Communicate and interact productively with a diverse and changing workforce and citizenry

What "takeaways" from these assignments demonstrate a deeper interacting with diverse audiences? What have you learned about the following:

• recognizing the legitimacy of different cultures and ideologies as they relate to management and policy making in public service

• encouraging the expression of competing viewpoints in management and policy making

• understanding the role of competing professional orientations and other sources of conflict that exist within public-service organizations

• knowing all forms of discrimination and legal requirements, human-relations concepts, and techniques designed to ensure tolerance and equal opportunity in the workplace

• understanding competing values and practical tensions embodied in alternative conceptions of "merit" such as objective job-related criteria, demographic representation, and political patronage

• knowing the legal constraints on human resources administration such as affirmative action, validity testing, procedural due process, and First Amendment protections

See Writing about Class Assignments and Writing about Projects for guiding questions specific to assignments and projects.

Reflect on communication decisions

Demonstrate how you as a “policy consultant” are learning how to communicate with a client, decision maker, or other beneficiary of the information you provide. Draw from the assignments completed in your academic courses, job-related experiences, capstone or extracurricular activities to demonstrate this competency, focusing on communication activities and deliverables. Attach any documents, blog posts, evaluation results or feedback abstracts, executive summaries, photos, slideshows, or other artifacts as needed to support your reflection.

Guiding Questions

1. What did you do? Identify & Analyze
   What was the problem/situation that you (or your team) investigated? Describe the assignment context including the client, problem statement, limitations, prerequisites, stakeholders, etc. In addition, what did you need to learn about the audience and stakeholders in order to prepare the message? How did you communicate your findings to your client? Describe the different project deliverables (including your contributions if the project resulted from a team effort). What was the outcome (evaluation from the instructor, team leader, or client)?

2. What does it mean? Evaluate & Synthesize
   How did you prepare the message according to your analysis of the audience and stakeholders? What have you learned as a “policy consultant” about how to communicate with different users: clients, decision makers, colleagues, issue experts, or multiple audiences?

3. Who benefits & how? Transfer (Bottom Line)
   What types of audiences do you expect your post-graduate work will require you to write for? Are they similar or different from the audiences you wrote for at Bush School? What do you expect to apply in the workplace from the lessons learned about preparing written deliverables for different audiences?

Reflect on the writing process

As a graduate student, you have undoubtedly prepared many documents for course assignments, some brief (2-5 pages), others much longer (20+ pages), some requiring a response in a couple of days, others having a much longer deadline. Regardless of the assignment scope, what have you learned about the writing process and how have you learned it?

Guiding Questions

• 1. What did you do? Identify & Analyze
     What types of assignments have you prepared in graduate school? To whom were they directed? What were their purposes? How did you prepare them? What steps did you take? For example, an assignment you completed required you to prepare a brief for a decision maker. How did your approach differ from one used to prepare a much longer paper?

  2. What does it mean? Evaluate & Synthesize?
     What did you learn about the writing process by completing the assignments the way you did? What works, what doesn't? Why? What criteria would a reasonable, effective approach include?

  3. Who benefits & how? Transfer (Bottom Line)
     What type of writing do you expect to do on the job? How do you plan to approach these writing assignments based upon your understanding of what works or what criteria must be met to prepare the quality of response the reader expects?

Reflect on communication challenges

Many of your courses have required you to prepare policy briefs describing your analysis of a policy issue and recommending a position or a course of action for a decision maker. When have you encountered the challenge of preparing a brief (or other communication deliverable) that you understood may not be well-received by the reader? For example, when have your findings conflicted with the interests of key stakeholders, or when have your recommendations required costs or other challenges that may not be enthusiastically embraced by your reader? How did you address the challenge of communicating difficult information to a disinterested or even a potentially antagonistic audience?

Guiding Questions

1. What did you do? Identify & Analyze
   Describe the context where you encountered this communication challenge. What components made it particularly challenging? How did you address the issues of communicating clearly and diplomatically to achieve the best possible response? What did you need to consider as you prepared your response? Any pitfalls you needed to avoid?

2. What does it mean? Evaluate & Synthesize
   Identify and explain communication principles that surfaced from your analysis. What are you learning about communicating controversial findings in complex rhetorical contexts?

3. Who benefits & how? Transfer (Bottom Line)
   What similar scenarios do you expect to encounter in your post-graduate work? How do you expect to apply the principles you have learned in these challenging contexts?

Reflect on oral briefings

Many of your courses have required you to prepare oral briefings. Reflect on what you have learned about the importance of audience to the presentations you make. You may want to consult the attachment, prepared by the Texas A&M University Writing Center, which explains key considerations about audience to the message you deliver.

Guiding Questions

• 1. What did you do? Identify & Analyze
     Describe the different audiences targeted by your oral briefings. First, what did you need to learn about your audiences in order to deliver a strategic, succinct presentation? Identify essential questions you should be able to answer about your audience as you prepare your briefing. Second, how are you communicating the information you gathered from scholarly sources and subject matter experts to non-technical audiences? Describe how you determined the scope of your presentation based upon the needs of your audience. Third, how are you adjusting your delivery to audience your presentation addresses?

  2. What does it mean? Evaluate & Synthesize
     How does the audience influence the message and delivery of a briefing? Why is knowing your audience essential to a successful presentation?

  3. Who benefits and how? Transfer (Bottom Line)
     What types of audiences do you expect to encounter in preparing and delivering professional briefs in the work you will be doing post graduation? Are they similar or different from the audiences attending the oral presentations you delivered at the Bush School? What do you expect to apply in the workplace from your lessons learned about preparing oral briefings?

Courses, assignments, and high-impact experiences addressing this outcome

• • PSAA 601, Foundations of Public Service, Justin Bullock, "Federal/State Program Project"

  • PSAA 611, Public Policy Process, Deborah Kerr, "Policy in the News Presentation."

  • PSAA 648, Performance Measurement and Management, Deborah Kerr, "Create a Measurement System for a Client," producing an alpha version of a performance measurement system for a client. The work includes identifying team roles, developing a work plan, interacting with the client organization, completing a literature review, producing a detailed final report, and presenting the scorecard to the leaders of the client organization.

Communication Rubric for Oral Briefing and Written Report (PSAA)