Communicating for Team Success

There are two types of approaches to seek legitimacy: strategic and tactical.  The strategic approach focuses on institutional authority.  The tactical is based on exploiting relationships.  Tactical approaches force group members to play politics to strengthen a relationship with a supporter.  The message gains support with the strength of the relationship.  The strategic way of viewing legitimacy applies more weight based on a member’s position within the group.  Sometimes ideas may only be accepted when they are adopted by more senior members of the group.  Cliques exist within my SLT that tend to share more information with each other then the remaining team.  This increases the competitive nature of the environment and makes it hard for open and trusted communication to take place.

Cooperation should also be a goal when creating an environment for effective communication.  When group members cooperate communication becomes more effective. Competition among team members breaks down the communication process.  Johnson describes how defensive communication results when group members are threatened and often results in defensive reactions. The more defensive the communication in a group the more likely it is that members will misperceive the motives, values, and emotions of other members and the less efficient and effective communication tends to be. The problem created by this misperception is two fold.  The members not only become confused about the actual message itself, but they also begin forming a bias that becomes noise in the communication process.  Noise as elements that interfere with the communication process.  Like “attitudes, background, and experiences.”  These elements are tangible barriers to effective communication.  Group members must be aware that they exist and account for them when communicating. 

Ask “What do we do well?  What needs Improvement?” and “What are the barriers to improvement?” The fact that I had many answers to those questions leads me to believe that my strategic leadership team has a communication system that is failing.  Day to day observation of my team’s interaction reveals that members do not share information.  This is due to many factors including: the competitive nature within our office.  The more intense the competition, the more likely it is that communication will be ineffective.

So where do we go from here?  To create an environment for effective communication barriers need to be removed.  Members of the SLT need to be made aware of the bias they are creating and actively work to eliminate office politics as it applies to group communication.  An environment must be created to allow an open exchange of ideas with less noise.  Ultimately this should support successful communication within the team and remove some of the barriers present.

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