The following is an excerpt from a chapter in the manual "How to Measure Your Communication Programs" by Angela D. Sinickas copyright 2005 Angela D. Sinickas. All rights reserved. ISBN 0-9661757-1-9
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	Measuring Face-to-Face Communication
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	Face-to-face communication includes group meetings, one-on-one sessions between employees and their supervisors, cascading communications from senior leadership through the organization -- as well as electronically facilitated versions of these meetings, such as videoconferences or teleconferences. Improving face-to-face communication is taking on a larger role in the job descriptions of corporate communicators. While interpersonal communication should never be expected to replace print, audiovisual and electronic media (because managers cannot be relied on to reach all employees with consistent messages on a timely basis), every communication campaign should consider how the chain of command will be used in the most complementary way to communicate various messages. While supervisors and managers have the responsibility for face-to- face communication with their staffs, corporate communicators can help them by providing supervisors with consistent content to pass along to employees in the form of supervisor briefing sheets or presentations and improve the process by providing training on communication skills like active listening and making presentations. The content that supervisors and managers should talk about can be determined from a pattern analysis measurement (described in another chapter, "Measuring Messages"). But the other component of face-to- face communication is the medium itself -- how good are supervisors and managers at the variety of communication skills that are expected of them? Skills assessment is a first step to increasing the effectiveness of the management ranks as a channel of communication. But even if they have the skills, are they effectively facilitating the movement of information up, down and across the organization? This chapter provides tools for measuring the effectiveness of the face-to-face communication process and the skills of individuals conducting it. It includes some objective measurement techniques, as well as some self-assessment tools for participants in interpersonal interactions. The measurement approaches in this chapter can be conducted on their own, or some can be grouped together as a series of questions asked in interviews, a focus group or a survey questionnaire. In this chapter, you will learn how to conduct the following types of measurements for interpersonal communication channels: • Analysis of supervisor communication skills. • Communication diary. • Analysis of meeting effectiveness. • Network analysis. • Message diffusion tracking. (End of Excerpt)