Organizational Communication Applied

A nationally recognized organization would seem to have little to improve upon but this is often times not the case. The Saint Mary’s College golf team is a nationally recognized golf team. They have gone to the national championship four years in a row representing our school at the highest level of the NCAA organization possible, but still have yet to win a national title. One may attribute these facts to the skills and abilities of the members of the golf team but it is often times a deeper reasoning where the problem lies.

The Saint Mary’s College golf team is currently made up of nine female golfers and a head coach. The organizational communication being used by the head coach, the leader, of the team is communication as an information transfer. Information is sent from the coach to the players typically through the channel of email. Unfortunately this method of communication makes too many assumptions that do not hold true especially when it comes to working with a group of 9 women. Feelings and emotions are not transferred in the words of those emails and this is difficult for women to work with. The receivers in this case, women, extract thoughts and feelings from the words and these may be incorrect assumptions. Here we discover we have already uncovered many downfalls of the organization. The management practices, gender communication and overall communication are all at question here in this organization.

Using the current method of organizational communication over simplifies communication. Treating communication as a pipeline system where information is spewed and expected to end up in the right location with the correct understanding is very unrealistic. The coach (sender) sees the players (receivers) as a passive receptor uninvolved with you meaning of the message. The results and consequences of the communication often directly affect the players making this mode of communication faulty. Using this type of communication does not account for the differences in interpretation between speaker and listener. In laymen’s terms, the women of the golf team are unable to ask questions of the coach are expected to always understand and properly interpret what is to be transferred in messages. We are treated as if we have no interest in the decisions that are made and the results that come from those decisions and this is simply not the case.

Modifying a working and mostly successful organization is often risky and difficult and requires extensive studies and research. In this situation the best possible approach to communication would be the use communication as a transactional process. This would be most successful because of the women on the team and their requirements for understanding the messages being sent from their coach. The idea that you cannot not communicate is one that is portrayed in this organizational communication process and it is an important one. You should no be able to tell the difference between who is sending and who is receiving a message because the communication should be continuous. One man managing a team of nine women is a difficult task and he has worked to the best of his abilities to succeed but information transfer is the wrong approach to use to communication. Using communication as a transactional process requires face to face communication for best results because non-verbal feedback is readily available. These non-verbal messages accompany the verbal and can fill in the gaps and questions the team members may have about the message being sent.

One approach to conquering this communication challenge would be to replace the one who is failing to communicate properly but that is not the answer in this situation. The coach is so successful and good at what he does Saint Mary’s would be at a disadvantage to lose this leader. Instead the answer is cooperation and coordination. Recently the athletic department has brought on an assistant golf coach to work with the current coach. The assistant golf coach is a women with a degree in communications. This strategy was an excellent decision by administration because it is the balance that allows the team to have the best of both worlds. The golf team is able to keep the coach with the wealth of golf knowledge and success and incorporate someone with strong communication skills and enough golf skills to understand everything that is happening.


This new implementation of management practices, improved gender communication, and the new approach to overall communication can and has begun to make leaps and bounds forward for the organization. The Saint Mary’s College golf team currently has the skills, abilities and knowledge to be a high caliber team in the NCAA and this is shown by the national recognition but these changes and new implementations could take the golf team to the next step. The organization would become more cohesive and unified if they were better able to communicate from the top down and that is exactly the opportunity the administration gave to team when they hired the assistant coach. Golf skills don’t make a golf team, players make a great golf team.