RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMMUNICATION STYLES AND ADMINISTRATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS IN ANAMBRA STATE
ABSTRACT
The study investigated the relationship between communication styles and administrative effectiveness of public secondary school principals in Anambra State. Correlational design was used for the study. The study guided by five research questions and five hypotheses respectively. The population for the study comprised all the 6,185 teachers in all the six education zones in Anambra State. A sample of 619 teachers representing 10 % of teachers in all the six state public secondary schools in Anambra State was used for the study with the aid of stratified, purposive, and simple random sampling technique. A researcher developed instrument titled “Communication Styles Questionnaire (CSQ) and Principals Administrative Effectiveness Questionnaire (PAEQ)” were used for the study. The instrument was duly validated by experts. The Cronbach Alpha was used for reliability test. This yielded an average index of 0.83 which was considered high enough in making the instruments reliable for the study. The researcher with five briefed research assistants collected the data for the study. Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to analyze the study. Findings of the study revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between; the use of downward communication style and principals administrative effectiveness; the use of upward communication style and principals administrative effectiveness; principals’ use of horizontal communication style and their administrative effectiveness; principals’ use of interpersonal communication style and their administrative effectiveness; and principals’ use of combination of a four communication styles and their administrative effectiveness. The findings imply that ineffectiveness of some principals in secondary school could also be as a result of the communication style adopted by the principals. Based on the findings, the researcher recommended amongst others that principals should try to understand the characteristics of people he/she is communicating with before adopting any communication style will be effective on the people h e/she is communicating with so as to guarantee achievement of task set to achieve.