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Abstract: Leadership communication is typically viewed from a classical, or bureaucratic, orientation where the focus is on information exchange, positioning, or effective persuasion. However this misses that communication is constitutive of interaction. Communication is not simply delivering messages but is a way of working out the content, direction, and outcomes of activities such as meetings, speeches, purchases and negotiations. The current paper proposes a model of leadership communication competency that is founded on the capacity of an individual to design interaction though communication. Using the basic design elements of designer, material and situation, three steps are described that are meant to guide leaders on how to construct preferred forms of interaction and stay away from others. The focus on communication as constitutive of interaction offers great potential to help us shift the context and purpose of leadership communication. The model shows how leadership communication generates the grounds for interaction as well as arises in response to and anticipation of the demands for interaction.
Keywords: communication, interaction, design, competency
1. Introduction
One thing that bridges academic and popular business and organizational literature is that communication is an important aspect of leadership. With that being said, there have been countless attempts to describe leadership communication competency (Ruben and Smulowitz 2007). Most of these attempts presuppose that communication is not just message creation and delivery but an aspect of interaction. Interaction is when multiple actors come together through communication to successfully complete something like a meeting, speech, purchase, negotiation, etc. For a leader to be competent in communication, the individual must have an understanding of how to create communication that effectively mediates and navigates interaction. The current paper advances a new applied model, one where leadership communication competency is the capacity of an individual to design preferred interaction though communication. The model is focused on re- imagining leadership communication in the context of globally-dispersed organizations where complex decisions lead to difficult situations such as discussions with stakeholders about social and environmental behaviors.
2. Literature on leadership communication competencies
Communication competency is an expertise and proficiency in crafting communicative action (i.e., speeches, appearances, letters, partnerships, plans, etc.) (Ziek 2011). Myriad researchers have attempted to describe the communication competencies that leaders must have to capitalize on opportunities within...