Organizational Communication

Humanitarian, actor and filmmaker Robert Townsend said “True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders”. Some people may believe that the success of an organization depends on the employees, but the leaders within the organization are the catalyst to how the group communicates and ultimately how the tasks are performed to meet the goals of the company. The different sources of power in an organization also have an impact on how a group and organization communicates, and motivational theories such as goal-setting and self-efficacy play a role in stimulating employee productivity in the company.

The Affect of Leadership Styles on Group Communication

Webster‘s dictionary defines a leader as a person who leads, or a person who has commanding authority or influence. There are different leadership styles that govern exactly how a leader goes about guiding their followers. Leadership styles such as authentic leadership, transactional leadership, charismatic leadership, and transformational leadership would all have different affects on group communications within the Starbucks Coffee Company. The authentic leadership style includes leaders who act on their own beliefs and values, and encourage open communication amongst the group (Robbins & Judge, 2007, Chapt.13). The Starbucks Coffee Company is an organization that has a precise set of principles that it values such as its coffee, customers, partners, stores, neighborhoods and shareholders. Authentic leaders could affect the communication within the group by not promoting what the company values if they have their own personal beliefs and values that do not coincide with what the company believes in. The followers of authentic leaders have a strong faith and trust in those particular types of leaders. Starbucks employees would more than likely adapt to the values of authentic leaders rather then those of the company. For example, if upper management at Starbucks...