Rasool Nazari

doi:10.19080/JPFMTS.2022.09.555770

Research Article

Communication Skills Roles on Leadership Styles and Sport Organizations Effectiveness

Rasool Nazari*

Assistant Professor, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran

Submission: April 07, 2022; Published: April 20, 2022

*Corresponding author: Rasool Nazari, Assistant Professor, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran

How to cite this article: Rasool N. Communication Skills Roles on Leadership Styles and Sport Organizations Effectiveness. J Phy Fit Treatment & Sports. 2022; 9(4): 555770. DOI: 10.19080/JPFMTS.2022.09.555770

Abstract

Necessity of recognition and awareness of communication skills, Leadership styles and organizational effectiveness of sport directors and determination of their relations is the main goal in this research. The current research is correlation research and is executed based on survey method. The statistical society of this research consisted of managers in selected Iranian sport organizations. 245 Statistical samples of the research were selected eventually based on Cochran sampling method. Measuring tools in the research consisted of questionnaires of communication skills, multifactor leadership questionnaire and organizational effectiveness. The statistical methods consisting analysis of this research applying two descriptive and conclusive methods. Based on the results obtained, there exists a significant relation between communication skills, Leadership styles, and organizational effectiveness between sport managers. The results of implementation of path analysis models of communication skills, Leadership styles; organizational effectiveness confirm conceptual models of the research. So, recommend that communication skill to be mentioned as one of the most important effective factors in selective sport managers for sport organization. Generally, it could be stated that sport managers should be strengthen their communication skills and use the transformational leadership style as effective leadership in the sport organizations and try to reach to desirable level of their leadership style. Because strengthening of cohesion and stability on the sport organization lead to better doing of complex mission. Since communication skills can lead to enhanced efficiency and efficiency beside effectiveness lead to productivity on sports organizations. Therefore, corporate with managers that have high level of communication skills is recommended. It also recommended that in the selection of managers leadership style will be considered as a most important factor. In the sport organizations use the managers that have high level of communication skills.

Keywords: Communication Skills; Leadership style; Organizational effectiveness; Sport Organization

Introduction

One of the basic assumptions of organizational behavior is to recognize individual and communicational characteristics in relation to access to the effectiveness, efficiency and ultimately productivity and achievement to organizational goals. This subject is closely related to various types of individuals, social, economic, and cultural aspects [1]. Since the occurrence of a given behavior is associated with specific conditions, then successful managers in achieving organizational goals are seeking to prediction, guidance, control and change employee behaviors and, also, given to individual differences, communication development and cultural differences in various societies in current century this trend is needed to comprehensive research [2]. According to the results of studies, managers only use %4.6 of effective communication for different fields [3]. This indicates that the areas of interpersonal communications have require more attention [4] found that the fundamental skills have a significant effect on managers interpersonal communications and their organizational effectiveness. Moreover, personality differences in communications shows that communication among men and women are different.

It should be noted that mangers that have good verbal, listening and feedback skills will be better able to communicate effectively. Leadership style is representative of managers thinking style, worldview, and personality. If leadership styles have been selected an inappropriately, individual efficiency is decrease and it causes to psychological stress and pressure [5].

Factors that influence the leadership style are attitude toward his role and employees. Most leaders have a style that is coincided with their own characteristics, just a few of the leaders, could adapt their style with different situations and people. [5] noted that leaders could guide followers through transformational leadership behavior characteristics to high performance.

The results of [6] research showed that sport managers through different leadership styles could facilitate goal achievement, sense of optimism, higher initiatives, job satisfaction, and ultimately the internal and external processes of an organization to achieve organizational goals and as a result increase organizational effectiveness. Also, based [7-9] there was significant relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment, performance satisfaction, effectiveness and ultimately productivity. Concluded that there is a positive relationship between senior managers’ ethical behaviors with all aspects of employee job satisfaction such as supervision, pay, promotion opportunities, coworkers, and employment [10]. Considers four levels in the system of ethical decisions and behaviors, which include personal ethics, social ethics, legal ethics, and utilitarian ethics. State that people sometimes must behave in a way that is beyond the best interests of others for relationships to continue and be strengthened. Values such as morality, justice, benevolence, tolerance, support, trust, compassion, and harmony are very important in many countries Kokak, 2020. In a study on entrepreneurial behavior and its relationship with people’s perception, it has been shown that people’s perceptions affect entrepreneurial behavior, and it seems that by changing attitudes and orienting to the abilities and interests of people, behavior in the organization can be changed [11].

Also showed that there is a positive relationship between employees’ perceptions of human resource management and innovative behavior. Improving ability, motivation and human resource management improving opportunity has a positive relationship with the structure of innovative work behavior. In their view, resource resilience has a positive relationship with innovative work behavior [12]. Stated that there is a positive relationship between survival and growth of the organization and innovative behavior of managers in the organization [13]. Has been mentioned significant relationship between the quality of financial statements and investment behavior and leads to better investment performance [14]. Excessive investment is related to how managers use the company’s financial resources. When profitable investment projects and growth opportunities are scarce, managers prefer to use free cash flows and risky investment behaviors for their opportunistic purposes rather than paying dividends to shareholders [15].

The concept of organizational effectiveness is one of the subjects that recently draw researchers’ attention [16] noted that most organizations focus is to enhance the ability of employees and managers for better performance in a dynamic environment [17] in defining effectiveness stated that scholars of management referred the effectiveness as an accessibility of goals. In addition, organizational effectiveness is complex issue and is not easy to understand, and because of it various approaches are provided to measuring organizational effectiveness and each of them are focused on one aspect of effectiveness. It should be noted that presence of effective communication among manger and employee in all levels of organization is essential to organization effectiveness and efficiency. In fact, leadership style represents style of mangers relationship with employees. Although necessity of having communication skills for success in the management of organizations is clear. Therefore, recognizing the relationship between communication skills and managers’ leadership styles, and the role of communication skills and leadership styles on organizational effectiveness could facilitate the direction of organization to achieving to predetermined goals. Given to these issues the main question of present study is that, is there relationship between sport managers communication skills and leadership styles? Could leadership styles effect on organizational effectiveness?

Methodology

The method of this study is correlation, and the conduction is survey. The data was collected using questionnaires and through field study procedure. The population of the research consisted of staff assistants and managers of the Sports and Youth Ministry, directors and their assistants, the director of Iran’s National Olympic Committee and sports federations. The population size in this study is based on data received from staff department were 669 people, respectively. Sample of this study was selected through stratified random sampling. To determine sample size Cochran method (.05) was used. Sample size was 245 staff. Barton G. E (1990) Communication Skills, Bass & Avolio (1995) Leadership Styles Organizational Effectiveness questionnaires were used. The Reliability of questionnaires has been reported to Communication Skills Questionnaire by Nazari et al. [4], (.81), Leadership Styles Questionnaire by Nazari et al. [8], and the Organizational Effectiveness questionnaire by Sheykh Alizadeh [18] (91/0). Also, the validity of questionnaires has been confirmed by the researchers. Data analysis in this research is descriptive and inferential. For analyzing data, the SPSS/16 and 8.54Lisrel software was applied and 95% of confidence level was considered (Tables 1-4).

Results

The results revealed that about 23.7 percent of Iranian sport managers are women and 76.3 percent are men. Also, 84.9 percent of managers have bachelor’s degree, 14.3 percent have a master’s degree, and only 0.8 percent have doctorate degrees. Sports managers’ field of study indicated that 51.4 percent of physical education, 48.6 percent was enrolled in other fields. The results show that there is significant differences between the mean of the current status and the desired status of sport managers within communication skills subscales include the verbal, listening and feedback. The first model shows the measure of communication skills, leadership styles and organizational effectiveness in a standard estimate. The estimate results on bottom of model (1) represents that the model is suitable. Given to Lisrel Chi-square score is (574.20) that are relatively high. Low score of Chi-square indicates low differences between research conceptual models with observed data. Also, output indicate (0.054) RMSEA for model. The lower the index, the model has a better fit. In other words, they have good fit and therefore it confirmed path analysis of communication skills, leadership styles and organizational effectiveness (Figure 1).

Discussion

According to the analysis, sport, and youth managers in compared to international Olympic committee and federation’s managers have good status on verbal and feedback skills, but in listening skills federation’s managers have desirable status. It seems that this result is because of manager’s different interactions with people from various sports, policy, cultural and social contexts. The possible reason may be type of clear management of federation’s managers in comparison with sport and youth managers. It seems that given to the complex nature of communication process and significant of interpersonal communication skills development, mangers must be developed their communication skills. According to the results on communication skills subscales the male managers have desirable status than female managers. The results of this study revealed that female mangers have good communication ability. The result of this study is consistent with Sullivan that women often tend to feel self- disclosure and have louder reactions to things. Nazari et al. [4] found significant relationship between men and women in verbal and listening skills. Given to significant relationship between job experience and management history with communication skills in all subscales and according to the Graham [3] that job issues, feelings and attitudes are the most influential factors on communication, individuals with high job experience and management history reach to the better place on environment and obtain the necessary skills that help them to create effective communication on the organization. Generally, the results of this study that the level of manager’s communication skills is not suitable are consistent with [3,4,19] and Aroofzad 2008.

The results showed that the dominant style of leadership styles in sport organizations are transformational leadership style. In other words, Iranian sport manager’s use more transformational leadership style than structural leadership style. The result of this part of study is consistent with [18]. It should be mentioned that attention to this style of leadership by managers may lead to increase job satisfaction, organizational commitment, performance, efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity. Given to the significant differences between leadership styles desired status and status scores among sport managers, therefore it could be contented that regarding leadership style Iranian sport organizations are not in good status. According to the findings of this study, both transformational and structural leadership style have significant effects on organizational effectiveness. Bass 2003 is believed that transformational leaders go beyond of the attention to existing and commonplace demands and always try to penetrate deep into the individual’s beliefs and change the structure of the hierarchy needs of followers. Transformational leaders communicate with their staff and attend to their individual differences and help them to using potential capability and increase their sense of responsibility towards their responsibilities within the organization. They strengthen job independence and challenges and by promoting thinking on working process extended inspire motivation in organizations. The result of this part of study is consistent with the findings of [8,18,20], Transformational leaders due to desirable level of communication skills that are potentially have a positive impact on organizational effectiveness. Given to the fact that leaders are needed to develop leadership skills such as the scope of communication skills and it enabled them to improve organizational performance change aspects of the organization culture. Therefore, according to the obtained results it is recommended that sport organization managers through developing organizational learning, increasing of organizational cohesion, developing teamwork culture and encourages creativity and initiative and also promoting strategic thinking in sport organizations could effect on organizational performance and effectiveness.

It is clear from the Figures 2 that on the proposed model the importance of fields in the communication skills include feedback, verbal and listening, respectively. These skills have large share on communication. While Barton G. E conceptual model of communication skills include verbal, listening and feedback skills. Transformational leadership style aspects have been determined that include personal equation, ideal attitudes, motivational inspirational, ideal behaviors, and stimulus intellectual have significant role on Transformational leadership style. Also, structural leadership style aspects have been determined that include passive management, contingent rewards and active management have significant role on structural leadership style. The proposed model to leadership styles is like Bass conceptual model; also, this model is confirmed on [8] study. Ultimately, on the proposed model the effectiveness include organization, job satisfaction, decision making, and communicate with peoples that have had most influence on organization effectiveness (Figure 2). The proposed model to effectiveness is like [20] conceptual model, too. Also, this model is confirmed on [8] study.

Generally, it could be stated that sport managers should be strengthen their communication skills and use the transformational leadership style as effective leadership in the sport organizations and try to reach to desirable level of their leadership style. Because strengthening of cohesion and stability on the sport organization lead to better doing of complex mission. Since communication skills can lead to enhanced efficiency and efficiency beside effectiveness lead to productivity on sports organizations. Therefore, corporate with managers that have high level of communication skills is recommended. It also recommended that in the selection of managers leadership style will be considered as a most important factor. In the sport organizations use the managers that have high level of communication skills [21-24].