From the Top Down
Garrett Jensen
ORG300 – Applying Leadership Principles
Colorado State University – Global Campus
Sheila Landfair Mueller, Ph.D.
November 23, 2014

From the Top Down
Effective communication throughout an organization starts from the top down. A leader’s ability to communicate is key to organizational success and motivating employees to a common goal. Without the use of effective communication within an organization, the organization itself or their projects can lead to an overall failure. As indicated by a trend in the bi-annual survey, Ben Williams’ employees are increasingly unsatisfied with the level of leadership from the top down. This essay will analyze where CEO Ben Williams’ falls short as an effective communicator that directly influences employee satisfaction.
Summary of the Key Issues
Ben Williams will have to change his leadership styles as well as communication skills in order to turn his employee’s satisfaction around thus ensuring his firm does not fail under his leadership. Williams currently only communicates with staff when he deems essential and only when he feels there is a problem that he can solve on his own. Through direct assertive control, Williams tells his subordinates what needs to be done and how they will do it, leaving no room for individual thought and negating the possibility of ideas from employees that may prove to be more efficient. The fact that Williams does not like meetings or electronic communication should not deny his employees important informational updates that should be decimated down the chain.
This was my first time using the CSU-Global library. It was a long engaging experience that I’m sure will help throughout my CSU educational path. I attended American Military University that used a similar library that searched all the academic open sources but only used once as my classes had text books that the professors wanted to see citations from. Keywords I used to find the source material were: organizational communication effectiveness, communication leadership, and key leadership communication. I was unable to find sources immediately and had to constantly change key words to find topics that related best to the case study. I utilized internet search engines to find additional relevant keywords to search in the CSU library in hopes to narrowing down the search.
The difference between scholarly journal articles and magazine or newspaper articles can become apparent in the purpose and appearance of the article. A scholarly article is written by subject matter experts for the intended purpose sharing results of studies, experiments, or research whose targeted audience is for other subject matter experts or academic purposes. Also, the author will publish their credentials in the field for credibility. Other types of articles are written to share information for a more generalized audience with comparatively less length in content and credible cited sources as well as having advertisements.
I found a reliable website that passes the CRAAP test lined out in the module. The article on the website posted in June 2012, giving it currency to the topic. Leadership is always changing with the adoption of technology in the business world. In particular, the mediums of communication change, not necessarily the idea of leadership and communication. The article discusses how a leader communicate successfully with supervisors of all levels. “Duke Energy’s president and CEO, James E. Rogers, instituted a series of what he called “listening sessions” when he was the CEO and chairman of Cinergy (which later merged with Duke). Meeting with groups of 90 to 100 managers in three-hour sessions, he invited participants to raise any pressing issues” (Groysberg & Slind, 2012). This is relevant to the case study with Ben Williams as he finds meetings to be useless, the article explains the benefits of CEO’s sitting down with supervisors to discuss issues and resolving them successfully. The authors state their credentials at the bottom. Boris is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, while Slind is a communication consultant and writer. These qualifications allow me to give the article credibility, along with the distinguished name of Harvard Business Review and a .org address. The authors support their claims with quotes from varying CEO’s of companies, mentioning the company they are from. They have interviewed nearly 150 people at more than 100 companies (Groysberg & Slind, 2012) giving the article accuracy. The website has very little advertisements and is written primarily for educational purposes by authors who study communication in conjunction with business, giving the final pass to the CRAAP test: purpose. Currency and accuracy with dependable sources allowed me to view the website as a credible source.
Using the CSU-Global library, I was able to find an e-book that talks about using communication to enhance direction-giving. As a CEO, Williams runs the company and will have to give direction to the company in order to be successful. This e-book provides an in-depth guidance on effectively leading a group or team using research and citing outside sources.
Resolving the Issues Williams recognizes the need for a change in his communication. “Every social institution is a human collaboration. We must collaborate in order to interact, and we must collaborate in order to work together” (Burtis & Turman, 2010). People in an organization require effective communication to understand and share information. Williams will need to host meetings where employees may communicate problems within their branch, or gain understanding, regardless of his personal feelings towards meetings. Meeting notes should be taken and then transcribed and made available to employees through email. This would allow more transparency to new projects being introduced or started. Groysberg & Slind (2012) say, “By talking with employees, rather than simply issuing orders, leaders can retain or recapture some of the qualities—operational flexibility, high levels of employee engagement, tight strategic alignment—that enable start-ups to outperform better-established rivals.” Williams method of telling employees exactly what to do and not why they are doing them, allows confusion and sometimes resistance to change. Effective communication gives meaning and allowing employees to challenge his ideas promotes individual thought or allows the possibility of better ideas to be discussed. According to Rogers (2012), “…people want to work for and with people who are skilled in communication and who have strong professional and personal leadership qualities”.
Conclusion
Ben Williams’ change in communication methods can turn around his staff’s level of satisfaction with organizational communication. Williams needs to allow open discussion of ideas by hosting more meetings and incorporating meeting notes to be made available for decimation to employees. In doing so, this will shift “...the focus from a top-down distribution of information to a bottom-up exchange of ideas” (Groysberg & Slind, 2012).

References
Burtis, J. O., & Turman, P. D. (2010). Leadership Communication As Citizenship : Give Direction to Your Team, Organization, or Community As a Doer, Follower, Guide, Manager, or Leader. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage.
Groysberg, B., & Slind, M. (2012, June 1). Leadership Is a Conversation. Retrieved November 24, 2014, from https://hbr.org/2012/06/leadership-is-a-conversation
Rogers, R. (2012). Leadership communication styles: a descriptive analysis of health care professionals. Journal of Healthcare Leadership, 4, 47-57.