Well-educated and sufficiently trained employees are conducive to the success of a business (Al-Adwani 2014:137). According to Daoanis (2012:48), education and training in communication are included among the most important skills a subordinate should have in a business. Differences in level of education and training can be linked to different employee perceptions of aspects of communication. Gondlekar and Kamat (2016:193, 195) found that employees with postgraduate degrees had reached significantly higher levels of personal growth and development within businesses than those with only a matric qualification. Employees with higher levels of education were also found to have higher perceived levels of respect and satisfaction within the business as well as regarding the effectiveness of their managers’ communication competencies (Erdil & Tanova 2015:187; Hailu et al. 2016). It can be concluded that managers who consider the educational levels of subordinates can promote effective communication (Tschannen & Lee 2012).

Oosthuizen (2011:66) describes managerial competencies as a set of skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviour that a manager needs to be successful in a variety of organisational settings and managerial jobs. Effective communication is imperative in business because it affects how managers and subordinates execute their tasks, as well as the quality of their execution (Henrico & Visser 2012:185–186).

Listening can be referred to as the act of consciously paying attention to not only the message but also the manner in which the message is being conveyed, such as the use of language, voice, tone and body language of the speaker (Certo 2014; Pelham 2006:180). Effective managers are active listeners who are engaged and invested in the outcome of the interaction (De Janasz et al. 2009:128). To be truly effective listeners, managers are advised to be supportive and genuinely concerned about the feelings of their subordinates during the communication process through empathetic listening (Henrico & Visser 2012:185).

As indicated in the problem statement, listening is a crucial element of the communication process. Listening skills are significantly more important than speaking for managerial success, business performance and effective communication (Flynn, Valikoski & Grau 2008:148; Fracaro 2001:3). Burley-Allen (2005:2) states that a significant portion (40%) of the communication process is made up of listening, yet despite this frequency communicators may not actually grasp the impact that effective and ineffective listening have on interpersonal interactions (Bambacas & Patrickson 2008:67). Managers who are effective listeners connect with subordinates, which, in turn, may result in those managers being perceived as leaders to be followed by choice (Canary et al. 2008:111). Subordinates also perceive managers who actively and attentively listen as being more competent communicators, which increases the likelihood of achieving interpersonal objectives. Managers gain insights into complex problems and solutions and are better able to provide valuable feedback (Canary et al. 2008:111; Trees 2000:259) when they listen attentively. Managers who are ineffective listeners are more likely to make mistakes, are generally less proficient at their managerial tasks and obstruct the flow of information (Pelham 2006:180). Insufficient listening skills may cause managers to squander potentially lucrative opportunities (French 2013; Johnson 2013).

According to Hartley and Bruckman (2002:20), managers can improve their listening skills by applying two steps: firstly, developing the aptitude to identify and deal with obstacles that prevent optimal listening and secondly cultivating and using behaviours that assist listening. Hoppe (2007:11–12) suggests a six-step model to assist managers to specifically improve their active listening: paying attention, withholding judgement, reflecting, clarifying, summarising and sharing. As the initial senders in the communication process, subordinates can smile, lean forward, maintain eye contact and arch their necks forward to increase the probability of their managers listening to them actively (Buck 2004:25).

Feedback can be regarded as providing information relating to the performance of the receiver with the goal to improve performance (Dai, De Meuse & Peterson 2010:213; Dobbelaer, Prins & van Dongen 2013:99). During the feedback phase of the communication process, the message could also consist of validation that the first message was comprehended, reiterate the first message to ensure an accurate interpretation or request additional information (Jones & George 2013:416–417). Managers and subordinates provide and seek feedback with the intention of confirming, adding to, overwriting or restructuring received information (Ragusa 2011:21). Feedback enables subordinates to determine whether they have been successful in transmitting their message. Naturally, it also assists managers to evaluate peers and subordinates according to predetermined, preset standards, expectations and norms (Daft & Marcic 2009:573).

The importance of feedback was discussed in the problem statement. Feedback is mentally reassuring and usually leads to improved performance and growth (De Janasz et al. 2009:392; Kobeleva & Strongman 2011:98). Modern managers are usually preoccupied with their strategic responsibilities, effectively removing them from the ground-level, day-to-day operations of the businesses. This causes a rift between managers and subordinates and makes it more challenging to provide and receive effective feedback. This gap can only be bridged by fostering an effective feedback culture within a business (Jones & George 2013:418–419). Managers can only positively alter dwindling subordinate performance with effective feedback (Longenecker 2010:34). However, regardless of its importance, feedback is often neglected, and managers and subordinates find providing and requesting feedback to be inherently challenging (Daft & Marcic 2009:573). This could be because of the feedback provider’s fear of the receiver’s reaction, fear of insufficient tangible support of the feedback or fear of a potential rise in tension in the interpersonal relationship (Dixon & O’Hara 2010).

A prerequisite of effective feedback within the business context is established standards (Longenecker 2010:38). To provide effective feedback, managers are advised to be specific, provide the feedback face to face, be sensitive and offer solutions when providing negative feedback (Wertheim 2005). Daoanis (2012:49) recommends clear objectives and proper documentation as effective feedback practices that can serve as tangible support for the feedback and increase subordinate commitment and performance. Krasman (2011:24) found that having unambiguous goals and appropriate standards in place also increases the likelihood of feedback-seeking among managers and subordinates. Consistently seeking feedback demonstrates a subordinate’s willingness to learn and leads to improved self-awareness. However, excessive feedback requests can lead to perceptions of incompetence and could indicate a lack of initiative (Van Rensburg & Prideaux 2006:566).

According to Brown (2001:27), interference is any obstruction to the effective exchange of thoughts, ideas or commands. Interference can, therefore, refer to anything that hinders the communication process, and it can occur during any phase of the communication process (Lunenburg 2011:4). A common example of interference within a business context is literal blare caused by clattering machinery during production (Colquit et al. 2013:393). There are many ways for a message to get misinterpreted, distorted, misunderstood or confused during the listening and feedback phase. The barriers that stand out the most during the listening phase of the communication process are: jumping to conclusions, hearing what one wants to hear, formulating and rehearsing responses, being inattentive (that is, thinking about other matters), judging the sender, having a closed mind, feeling anxious or self-conscious and excessive interrupting (Dixon & O’Hara 2010). During the feedback phase, fearing tension, receiver reaction and lack of concrete substantiation can be sources of barriers (Dixon & O’Hara 2010).

Having sufficient knowledge about interference and the contributing barriers to listening and feedback enables managers to deal with it better and promotes effective communication (Truter 2006:1–3). It can be concluded that the most effective way of dealing with interference is by being knowledgeable about it and actively trying to minimise its impact on the communication process (Erven 2012; Pfeiffer 1998)

An exploratory factor analysis was executed to determine valid constructs. Bartlett’s test of sphericity and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy were used to test whether the data were suitable for factor analysis. The KMO statistic generally varies between 0 and 1; the KMO should be 0.50 or higher for a satisfactory factor analysis. In this study, the KMO measure of sampling adequacy was 0.950. Bartlett’s test of sphericity tests the null hypothesis that the original correlation matrix is an identity matrix, which would indicate that the variables are unrelated. The associated Bartlett’s test of sphericity for the current study was found to be statistically significant in all cases.

A principal component analysis technique was used to extract factors from the data, which best describe the underlying relationships among the variables. Eigenvalues exceeding 1.0 with loads of 0.30 were used for inclusion of items in the exploratory factor analysis. An oblimin with the Kaiser normalisation technique was applied. Five factors, representing 51.79% of the variance explained in the data, were extracted. For the purpose of this article, only three of the five factors will be discussed.

The above analysis was followed by a CFA. The chi-square minimum discrepancy (CMIN) divided by degrees of freedom (DF) function was used to calculate the goodness of fit in AMOS. The goodness of fit is acceptable if CMIN/DF is between 2 and 5 (Arbuckle 2003:77–85). In this study, the goodness of fit was acceptable (CMIN/DF = 2.929). Additionally, a model is regarded as acceptable and valid in a CFA if the following conditions are met:

Additionally, in manual calculations outside of AMOS, the following was found:

Consequently, the researchers believe that the instrument can be seen as construct valid.

According to Delport and Roestenburg (2011:173), content validity is concerned with the extent to which a measuring instrument covers the whole content domain. The items in each scale of the measuring instrument must consequently be representative of the conceptual definition under discussion and must measure the concept that the researcher intends to measure.

In this study, content validity was verified by knowledgeable study leaders and supervisors from the School of Business Management at the North-West University’s Potchefstroom campus, who all found the instrument to be content valid.

The researchers computed the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients to establish the statistical reliability of the constructs. Zikmund and Babin (2015:280) state that a Cronbach’s alpha value between 0.60 and 0.70 indicates fair reliability, a value between 0.70 and 0.80 indicates good reliability and a value between 0.80 and 0.96 indicates excellent reliability. Scales with a Cronbach’s alpha value below 0.60 indicate poor reliability.

Table 1 depicts the reliability testing conducted in this study.

It is evident from Table 1 that all the constructs have good reliability.

Nearly an equal number of males and females took part in this study, the majority of whom had a Grade 12 qualification (50.2%), followed by approximately one-third who had obtained a diploma or degree. Lastly, only 123 of the subordinates had obtained a postgraduate degree. Only 337 (36.2%) of the respondents had completed a course to improve their own communication skills. The average age of the respondents was 33 years old.

Table 2 depicts the mean scores and standard deviations of the items measuring managers’ perceived listening skills on a five-point Likert scale.

Regarding their managers’ listening skills, subordinates agreed most with the statement, ‘My manager makes sure he or she understands what I am saying in a conflict situation’. According to Cohen (2014:139), people generally listen poorly during situations of conflict. Managers who can listen effectively under these conditions promote the solving of problems and the resolution of the conflict. However, subordinates had a less positive perception about their managers’ aptitude to read their emotions during conversations. Employee engagement, commitment to production quality as well as an understanding of business issues decline when managers fail to read subordinates’ emotions during the listening phase of the communication process (Mishra et al. 2014:196). The overall relatively positive mean score for managers’ listening skills as perceived by their subordinates was 3.531 (standard deviation [SD] = 1.083).

Table 3 depicts the mean scores and standard deviations regarding managers’ feedback skills on a five-point Likert scale.

The statement ‘My manager does not have trouble handling conflict’ had the highest mean score of 3.79 (SD = 1.033). Managers who appropriately handle conflict during the feedback phase of the communication process take steps towards improving their overall communication competencies and can identify and consolidate sources of deficiencies and make the necessary amendments to reward systems (Jiang et al. 2014:101). Non-verbal feedback, such as leaning forward, is deemed to be very credible and can increase the likelihood of active listening among subordinates during the feedback phase (Buck 2004:25; Trenholm & Jensen 2013:50). However, in this study, the gesture of leaning forward so as to show interest had a lower score of 3.57 (SD = 1.002). Managers can improve their feedback skills by addressing this behaviour specifically. The overall mean score for the respondents’ perceptions of how well managers provide feedback was 3.668 (SD = 1.048), pointing out that respondents perceived managers’ overall feedback skills to be slightly above average.

Table 4 provides insight into the mean and standard deviation scores of the items measuring managers’ ability to deal with interference during the listening and feedback phases.

The overall mean score for managers’ ability to deal with interference during the listening and feedback phases was a positive 3.720 (SD = 1.057). It can be concluded that subordinates generally agreed with the items within this construct. ‘My manager does not use technical language (jargon) that I do not understand’ was the statement subordinates agreed with most. When managers avoid the unnecessary use of technical jargon, it improves relationships between managers and their subordinates, enhances the effectiveness of the communication process and increases productivity (Patoko & Yazdanifard 2014:570). On the opposite side of the spectrum, subordinates agreed equally less with the statements ‘My manager makes sure I do not have an overload of information when giving an instruction’, which might lead to a loss of the intended purpose of the communication (Daft & Marcic 2009:552), and ‘My manager does not allow a poor relationship with a person to detract him/her from effective listening’, which may result in subordinates being more hesitant to report problems they may have experienced in the execution of their duties (Jones & George 2013:418–419).

Analysis of variance was used to determine statistically significant differences (p ≤ 0.05), and Cohen’s d-values (d ≥ 0.5) were used to determine practically significant differences between the perception of subordinates regarding their managers’ listening skills, feedback skills and their ability to deal with interference during the above-mentioned communication processes based on their highest level of education. The findings are summarised in Table 5.

Regarding listening skills, there was a statistically significant difference (p = 0.000) between the perceptions of subordinates with varying educational levels (Grade 12 mean = 3.410, SD = 0.790; diploma or degree mean = 3.622, SD = 0.722; postgraduate degree mean = 3.588, SD = 0.662) in terms of how they perceived this skill.

In further conducting post hoc tests, it was found that subordinates with Grade 12 and those with a diploma or degree (Tukey’s honest significant difference [HSD] at Sig. = 0.000/p = 0.000 and Games-Howell at Sig. = 0.000/p = 0.000) had statistically differing perceptions. Respondents with a diploma or degree (mean = 3.622) perceived their managers’ listening skills to be slightly better than those with Grade 12 (mean = 3.410) did. However, Cohen’s effect size (d = 0.2) suggests little practical significance.

With regard to managers’ feedback skills, there was a statistically significant difference (p = 0.049) between the perceptions of subordinates with varying educational levels (Grade 12 mean = 3.602, SD = 0.728, diploma or degree mean = 3.726, SD = 0.726; postgraduate degree mean = 3.701, SD = 0.720) during the communication process.

In further conducting post hoc tests, it was found that subordinates with Grade 12 and those with a diploma or degree (Tukey HSD at Sig. = 0.048/p = 0.048 and Games-Howell at Sig. = 0.049/p = 0.049) had statistically differing perceptions. Subordinates with a diploma or degree (mean = 3.726) had a slightly better perception of their managers’ feedback skills than respondents with Grade 12 (mean = 3.602) did. However, Cohen’s effect size (d = 0.2) suggests negligible practical significance.

Regarding ability to deal with interference during the listening and feedback phases, there was a statistically significant difference (p = 0.042) between the perceptions of subordinates from different educational levels (Grade 12 mean = 3.665, SD = 0.791; diploma or degree mean = 3.792, SD = 0.716; postgraduate degree mean = 3.785, SD = 0.641) regarding how subordinates perceived their managers’ ability to deal with interference during the listening and feedback phases during the communication process.

However, the Tukey HSD and Games-Howell post hoc tests yielded no specific group differences, and Cohen’s effect size (d = 0.2) suggested negligible practical significance.

Similarly, Tschannen and Lee (2012) and Erdil and Tanova (2015:187) found that higher levels of education were associated with better perceptions of communication skills. The findings of this study, however, are specific to the three aspects of effective communication under discussion. Furthermore, regarding listening and feedback, the statistically significant differences were only between subordinates with Grade 12 and those with a diploma or degree, whereas from the mean scores it can be concluded that the perceptions of subordinates with postgraduate degrees slightly declined. In this study, the increased educational level, from first degree to a postgraduate degree did not seem to improve the respondents’ perception of their managers’ listening or feedback skills or ability to deal with interference. The researchers believe that the relatively small number of respondents (p. 123) involved may have contributed to this finding. It should be noted, however, that the mean scores for the perceptions of subordinates with postgraduate degrees were higher than those of subordinates with only a Grade 12 qualification.

Regarding hypothesis 1, stating that there is a statistically significant difference between the perceptions of subordinates with different educational levels regarding their managers’ listening skills during the communication process, the following was found:

There was a statistically significant difference between the perceptions of subordinates with different educational levels regarding their managers’ listening skills during the communication process.

In post hoc tests, it was found that employees with a Grade 12 qualification and those with a diploma or degree had statistically significant different perceptions, where subordinates with a diploma or degree perceived their managers’ listening skills to be slightly better than those with only a matric qualification. The perceptions of respondents with a postgraduate degree did not differ statistically significantly from those with the other two levels of education.

Consequently, Ha1 is accepted regarding statistically significant differences between the perceptions of subordinates with Grade 12 and those with a graduate qualification concerning managers’ listening skills.

Regarding hypothesis 2, stating that there is a statistically significant difference between the perceptions of subordinates with different educational levels regarding their managers’ feedback skills during the communication process, the following was found:

There was a statistically significant difference between the perceptions of subordinates with different educational levels regarding their managers’ feedback skills during the communication process.

In post hoc tests, it was found that employees with a Grade 12 qualification and those with a diploma or degree had statistically significant different perceptions, where subordinates with a diploma or degree perceived their managers’ feedback skills to be slightly better than those with only a graduate qualification did. The perceptions of respondents with a postgraduate degree did not differ statistically significantly from those with the other two levels of education regarding managers’ feedback skills.

Consequently, Ha2 is accepted regarding statistically significant differences between the perceptions of Grade 12 and graduate-level subordinates concerning managers’ feedback skills.

Regarding hypothesis 3, stating that there is a statistically significant difference on how subordinates with different education levels perceived their managers’ ability to deal with interference during the listening and feedback phases of the communication process, the following were found:

There was a statistically significant difference between the perceptions of subordinates with different educational levels regarding their managers’ ability to deal with interference during the listening and feedback phases of the communication process.

However, in the post hoc tests, no statistically significant differences could be identified between perceptions of subordinates regarding managers’ ability to deal with interference during the listening and feedback stages of communication.

Consequently, Ha3 is accepted regarding the existence of statistically significant differences between the perceptions of Grade 12, graduate-level and postgraduate-level subordinates concerning managers’ ability to deal with interference during the listening and feedback phases, without having been able to determine the educational levels wherein these differences occur.