Communicating for Team Success

Consider if you are just talking at your team, or communitcating for Success. Do your employees say that you don't listen? Is there a disconnect between the team and your leadership style?

Communicating is the key to success in business. Remeber: It's all in the delivery...To become a team is often viewed as the most important stage of development for any business. There are many approaches to building a successful team.  Along the way pitfalls must be avoided.  One of the “sins” to critical functioning of a team is to inhibit the communication system.  An effective strategic leadership team must instead have a highly functional communication system free of barriers.

Since communication is an activity that requires participants to send, receive, interpret, and infer concurrently, it is hard to develop a theory of group communication.  Many functions take place at the same time in a very dynamic and fluid process instead of sequentially.  This makes it hard to pin down all the different ways information is exchanged and interpreted.  There are many opportunities for both senders and receivers to interact with each other.  Along the way there are many places where the message can become altered or lost.

Groups have different ways of viewing problems and often members don’t have the same clear view of the problem.  Each member brings there own unique background and experiences to the table.  At the same time members may have different levels of expertise and factual information about the task.  Some information may be known to all; other pieces may not.  Each member becomes responsible for seeking out the unknown information.  Obtaining the information is only the first step.  There must also be a way to share and exchange these thoughts and ideas freely for effective communication to take place.

The way a message is evaluated is often a product of the perceived authoritativeness of the group member that is delivering it. To facilitate good communication the perceived authoritativeness should lend enough credibility that all the statements are received, interpreted correctly, and then given proper credit.  The member’s expertise means that the message should be trusted.  However, within a strategic leadership team, members can have various role requirements.  This leads to a hierarchy in communication and group members struggle to influence others so their messages will be accepted. It is not as simple as knowing that you have all the information correct.  Group members may be called upon to sell there ideas.

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