L11: Leadership through Strategic Internal Communication

BA370

Leadership Communication Chapter 11: Leadership through Strategic Internal Communication

In this chapter you will learn to recognize the strategic role of employee communication, assess internal communication effectiveness, and establish effective internal communication, use missions and visions to strengthen internal communication, and design and implement effective change communication.

In the effective internal communication stage, there are the core factors as follow:

- Supportive management

- Targeted messages

- Effective media/forum

- Well-positioned staff

- Ongoing assessment

Organizational direction comes from leaders having created and effectively communicated a clear and meaningful mission and vision. Developing and communicating mission and vision is one of the most important and visible communication tasks of upper level management.

For Building an Effective mission and vision, we might start with create initial draft, then clarify the meaning. The mission and vision need to be concise. The strategic objectives are developed to make the vision. Cascading meeting is the way to test the employee about the mission and vision. It might start with the upper level of the organization broken into functions or division and then give way to cross-level, functional, or divisional meetings. Next step is the designing and implementing effective change communication which should begin with determining the scope of the change communication program, and then structuring a communication program for major change.

                                             

Question 1: What are the basic objective the employee communication should accomplish?

Answer:

1.    Educate employees in the organization’s culture, vision and strategic goals

2.    Motivate employees support for the organization’s goal

3.    Encourage higher performance and discretionary effort to achieve those goals

4.    Limit misunderstanding and rumors that may damage morale and productivity

5.    Align employees behind the organization’s performance objectives and position them to help achieve them

Question 2: What is effective internal communication consists of?

Answer:

·         Supportive management

·         Targeted messages

·         Effective media/forums

·         Well-position staff

·         Ongoing assessment

Question 3: Why effective mission and vision statements are important to an organization?

Answer:

·         They inspire individual action, determine behavior, and fuel motivation

·         They establish a firm foundation of goals, standards, and objectives to guide planners and managers

·         They satisfy both the organization’s need for efficiency and the employees’ need for group identity

·         They provide direction, which is particularly important in times of change, to keep everyone moving toward the same goals