Effective communication is critical to a manager’s success and subsequently the
organization’s success”. With the use of relevant theory discuss the validity of this
statement.
Effective communication is an essential tool, to ensure the planning and controlling of the
company’s resources, to achieve any organization’s success. It is critical for a manager to be
successful in his or her role, by effectively transferring information to the lower levels of the
company; this process is call downward communication. “All organizations regard effective
communication as essential for survival. Without communication a business would not exist.
Businesses are concerned with a wide range of communication activities. First of all,
communication within the company has to be as effective as possible. This involves a wide range
of communication activities to ensure good upward, downward and lateral or sideways
communication. Companies also have to communicate with other companies and suppliers, since
good relationships with them are essential. The most important activity of all is communicating
with customers; without them no company would exist” (Fielding, 2005). With reference to the
statement, effective communication is very critical for the success of a manager and also the
company in which they reside in.
The communication line needs to be clearly and unambiguously transferred between individuals.
Communication is a confusing process if not effectively done. Communication problems arise
with individual to individual for example, “What I mean to say? What I actually say? What the
other person hears? What the other person thought they heard? What the other person means to
say? What the other person actually says? What I hear the person say? What I think I heard the
person say?” Effective communication is a very important element for a successful company,
leader, manager, supervisor, and employees. Any organization that has excellent downward and
upward communication is likely to experience fewer misunderstandings that can result in friction
between employees, waste of time and cause catastrophic mistakes (McIntosh and Luecke,
2008).
Harold Lasswell introduced an important model which as five levels of communication. The first
step of this model is the source, or in Lasswell words, ‘who’ would be the distributor of the
information. In this case it would be the manager. As stated earlier, the process of
communicating a message from the upper level to the lower level is called downward
communication; whereby managers communicate down the line to subordinates. The second step
is the message, which should be unambiguous to the lower levels of the companies. The third
step is how would this message be deliver; through which channel or medium of exchange. This
message can be delivered to the employees via oral, written or non-verbal communication.
Fourthly, to whom would this message be delivered to, in this particular case, the message would
