I have just taken part in a group session trying to write statements for a general survey that the students will have to undertake for COMM12025, Organisational Communications. One of the hardest things that I found is getting people to think of ‘what’ they want to know from their recipients. For this subject, students have to do a communication audit on one communication channel. There is no problem getting the quantifiable data, that seems to be the really easy part, but getting the qualitative data seems to be a sticking point. I have tried to get students to think of just five things that they want to find out from their recipients.

The best way to do this is to ask a series of questions, and then when they have their questionnaire these questions need to be turned into statements. What I have suggested is that questions such as. “Do you think that email is the best channel for communication in this company?” could be changed to a statement like “Email is the best channel for this company”, agree or disagree.

The way that we communicate within an organisation tells a lot about the style of leadership, as much as it does about communication flow. Getting people, students and others, to recognise this is part of why this course is running.

Cheers, Ken.

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