Date of Award

12-1-2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Industrial/Organizational Psychology (PhD)

Department

Industrial/Organizational Psychology

First Advisor/Committee Member

Joey A. Collins, Psy.D.

Second Advisor/Committee Member

Thane Erickson, Ph.D.

Third Advisor/Committee Member

Louis R. Forbringer, Ph.D.

Keywords

Communication, Psychology, Motivational Interviewing, CoachMotivation, Transformational Leadership

Abstract

Communication is an intrinsic part of the human experience and has been widely studied empirically and practically within organizations. It is the bedrock for many workplace behaviors and outcomes such as employee trust, engagement, job satisfaction, and transformational leadership. Nonetheless, effective communication continues to be a challenge for organizations across a variety of sectors. The current study examined whether a communications training, CoachMotivation (CM), increased perceived effective communication. CM is derived from clinical psychology skills for behavior change, namely, the Motivational Interviewing concepts of open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summary statements. This study also considered the Big Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism) as predictors of baseline perceived effective communication and whether personality predicted residual change in perceived effective communication after participating in CM training. Findings include: (a) CM training increased self-perceptions of effective communication on the total communication scale (N = 153; t [152] = -8.19, p <.001, d =.66) as well as subscales of clarity (t [152] = -6.83, p <.001, d =.55), responsiveness (t [152] = -6.56, p<.001, d =.53), and comfort (t [152] = -7.13, p <.001, d =.58); (b) Extraversion predicted perceived effective communication at baseline for the total communication scale and comfort scale (B = .19; SE = .06; p <.001 and B = .14; SE = .03; p <.001, respectively); (c) Openness predicted residual change in perceived effective communication on the total communication scale and comfort scale (B = .09; SE = .04; p = .043 and B = .06; SE = .03; p = .034, respectively). This research provides practical implications for using CM to enhance communication and lays the groundwork for further study of CM's effects on more distal outcomes of communication as they relate to transformational leadership.

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