused
|
Loyal
|
|
5
|
Pessimistic
|
Optimistic
|
Examples of
Change of Behaviour
(from positive
to negative)
|
No
|
Before
|
After
|
|
1
|
Kind
|
Rude
|
|
2
|
Open minded
|
Narrow minded
|
|
3
|
Diligent
|
Lazy
|
|
4
|
Optimistic
|
Pessimistic
|
|
5
|
Tolerant
|
Fanatic
|
In addition to those definitions there
are some more other definitions, among others,
delivered by Brent D Ruben
(1988), Louis Forsdale (1981), William J Seiler (1988), Hovland, Janis and
Kelley (1981).
On the basis of this discussion, it can
be concluded that in every day life and business environment many people do
communicate but they do not communicate. It means that they cannot achieve
their communication goals. Many managers do speak, give instructions, give
warnings, et cetera but the employees do not listen, follow, and obey.
This may happen as communication
strategies are not functioned. That is why communication skills should be taken
into account when communicating.
DISCUSSION
Improving
Communication Skills
It is obvious that communication has to
achieve its goals or targets. In business, achieving the goals or targets is a
must. The failure of achieving the goals or the targets may make a company get
lost. Some profits cannot be taken. Everyone in a company has to learn how to
communicate effectively to each other. Horizontally and vertically. A manager has to able to motivate his subordinates,
a supervisor has to be able to report to his manager, a secretary has to have
the capability to give interesting and effective business presentation, a
manager must be able to discuss with his General Manager to make some crucial
business development decisions,
employees must have ability to give their complaints, suggestions, and opinions
to their boss politely and persuassively. At last all people in the company,
General Manager, Managers, Supervisors, and Employees have to have the skills of
comunicating horizontallly to enable the functions of management (POAC) work propperly.
In discussing how to improve
communication skills, the components of communication process should be put
forward, namely Communicator, Message, Channel, and Communicant. Below is the chart of Communication Process
.
General Model of
Communication Process (Zuhdi, M.Si,
2011)
Regarding Communicator and Communicant,
there are some factors influencing the effectiveness of communication process
such as the mastery of four language skills (Listening, Speaking, Reading, and
Writing), creativity to develop ideas, culture, education, age, feeling,
family, et cetera. In communication
process Communicator and Communicant can function interchangably, for it
happens reciprocally or two way traffic of communication.
Message which contains information can
also give influence to the effectiveness of communication process both positive
and negative. Message will be not obvious if the use of language is not correct
grammatically or some incorrect words are used.
The use of inappropriate cultural contexts may also make the message not
easily understandable.
As to the use of channels or media of
communication what is crucial to take into account is their quality. Naturally,
we use our five senses as the channels of our communication, covering seeing,
hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. If those senses can function
normally, they facilitate to the success of communication process conducted. If
there is a problem with them, it becomes
a ‘noise’ in communication process.
In practice communication process not
only uses the five senses but also technological equipments, such as telephone,
television, internet, teleconferencing, skype, loud speaker, an so forth. The
quality of those equipments, of course, will improve the quality of the
communication process and avoid the communication noise.
So, how can we improve our communication
skills? The followings are the solutions offered:
1)
Improve the skills of listening,
speaking, reading, writing, and developing ideas.
2)
Pay attention on the culture,
education, age, family, feeling, et cetera of communicant.
3)
Make sure that the media used are
of good quality.
4)
Avoid
‘hallo effect’. It means we have to behave objectively to others without having
subjective prejudice.
5)
Understand
individual differences or complexity of individuals. Every body is unique. We
have to interact with them not by ignoring their uniqueness.
6)
Understand
cultural background. In global communication there is a big risk of getting
communication problems caused by cultural background. This must be avoided as
it is sometimes very sensitive. Cross cultural understanding seems to be urgent
to discuss in communication activities these days.
7)
Utilize
feedbacks or responses to improve our communication quality. Those feedbacks or
responses can be verbal or non verbal. Therefore, it is not good if we only
listen to someone’s words in oral communication. Body languages such as eye
contact, facial expression, hand movements and so forth should be very
carefully seen.
8)
Practice
face to face communication. Communicating by using technological facilities
like telephone and teleconferencing, for instance may make misunderstanding or
miscommunication. It is because the used technology has some weaknesses by its
nature. The poor sound system and the poor picture quality that we can enjoy
may trigger some distortions leading to communication ineffectiveness.
9)
Use simple
language. The goal of communication is to create mutual understanding, therefore
use easy words and never use difficult and technical words which only
understood by specific professional community. The task of communication is to
change something difficult or complex into something easy and simple. Consider
your receivers.
Effective
Leadership
Many people are still of the opinion
that to be a good leader an intellectual or academic record is the most
important prerequisite. This opinion, as we know, is not true. Many bright
people fail to be a good or effective leader. David Goleman
(http://www.businessballs.com/eg.htm)
quotes that to be successful requires the effective awareness, control
and management of one’s own emotions, and those of other people. This is what is called Emotional Quotient
(EQ). EQ embraces two aspects of intelligence:
1)
Understanding one’s self, one’s goals,
intentions, responses, behaviour and all.
2)
Understanding others, and their
feelings.
Goleman
identified the ‘domains’ of EQ as:
1)
Knowing emotions.
2)
Managing emotions.
3)
Motivating one’s self.
4)
Recognising and understanding
other people’s emotions.
5)
Managing relationships, that is
managing the emotions of others.
All these are concerned with leadership
communication. To make it obvious, let’s start with discussing types of
leadership. According to Riyanto’s statement,
there are four types of leadership, namely authoritarian, supervisory, laissez
faire, and democratic. Many experts of
communication agree that democratic type of leadership is the best type
to implement compared to the other types. Though this is not true when we refer
to the theory of situational leadership but it is true when the four types of
leaderships are discussed separately. Situational leadership on the other side,
emphasizes on the flexibility of using the four types on the basis of the recent
conditional and situational context.
Situational leadership theory believes that each type of leadership has
its own superiorities and weaknesses.
Apart from the above discussion, all
experts of communication are convinced of the importance of communication
skills to support leadership effectiveness. They say that communication is the
backbone of management. Without
excellent communication skills it is quite difficult for a leader in an
organization to implement the functions of management (Planning, Organizing,
Actuating, and Controlling). This is reasonable, for Planning, Organizing,
Actuating, and Controlling in the organization have to do with people. All
these can be well done if communication can be practiced more strategically to
give its most beneficial defects. A
manager cannot give an effective instruction to his employees to do a task if
he communicates without respect, courtesy, and persuasiveness. Although the
employees understand the instruction but they will give a negative response to
him. This will decrease his leadership.
An authoritarian leader generally has
bad communication skills. They never listens to his employees and other people
in his company. He tends to listen to himself and ignores everything beyond. He
feels that what he thinks and decides is the best for all. This kind of leader
will never be successful in managing his organization. A leader of supervisory
type of leadership when implementing his leadership generally likes to listen
to his employees. The weaknesses of this
type of leadership is he listens too much and
is not brave enough to make decisions. He releases a half of his
responsibility to take some risks. He gives the other half to his employees.
The degree to which he really communicates with them by all means influences his leadership:
effective or ineffective. Laissez Faire leadership,
more rarely communicates with employees. Therefore, in terms of the
communication quality, this type of leadership seems to be unsatisfactory. He
creates distance because of his low capability to lead. He does not feel
comfortable to be with his employees. He manages his company from a distance.
Decision makings are made by his employees. Democratic leadership, among the
other-mentioned types, is the best. He communicates effectively with employees.
He takes all the risks to make decisions. He likes to be with the employees,
listen to them, motivates them to work, and tries to cultivate conducive
corporate culture. If the made decisions are successfully implemented to develop
the company, he says that the success is made by his employees. On the contrary
if the implementation of the decisions fail, he says it is because of his
leadership. A democratic leader generally is optimistic and motivates all his
employees to work better for the expecting success despite the failures. He is
a type of inspiring communicator and motivator. He is a person with high
communication skills.
The Role of
Communication in Effective Leadership
The
role of communication in effective leadership is quite crucial. Without
communication leadership will never exist. The process of leadership will stop
because leadership relates to people. Communication is the core of leadership
since it manages the interactions among people: leaders and followers. Consequently,
the quality of communication will influence the quality or effectiveness of
leadership. The following chart will make this concept more understandable:
(Source:
US Army, 1983)
As clearly shown in the chart,
communication between a leader and a follower will create situation. An
effective leader manages to create conducive situation when communicating. On
the other way round, an ineffective leader creates many communication problems.
As a result, he creates situation which is not favorable or inconvenient for
his followers. This gives negative impacts to his leadership.
Regarding the role of communication in
leadership effectiveness, some experts put forward their statements:
1)
Murray Johannsen (1983) says that there are six competencies
which contribute to leadership communication skills, namely organizational
communication, feedback, small group communication, persuasive skills, public
speaking and self-talk. (httpp://www.legacee.com/Ionfo/Skills/Communication
Interpersonal.html)
2)
John Eric Adair (2009) states that
strong communication skills are arguably
the most important attribute a manager can possess.
3)
George Ambler (2009) quotes that
without effective communication you cannot lead....you end up talking a walk on
your own. Communication is critical to effective leadership, however it is
often something we take for granted and therefore not given the attention it
deserves. One can lack any of the qualities of an organizer – with one
exception – and still be effective and successful. That exception is the art of communication. (http://www.thepracticeofleadership.net/no-communication-no-leaderhship)
CONCLUSION
Based on the discussion it is obvious
that communication skills and leadership seems to have a strong relation.
Whoever wants to get success in his leadership should consider his
communication skills verbally and non verbally. The choice of the types of
leadership is generally determined to some extent by his communication
skills. Sometimes the choice is done
beyond his awareness. For the purpose of
doing a business it is suggested that the choice is done professionally. It can
be done if every leader does it deliberately.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adair,
John Eric, Effective Communication,
London, Pan Macmillan, 2009
Davis,
Keith, Human Behaviour at Work:
Organizational Behaviour, Indiana, Mc Graw Hill Inc, 1981
Dwyer,
Judith, The Business Communication
Handbook, Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006
Handoko,
T Hani, Manajemen (Ed. II),
Yogyakarta, BPFE, 1989
Riyanto,
Makmun dkk, Komunikasi Niaga I,
Semarang, Polines, 1996
US
Army, Military Leadership (FM 22-100),
Washington DC, US Government Printing Office, 1983
Zuhdi,
M.Si, Drs. Umar Farouk, Komunikasi
Bisnis: Pemahaman Secara Mudah, Wahana Totalita Publisher, 2011
http://www.legacee.com/Info/Skills/Communication
Interpersonal.html (accessed on 18 December 2011)
http://www.thepracticeofleadership.net/no-communication-no-leadership
(accessed on 20 December 2011)
http://www.businessballs.com/eg.html (accessed on 21
December 2011)
