Increasing Employee Performance: Using Supervisory Communication and Leadership to Increase Employee Morale, Production, Performance, & Job Satisfaction

Supervisor leadership is the act of engaging others to follow through modeling and communication; a process that is neither static nor simple. Leaders are abandoning transactional (i.e., give-and-take) approaches to leadership and adopting transformational approaches, which are reciprocal, rely on trust, empower employees, and encourage ownership of organizational goals. Leadership and communication strongly correlate with employee and organizational performance. To explain the relationship, Dr. Richard Schuttler created a model of the Laws of Communication. Its theoretical framework suggested supervisor leadership and communication predicted employee behavior and organizational performance. Using the model and the companion Supervisor Communication and Leadership Inventory, Dr. Embry's study at a major federal agency incorporated a mixed-methods descriptive approach with a cross-sectional online survey to identify predictor and criterion variables relationships. Study results have broad significance for general leadership with specific examples for increased employee morale and organizational performance.