Importance of Competences in Communication, as Perceived by Business Leaders

Abstract

From the perspective of a hierarchically ordered company, the expectations of company leaders concerning their employees' necessary competencies play a greater role than vice versa. This paper light on the expectations of leaders and sub-leaders of micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises concerning the competencies of employees in neighbouring parts of Hungary and Slovakia.
The authors' collected 28 scientific papers on the issue of communication competencies in order to map out 21 "common denominators" derived from the combined competence lists. A survey was conducted with 222 respondents to measure the subjective importance assigned to these traits and to observe the respondents' attitudes towards the effectiveness of communication training programmes they had participated in. On the Hungarian side, speech competence proved to be the most crucial competence for business leaders, followed by attention/reflection and interpersonal communication skills. In Slovakia, persuasion was reported to be the most crucial trait, the second most important is the application of confirmation and feedback, and the third is speech competence.
In terms of the participants' past communication training experiences, the competences of group communication, assertiveness and leadership skills were reported to have been the main areas of focus. The findings indicate that overall satisfaction with communication training programmes depends on neither the amount of participants' leadership experience nor the companies' field(s) of activity, nor the nationality (i.e. the venue) of the companies. The overall satisfaction rate is 2.53 on a four-grade scale among those who ever attended communication training programmes.