Team Communication

Communication is an important part of your job – one that is often taken for granted. When you think about it, almost everything you do calls for good communications. The time you hire a new employee, good communication skills help you pick the right person and make sure the person you hire knows what the job involves. When you’re training, coaching, or evaluating an employee, you need to be clear about your expectations and sensitive in dealing with problem areas. When conflicts arise, you’ll need your communication skills to resolve the issues without creating more.

Communications is a two-way process that starts with the sender. The sender should be conveying information necessary for mission accomplishment. The sender must be proactive in making the receiver understand the message.

Team communication skills are critical for ensuring the success of the team effort, whether the team is charged with creating a new product, making a process improvement, or planning the summer picnic. Strong team communication skills can help build relationships, ensure the sharing of new ideas and best practices, and benefit team members through coaching and counseling.

Communication is the exchange of information, ideas and knowledge between sender and receiver through an accepted code of symbols. It is a two way process. The process is as

an information source or sender, which produces a message
a transmitter or encoding , which encodes the message into signals
a channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission
a receiver or decoding, which decodes the message from the signal
a destination or receiver, where the message arrives.
noise, is any interference with the message traveling along the channel

How does Good communication help?

Improve relationships and teamwork
Improve performance and productivity
Foster an open, creative environment
Solve problems effectively

Good communication is essential to teamwork. Practicing the skills of effective questioning and active listening will enable you to clarify important messages and keep the right kind of communication flowing through your team. As a team evolves through standard stages – Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning–team members’ feelings and behaviors change with each stage. The way in which a team leader responds can determine how successfully the team evolves. A primary cause for team ineffectiveness is poor communication. Two techniques are especially important in clarifying messages from team members: effective questioning and active listening.

Types of Communication

Communication is either verbal or non-verbal.

Verbal communication – It uses verbal medium like words, speeches, presentations etc. and the sender shares his/her thoughts in the form of words. The tone of the speaker, the pitch and the quality of words play a crucial role in verbal communication.
Non verbal communication-It involves facial expressions, gestures, hand and hair movements and body postures for non verbal communication. Any communication made between two people without words and simply through facial movements, gestures or hand movements is called as non verbal communication.

Communication Barriers

Communication barriers are influencing factors which impede or breakdown the continuous communications loop. They block, distort, or alter the information. By identifying the barriers and applying countermeasures, team members can effectively communicate. Barriers block communication due to which the information to communicate, is not absorbed correctly by the audience.

Barriers to effective Communication

Noise – Noises present during communication like in marriages high volume music is used
Cultural barriers – Persons from different culture acts as a barrier like dealing with foreigner
Emotions – Receiver is emotionally charged like sad due to death of near one
Poor retention – Receiver is unable to recall or remember the information
Poor Timing – A last moment communication with deadline may put too much pressure on the receiver and may result in resentment.
Inappropriate Channel – Poor choice of channel of communication can also be contributory to them is understanding of the message.
Network Breakdown – Sometime staff may forget to forward a letter or there may be professional jealousy resulting in closed channel.
Non-assertive behavior
Task-preoccupation
Anger or frustration
Personal bias
Team diversity
Lack of confidence
Inappropriate priorities
Organizational structure
Distractions
Interruptions
Rank differences

Barrier Removal can be done by taking effective steps as per the barrier type. Different barrier solving steps usually include

Effective Listening
Convey emotional contents of the message
Use appropriate language
Use proper channel
Encourage open communication
Ensure two-way communication
Make best use of body language

Communication Tools

Besides training, teams also need to have effective communication to run smoothly. Team members can use these communication tools to help them overcome a lack of personal contact, as

The Internet provides a way for teams to communicate quickly and inexpensively throughout the world.
Any number of small information-handling devices is now available to enhance team communication.
A teleconference is a telephone meeting between participants in separate locations. Teleconferences are similar to telephone calls, but they can expand the discussion to include more than two people.
In videoconferencing, participants feel more involved with each other because they can observe body language and facial expressions.

Communication techniques for team success

The environment in which conflict is managed is important. It is essential to manage communications to overcome the barriers and foster a supportive climate, marked by emphasis on

Problem orientation- focusing attention on the task.
Spontaneity- communicating openly and honestly.
Empathy: understanding another person’s thoughts.
Equality- asking for opinions.

Effective questioning enables a team leader to clarify superficial or fuzzy thinking and obtain useable information.

Techniques for effective questioning include

preparing questions in advance; create questions that will elicit the appropriate information
using open-ended questions; encourage team members to provide in-depth information
phrasing questions in a positive way, not a negative way; avoid the words no, not, can’t, won’t, and don’t

Effective Team Communication

Communicating effectively can certainly be a challenge, and you need team members who are getting the right information at the right time. A lack of clarity is the prime cause of frustration and ineffectiveness for many organizations. There will be differences in professional experience, organizational status, ability to take risks, and individual personalities. People may respond differently to incentives or rewards that are offered, and may vary in their willingness to change and to listen to other viewpoints.

Communication in the context of teams is critical. Stakeholders and team members need to be kept informed. You need to share your vision for the project with both stakeholders and the team. You then need to listen to their feedback to ascertain if they have understood and interpreted the information correctly.

Becoming a Better Communicator

Your responsibility as a supervisor is to communicate clearly and concisely to all employees and create an environment conducive to openness for others. As the staff become more diverse, you may have to take extra time and effort to communicate to all staff members.

Effective Listening

An important ingredient that runs through all good communication is listening. Listening is a skill that can be practiced and learned. Your goal as a listener is to fully understand your employee’s experience and point of view. Give the employee a chance to talk for a while before you say anything.