The effectiveness of communication skills training on organizational psychological capital and transformational leadership style

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 MA student, Educational Psychology, Islamic Azad University, Tehran Medical Unit, Tehran, Iran.

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Medicine, Islamic Azad University, Tehran Department of Medicine, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of communication skills training on psychological capital and transformational leadership style in municipal managers. The statistical population of the research included 140 municipal managers of the 3rd district of Tehran, 30 of whom scored poorly in Luthans (2007) psychological capital questionnaire and Bass and Avolio's (1985) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. They were selected by convenience sampling and placed in experimental and control groups. The experimental group received McKay's (2009) communication skills training in 10 sessions. The findings showed that manager’s competence in communication skills effectively improves the scores of organizational psychological capital and their leadership style. Therefore, communication skills training increases psychological capital and transformative leadership style in managers.
Introduction
Psychological capital with four dimensions of hope, optimism, flexibility and self-efficacy is an important psychological resource (Fraser and  Hvolby, 2020). As an intangible organizational capital, psychological capital can increase employee’s self-confidence, optimism, hope and flexibility, and improve the individual and organizational performance. (Hovida , Mokhtari Far and Forohar, 2017). The style and type of executive leadership in organizations are among the most strategic tools for excellence or failure in organizations. (Chen, et al., 2018). Transformational leaders have characteristics such as role modeling, personal and dedicated attention to employees, inspiring motivation and intelligent stimulation (Chin FeiGeh, Adam and Kong Tam, 2016). One of the important prerequisites of organizational behavior is individual’s communication skills. Managers' communication skills mean verbal skills, hearing, and feedback skills .(Moghimi, 2016). Calvo and Garcia (2021) in their research titled ‘the effect of psychological capital on graduates' perception of employability: The mediating role of communication skills’ showed that increasing students' psychological capital has a positive and direct effect on increasing their competence and communication skills.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of communication skills training on psychological capital and transformational leadership style in the managers of the 3rd district of Tehran.
Methodology
The current applied research used a quasi-experimental design with a control group, pre-test and post-test. The statistical population of the research included 140 municipal managers of the 3rd district of Tehran, 30 of whom obtained poor scores in the psychological capital questionnaire of Luthans  (2007) and Bass and Avolio's (1985) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. They were divided into an experimental and a control group. the experimental group received McKay, Fanning and Davis (2009) communication skills training in 10 sessions.
Tool:
1- Luthans Psychological Capital Questionnaires (PCQ) (2007): This questionnaire has 24 items in four subscales of hope, resilience, optimism and self-efficacy. Luthans (2007) reported its chi-square ratio as 0.97 and 0.08. Bahadri Khosrowshahi, Hashemi Nusrat Abad and Babapour (2012) confirmed its reliability in Iran through Cronbach's alpha of 0.85.
2- Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ5) Bass and Avolio (1985): MLQ5 contains 18 items in four components of personal attention, inspirational motivation, ideal influence and mental stimulation. Marjqol (2013) used the opinions of their supervisor and consulting professor to determine the validity of the questionnaire, and then used the opinions of several community experts to modify and finalize the questionnaire. Rohi  Marjqol (2013) confirmed the reliability of the questionnaire components through Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.97.
Results
In this section, the results are interpreted using the statistical method of univariate analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The first hypothesis of the research was that communication skills training is effective on the psychological capital of the managers of the 3rd district of Tehran.
According to the data in Table 1, the value of F = 16.139 with degrees of freedom (1 and 57) in the investigated variable is significant at the a = 0.05 level. Therefore, it can be concluded that the application of communication skills training has a significant effect on psychological capital.
In order to test the second hypothesis of the research regarding the effect of communication skills training on transformational leadership in the municipal managers of the 3rd district of Tehran, ANCOVA was ruan again, the results of which are shown in Table 2.
According to the data in Table 2, the value of F = 34.666 with the degree of freedom (1 and 57) in the investigated variable is significant at the a = 0.05 level. Therefore, it can be concluded that the use of communication skills training has a significant effect on the transformational leadership style.
Discussion and conclusion
The results showed that communication skills training is effective on organizational psychological capital and leadership style of managers. The limitations of the research include lack of full access to all employees' information, study setting being limited to ony one district in Tehran, and the participants being only the managers in that district. It is suggested that managers be taught communication skills and public relations, and that supervising managers consider the level of direct communication between managers and employees or clients as a criterion for their evaluation.

Keywords

References

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