Communication Within Teams: A Pathway to Success

Good team communication is the key to success in the modern days. Clear communication helps you:

• Manage team members easily.
• Get the tasks completed efficiently.
• Fix conflicts between team members with zero effort.

In this blog, we’ll learn some basic principles and practices of good team communication within teams.

Team Communication

Setting Roles in The Team

Role clarity is a very important aspect of a team. Every team member should clearly understand their roles & responsibilities so that the duplicity should be minimal and efforts are streamlined. Different roles within a team are:

• Convener: This person is usually the team leader. The convener organizes meetings, decides agendas, and schedules discussions.
• Recorder: The roles & responsibilities of the Recorder are preparing detailed notes, documenting participant contributions, summarising decisions, and sharing meeting minutes (MOM) with the team.
• Monitor: The monitor makes sure that discussions are kept focused, the objective of the agenda is met, and productive conversations are done.

We can rotate these roles among team members so that everyone may learn and experience the different skills.

Finalising Responsibilities

Assigning responsibilities is very critical to managing the team & workload. Fortunately, the RACI matrix is the saver !! The RACI matrix helps us define roles and responsibilities:

• R – Responsible: The person who is responsible for performing the task.
• A – Accountable: The authority who tracks task completion.
• C – Consulted: Experts and individuals who provide advice and input.
• I – Informed: Stakeholders who need to be updated on progress or outcomes.

If we clearly define these roles, tasks are done effectively with more transparency.

Setting Up Team Goals

Clear goals always take the team to the gate of success. Here are a few tips for establishing good team goals:

• • Go for Collective Goals: Set team goals keeping individual strengths into consideration and collective objectives will do better.
  • Establish Goal Criteria: Set clear rules for goal satisfaction.
  • Take Help from Team Charter: A Team Charter is a document that contains roles, responsibilities, commitments, and collaborative approaches for achieving goals.

When everyone in the team knows the team’s objectives, he/she can better focus on goals and produce impactful results.

For instance, always define clear goals & roles in the team. While developing software, teams should always know who will be working on which end and their deliverable deadlines, to avoid any confusion.

Setting Team Goals

Setting Up Expectations – Expectations from team members should be clear. It enhances productivity. Each team member should know:

• What they’ve to do.
• How their contributions play a key role in the team’s growth.

When you know what you’ve to do clearly, you can plan your actions more effectively and contribute meaningfully to the team’s success.

For Example, while setting the quarterly goals for the team, clearly state what is expected out of them to deliver by the end of the coming quarter. When they have a clear task list in their cart, they’re more focused on completing it on time. 

Winning The Trust of The Team

Trust is everything, everywhere. If you trust your team members, you feel more comfortable. You aren’t afraid of sharing ideas, raising concerns, and talking about solutions. Do this to gain trust:

• Do What You Say: You should be doing what you committed. Your words should be reflected in your actions.
• Respect Others Viewpoints: Don’t argue with others publicly. Discuss their concerns privately and constructively.
• Trust Your Team’s Strengths: You should believe in the ability of every team member and assign tasks accordingly.

Building Trust

Handling Accountability – Every team member should own their actions. These five W’s help you maintain accountability:

• What: Define what is to be done clearly.
• When: Let them know the clear deadlines.
• Who: Define who will be doing what.  Define responsibilities clearly.
• Why: Clearly state the importance of every task.
• What Happens If Not Delivered: Let your team members know clearly how badly your team can be affected if the objectives aren’t met.

How to Provide Feedback

Providing clear feedback to your team members is a very critical aspect. Give regular feedback to your team and take feedback from them as well. Luckily, we have the SBI framework that helps us provide clear feedback:

• Situation: Clearly mention when and where the behavior was observed. It could be a team meeting, a client call, a personal chat, etc.
• Behavior: Describe the individual’s behavior clearly. Let them know what they did, and how they behaved.
• Impact: Clearly explain how their behavior affected the team or the project.

For instance, Once one of my team members presented something to the client and there were mistakes in the content as well as the person was not well prepared, leading to awkward situations in between. Later we went into a quick feedback session where all the improvement areas were shared, and he made sure those were never repeated.

Providing Feedback

Handling Conflicts

Conflicts often take place in any team and it might impact the performance of a team badly.  So it’s very important to manage conflicts effectively. Conflicts can be following types:

• Task Conflicts: There could be disagreements about deadlines, priorities, or approaches.
• Interpersonal Conflicts: Different perspectives or misunderstandings. It might lead to clashes between team members.

We can resolve conflicts by following these guidelines:

• Accept that there’s a conflict.
• Identify what kind of conflict it is.
• Identify a best-suited time to address it.
• Listen to every party and understand their perspective.
• Generate the best solutions to prevent similar conflicts in the future.

Managing Conflicts

Communicating Virtually

Since lots of companies/clients are working remotely, it’s very critical to understand the importance of virtual communication. Follow these rules to create a healthy virtual environment:

• Interact regularly and schedule monthly or quarterly virtual meetings.
• Understand the way other team members work.
• Keep all your questions open to spend more time in the conversations.

Communicating Virtually

Communicating Globally 

When you are working with global teams, it’s very important to understand the sensitivity to differences in language, environment, and social norms. We have a LESCANT framework that guides us while working with global teams:

• Language: Use clear and simple words so that the message is understood.
• Environment: Take care of cultural factors.
• Social Organisation: Your communication should use only universally accepted practices.
• Context: You’ve to make sure your message is originally understood by others and should not be misunderstood because of cultural differences.
• Authority: Geographical differences shouldn’t affect the duties. Responsibilities should be given fairly.
• Non-Verbal Cues: Observe body language clearly. Try to catch the unspoken signals.
• Time: Choose the time that is best suited to all of the meetings.

Conclusion

Good communication is the backbone of a team and can lead to success or failure, depending upon how we set up the same in the teams. Following the rules and guidelines shared above, we can make our communication stronger and achieve success.