Abstract
This study was carried out to investigate the relationship between administrators’ communication styles and academic staff effectiveness in Kwara State, Nigeria . The survey research design was found suitable for the study. The population of academic staff in universities in Kwara State comprised of 5,456. The academic staff was divided into strata I.e. male and female. A stratified random technique was used to select 400 academic staff from the population. Two sets of questionnaires tagged Administratorr’s Communication Styles Questionnaire (ACSQ) and Academic Staff Effectiveness Questionnaire (ASEQ) were used for data collection. The validity of the instruments were done and pilot tested on 20 academic staff in a university that was not actually used for the study. Cronbach Alpha was used to ascertain the reliability co-efficient of the instruments and this yielded .65 and .62 respectively. Analyses of data collected were subjected to both descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings of this study revealed that the promoters communication style was the most commonly used by the administrators of universities in Kwasra State, Nigeria. It was further revealed in the study that the measures of academic staff-effectiveness i. e. teaching and research were on the average except community service which was low. The study showed that there was a significant relationship between the measures of administrators’ communication styles and academic staff effectiveness. The study recommended the following among others that administrators of universities should adopt the best communication style that is in agreement with the effectiveness of their staff since there is no best communication style for all occasions. Administrators should employ the communication styles that will foster effectiveness in terms of goal.