Team building events and efforts are often targeted at employees. But the fact is that improving team communication typically has to begin at the top, with a company?s management staff.
For businesses looking to improve team communication, utilizing team building events has no doubt become a ?best practice,? since more and more data shows that a team that communicates well sees a steady increase in quality and productivity. And while managers and business owners who make team building efforts are moving in the right direction, typically the issue of team communication is one that involves them more so than their employees.
Manage In Person ? Not Via E-mail
The great thing about the written word is that it gives people a medium for composing and organizing their thoughts so that they are communicated effectively. In the generations before high-speed communication, letter writing was more than just practical ? it was an art form, and being a great letter writer meant that you could express yourself fluidly.
Unfortunately, e-mails bears little resemblance to the romantic nature of letter writing. It is a practical albeit curt form of communication, and in the workplace, it often leads to miscommunication and hurt feelings. Unless you are a manager who is willing to take the time and care to craft concise e-mail directives and memos, it?s better to just get up from your desk and take a stroll to manage in person.
This is particularly true for ?shooting quick e-mails? about narrow yet sometimes critical issues. Granted, if you are managing a project off-site, then e-mail ? or maybe even texting ? might be applicable. But in an office environment, staying on your feet allows you to communicate in person, and be around in case your employee has questions or doesn?t understand what you want from them.
Position Yourself In The Information Stream
For managers to achieve effective communication in their department, they need to be directly in the center of communication and information exchange. Communication needs to be monitored since, as the manager, you should ultimately see the big picture of your project better than anyone else in the department. Thus, if anything goes awry in the business process for achieving your goals, you are there to step in and correct it.
However, in order to achieve fluid team communication, positioning yourself to review all communication without being a ?hub? is a fine line that needs to be balanced. It?s easy for a manager to quickly become a ?micro manager,? so that nothing gets done without their approval. This kind of managerial positioning would be ineffective for team communication, since it would mean that there is no real direct communication happening between team members; it would all be channeled into the manager.
Instead, the best practice for this is to remain in the pipeline for communication without being a part of the process itself. If e-mail is part of the communication strategy, then being CC?ed makes a lot of sense, as well as using some sort of project management platform. A more hands-on approach is to have an assistant manager run a brief daily meeting that the manager sits in on, without actually running.
In any case, it?s important to allow team members to communicate and work with one another directly. But have a watchful eye over all of those communications can be a big help.
Listen To Your Employees
We?ve already pointed out that a manager typically has the ?big picture? view of projects that take place within a department. While this world view of project management is key, it doesn?t necessarily mean that it is always accurate. Employees ? particularly ones that complete a narrowly-focused task ? come from a different perspective that allows them to see the project in a different light. And for the manager, this information is valuable, since wider perspectives on projects do not always take into account the finer details of specific work tasks.
Thus, setting up a clear channel of communication for employees to give feedback on work processes is a definitely best practice for team communication.
A great way to achieve this is to arrange a meeting early on in the project that is specifically designed to address any flaws in the business process, or suggest improvements. Often times, when a team is beginning a new project, many of the project difficulties are still hidden from the employees themselves. Giving your team an opportunity to help you fine-tune the project can be the deciding factor in whether or not the project is a success or failure.
Focusing on team communication is a step in the right direction in improving quality and productivity in the workplace. Just make sure that you take a look at yourself and see what you can improve on your end communication-wise.
Thanks for reading our article! Are you looking to improve team communication for your business? Be sure to talk to Accolade about our effective team building events today!
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