What is it about?
This is a study of a sample of 273 well-written emails solicited from Polish managers who had to switch to communicating more via text than talk during the pandemic to manage the work of their units. Apart from sharing (anonymized) email texts, the managers also took a personality test and a leadership style test. Previous literature suggested that "conscientious" and "agreeable" managers are better at facilitating two main work-related goals - Achievement and Communion, according to the Theory of Purposeful Work Behaviour
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Why is it important?
While personality may be importatnt for how managers communicate, written messages can be rewritten and recomposed for better efficacy. The personality factor is not a determinant of written communication style, because situations of work instruction giving, task management, feedback provision and relationship building may in fact depend on context and situation more.
Perspectives
We checked the salient linguistic and rhetorical patterns in efficacious managerial written communications and established a list of recommendations that could be useful for a reflexive manager who wants to use written texts for better completion of Achevement and Communion purposes at work. We believe that managers who are not highly "conscientious" or "agreeable" by personality could use the recommendations as modelling devices. They could monitor their writing style and adopt effective patterns.
Dr hab. Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska
University of Opole
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Managing in Writing: Recommendations from Textual Patterns in Managers’ Email Communication, Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, December 2022, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/23294906221137860.
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