Managers' message sending skills and ability to deal with interference: green panacea or red herring?

Abstract

Communication is one of the most important managerial skills for effective management, yet many managers have insufficient knowledge about the effectiveness of their message sending skills and ability to deal with interference as perceived by their subordinates. The primary objective of this article is to elucidate the effectiveness of managers' message sending skills and their ability to deal with interference in the communication process as perceived by their subordinates in the manufacturing, retail and services industries. The study focused on three constructs, namely communication, message sending skills and interference. A quantitative descriptive research design was followed. Data were collected by means of a self-administered questionnaire and 931 useable responses were obtained. A non-probability, convenience sample was chosen. The results showed that subordinates perceived their managers' communication competencies to be slightly above average and that subordinates from manufacturing businesses perceived their managers' message sending skills and ability to deal with interference to be slightly better than those from retail, whereas there were no statistical differences between these industries and the services industry. The contribution is to make managers aware of possible difficulties they may experience during the communication process regarding message sending skills and aptitude to deal with interference