Communication Builds Strong Teams
With the increase in complexity of real-time problems, there is a strong need of working in teams. Effective teams have become the best asset of all corporate companies because about 60% of the teams fail. Companies like google have separate projects on analyzing the formula for the best performing teams. Even after having such research and best practices available all over the internet, teams tend to fail because they are ultimately a mixture of humans and there are unimaginable things that can happen which leads to the failure of the team. A few reasons for team failure are lack of planning, shared leadership, resources, clarity, accountability, shared leadership, dealing with conflicts, training. Hold on !!! Now go back to the previous sentence and look at each reason and think about what may have been done to avoid failure for each reason. I am sure that some type of communication is the solution to every failure. In this blog, I’ll discuss how important communication is and how to communicate efficiently, based on my experience of working with an amazing team in the context of business analytics at UC Davis
Why is Communication, a key to team success?
Let’s begin by discussing why communication is critical to team success. We can all agree that the success of any team is defined by delivering the greatest possible end product in the least amount of time. To do so, a number of sub-jobs must be completed, each of which requires a different level of expertise and must be completed as quickly as possible. Collaboration is the only viable option under such circumstances. Apart from collaboration, everyone aspires to personal development, which is an important factor in the long term. As a result, we can conclude that a successful team aspires to complete the project on time by achieving a balance of successful collaboration and personal development.
I am lucky to be working with an amazing team that is aligned with the above concept. We precisely plan every task by assigning strong and willing-to-learn pairs in each task and letting the strong person support the learning person while delivering. For example
Prasad (Business Analyst) does an excellent job of conveying the impact and applying it to business, whereas I am someone who gets along with clients but wants to master business communication. Prasad was the presenter in the beginning, but after a few months, I took over, and with every call, I get valuable feedback on how it went and what could be more impactful.
Melissa (Business Analyst) is exceptional in management and does a really good job in assigning responsibilities or conveying impacts in writing. Weishen(Data Analyst) who is new to management has supported Melissa in the start and later took the manager position recently
To become such an amazing team, we must create an environment that encourages collaboration and personal development, with a strong emphasis on team dynamics throughout the project. Every team in the world will have certain good and bad dynamics along the process of the project.
The ideal team will have only positive dynamics (Green), but there is a 100% possibility that negative(red) dynamics will slide in at every step of the project, causing delays and chaos. Almost everything in the above picture is related to communication be it collaboration, trust, information withholding, status-seeking, power struggles. It is easy to say that we can build a great environment, but it is difficult to manage all the variables, and occasionally people fail to accomplish things to their full capacity, which leads to the introduction of negative dynamics. Fortunately, our team does not have any bad dynamics, although we believe we could have done a better job in many circumstances. For example, one of our teammates recently gave a presentation that did not have the desired impact. However, we later analyzed the reasons and decided that we would present in a different manner the next time.
The topic of communication in a team is a never-ending topic. I strongly recommend the go to the article “The Secrets of Great Teamwork” by Martine Haas and Mark Mortensen published in Harvard Business Review, you will get the extension of the thoughts that I presented above.
How do we communicate effectively?
There are multiple designs available explaining how to communicate it. The below framework helped our team a lot in becoming what we are now.
1. Build Trust: From the start of the project, we encouraged everyone to be open to other teammates. This helped us to understand the strengths of each other which came into play while panning any new task
2. Share Perspective: Before we saw this framework, I was cautious to express my viewpoint, which differed from that of other team members, but as we established trust, I was certain that they would take it constructively and begin to offer viewpoints that lead to new delivery solutions.
3. Demand Debate: Every viewpoint we present encourages debate, which leads to better outcomes. However, in this scenario, there should be a regulator who stops the debate when the best option is found.
4. Clear Commitments: As said in the previous point we come to optimal closure after having a debate
5. Design Strategy: All the above activities lead to achieving our final goal of delivering the task in the best way possible
By doing this we create the right environment which takes care of collaboration and individual growth as discussed above. Apart from communication done inside the team, there are other communication topics like client engagement, storytelling which help us understand the holistic picture of Teamwork. Stay tuned for my perspective on those topics.
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