Introduction
One of the integral part of leadership is to establish successful communication. It is essential to clearly differentiate between management communication and leadership by having a thorough knowledge of the diverse approaches to communication in leadership. This is one of the reasons why I have chosen the Chapter 7: Leadership and Management Communication as a means to discuss my personal experiences in my organization, Saudi Aramco.
I was working in a supervisory position in Saudi Aramco and was responsible to oversee the functions and activities conducted by five staff members in the women’s section. This company has a series of business and the female staff was responsible for diverse administrative activities which often made them do multi-tasking. Moreover, they needed to work together as a team and this is where excellent communication was needed.
Being in a leadership position, I often had to hold meetings and assign new responsibilities in case an urgent mandate had been issued. My supervisor empowered me to get the job done and strictly meet deadlines. This required me to hold meetings and encourage my team to come up with new ideas and suggestions to create processes and systems so that a particular task was completed within the given deadline. A manner in which leaders successfully influence and convince followers to achieve organizational objectives is leadership communication. Participative leadership helped in engaging the five subordinates and also made them feel needed. They were free to provide their opinions and feedback and accordingly a decision was taken. Moreover, I always held such meetings once in fifteen days. These were general meetings in which my subordinates shared their work updates, discussed current problems and also came out with effective solutions. For those instances which needed a supervisory approval, I forwarded them to my own supervisor and accordingly established excellent communication channel. In these supervisor – subordinate interactions, I also ensured that my subordinates were appreciated for their achievement and also informed about their shortcomings. This in a manner was a discursive leadership style which helped them to perform better. Appreciating a particular team member or the entire team for their excellent performance helped in enhancing motivation by means of effective communication.
My supervisor, Fahad, was also extremely cooperative and expected me to report to him once a month to update him about the activities that were conducted under my purview. Other than this, he always patiently listened to whatever issues I had and at times, I even met him to discuss departmental activities which needed urgent supervisory attention and subsequent action.
There was one particular incident which I would like to bring to light. At a particular point of time, at least three of my subordinates were to go on leave. They had filled in the leave request and the department would face extreme issues in conducting regular tasks due to acute shortage of staff. Prior to sanctioning their leave requests, I approached my supervisor, Fahad, and requested for his advice in this regard. This was a situation of effective leadership and management communication. There was both way communication which helped in resolving the situation. My supervisor asked me to again engage in situational leadership in which depending on the situation, only urgent tasks were assigned to be conducted in that period of time by the remaining two staff who would be in office. Contingency or situational approaches to leadership takes place depending on particular situations that leaders may face in an organization. In this situation, there was a selection of leadership style which was flexible and was in sync with the current circumstances at the point of time. This was a democratic approach to leadership in which the staff were informed about the changes to be implemented for that particular week due to the absence of regular staff. Also the decision to conduct only urgent tasks also was a leadership style depending on the contingent situation. All other regular activities, which could be delayed by a few days, were postponed. In this case, a mix of transformative leadership style and transactional leadership style was used as I changed the daily processes and systems and also reinforced my staff so as to ensure that urgent tasks were accomplished despite the current staff shortage. It was my sole responsibility to communicate to my team members about the required change in work processes for that week. Accordingly, with due discussion with my supervisor as well as my subordinate, intentions were translated into reality, new strategies were proposed and decisions were supported by several changed actions.
Effective application of leadership and management communication in Saudi Aramco
My tenure with Saudi Aramco required me to engage in effective communication with my subordinates as well as my supervisor. I had to maintain a balance and ensure that my staff shared their issues and came up with solutions with the means of several leadership traits and styles. I mainly engaged in participative and discursive leadership style while getting information about the routine activities under my purview. A mix of both these leadership styles made staff to feel that they are important to the organization and thereby enhanced their motivation levels. Moreover, staff also came up with effective problems and suggestions which were further implemented to streamline administration processes and systems. This led the team to attain deadlines and enhance their performance levels. Open two way communication also ensured lesser conflict among staffs and power balance.
I have mostly used participative tactics for effective leadership communication. In order to attain excellence in communication, it is essential to have excellent abilities to communicate. Values, skills, sensitivity and knowledge have been developed on an individual as well as on a team level. I have further empowered, aligned and designed processes and systems and appreciated as well as taken suggestions from my subordinates. This helped me to effectively create and manage my team. The team management style of leadership emphasizes on optimal concern for task attainment as well as for team members. The meetings were conducted with the objective to resolve issues and take several decisions with the support from the team.
Conclusion
Effective communication with my team and my supervisor helped me to thrive and grow at Saudi Aramco. Being a supervisor, instilling trust in my team mates, empowering and listening to them, appreciating their achievements and also pointing out their shortcomings helped me to garner optimal performance. This helped me to develop an effective team and lead my department to attain excellent performance levels. Furthermore, the management recognized my efforts to handle my team and over a period of time also promoted me. My choice of communication depended upon my set of moral values, sensitivity, talents and knowledge. I displayed a leadership style which was in alignment with highly people and task oriented leaders and therefore sought to attain a balance between the requirement of my team members and attainment of the activities to attain excellent team performance.
