The Importance Of Communication

As you mentioned, communication is an important part of the organizational environment. At my organization, due to its large size, electronic communication is often used as the primary method of communication, particularly for downward communication. Fischer pointed out that electronic forms of communication can carry a high potential for ambiguity, which can be troublesome when the message is communicating an important change (2009). Leaders at the director level and up rely solely on emails when communicating with line associates and, considering emails are interpreted correctly only 50 percent of the time, it is no surprise that these associates all come away with a different message (Robbins & Judge, 2009, p. 361).
To ensure a consistent message is delivered, my organization relies on its supervisors to be the face of the message. This means presenting the message verbally to our teams to ensure the proper interpretation and addressing any feedback from the associates. For the most part,

New supervisors are often some of the most stressed individuals in the department, faced with a larger team of associates, expanded duties, and a plethora of administrative duties they may never have encountered before. As the cognitive resource theory shows, this stress can be the downfall of new and inexperienced leaders. The cognitive resource theory states that “stress unfavorable affects a situation and that intelligence and experience can reduce the influence of stress on the leader” (Robbins & Judge, 2014, p. 395). When faced with a high-stress situation, a leader relies more on experience than knowledge. For new supervisors, high-stress situations occur regularly, but unfortunately, they lack the experience needed to perform under these situations. Consequently, these supervisors tend to be bottom quartile performers for the first year after being