How should managers speak to/with their team? The framing and dissemination of communication norms and soft skills

Abstract

The paper examines texts used by managers to be informed on communication norms (French main magazine on management issues for a wider audience), and to improve their communication skills in their team-management (professional training catalogs, websites of managers’ think tanks and consultancy companies as well as the various reports and books they publish). It analyzes mainly paradoxical prescriptions in terms of managerial expression and the following game between what managers are and what they are required to “sound like”. It thus contributes to a critical thinking on the theoretical, normative and symbolic frameworks underlying the relations between management and verbal communication in a dual perspective of agency and symbolic rationalization.