How To Improve Team Communications

by Ciara Conlon, Leadership and Productivity Coach.

Collaboration is crucial for an effective team to function. There is no collaboration without high levels of effective communication. Communication is essential to get things done, done well and within a specified time frame. When you have a team that communicate successfully, it will function more efficiently and more likely reach its goals. Team Leaders need to create the environment for good communication to take place and encourage the appropriate channels of communication to be used at the appropriate time.
Here are some suggestions for what you can do today to improve your teams communication:

Curbing Email
We rely too much on email. Sending emails to everyone in the organisation to ensure nobody gets left out. Email is not always the right choice, often a face to face conversation can be a lot more productive or a short team meeting can avoid pages of email conversations. Team work can often be hindered by over reliance on email, encouraging people to spend too much time answering to and forwarding emails rather than getting any actual work done. Teamwork can be a lot more efficient if a team tool is used to hold all conversation relating to team tasks in the one location. Tools such as Evernote, Asana or teamwork can fulfil this function very well. Find out more about these tools here.

Meetings
Hours of productivity is lost each week to inefficient and unnecessary meetings. Be sure your meeting is necessary before you start and then make sure it is being run as effectively as possible. Meetings should be as long as you need but as short as possible. Have a think about your regular meetings, maybe updates can be circulated to the team in a more efficient way? A few small changes to the way things are normally done and you can have more effective and efficient meetings every time.

Face to Face
Face to face communication is a powerful mode of communication and usually one that gets more effective results than email or other electronic methods. Create a list of questions or tasks for your team on your computer, when the time comes to meet them face to face you can ask them all at once rather than send them regular emails. Too much face to face communication can disturb the flow of work. Make sure your team have enough space and time so that they can actually get their work done uninterrupted.

Listening
Listening is a very important skill that is essential for building trust and respect between team members and of course an fundamental part of effective communication. If ever team member gets the opportunity to speak and be heard, there will be higher levels of contribution and engagement. In any organisation the Leadership need to be good listeners in order to lead by example.

Reducing errors
Teams that interact well together and that have positive channels of communication open will avoid the errors that come from team members being ill informed or unclear about their purpose or goals. Younger or newer members of a team are more likely to hide their lack of understanding. Clear and effective interaction with all team members will support more positive results.

Fostering Input
Teams work best when there is a diverse set of skills working together for a common goal. It is important to encourage input from all team members. Try to avoid the same dominant personalities giving the input and the quieter ones sitting back. Nurturing the relationships between team members can encourage the quitter personalities to give more input. Getting input from all members of the team will give a stronger output.
If the team can adopt these characteristics they will benefit from better communication which will lead to better performance and results.