Leadership has daily challenges, and to help build trust, you must implement best communication practices. Without solid, clear communication, your team is doomed to mediocrity. People will become confused and felt left out of the loop, which often leads to mistrust and lower performance.
In this post, I am sharing a few additional communication techniques that can leverage everyone’s knowledge base to help team improvement. From sharing critical information to team collaboration and then ultimately to positive, constructive feedback. But with anything involving communication, we must be aware of assumptions and the biases we have so the message we are sending is what we intended.
Collaboration done well changes how the team interacts. I believe in collaboration, but I have witnessed many teams and organizations not doing it effectively. People often work by themselves in agony trying to solve a problem or get drawn into painstaking meetings producing no results.
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Effective collaboration sometimes happens accidentally or in a quick desk side discussion. If you must schedule a meeting, keep the group to 2-3 people and really attack the problem. Don’t invite anyone two levels or more above you. Keep the invite list to peers only, if you can.
“The art of communication is the language of leadership.” –James Humes, presidential speech writer
Feedback is essential for both your team members and you. Trust is built when you act in the best interest of others without the promise of reward. You need to know how you are impacting their quality of life at work, and you need to provide constructive feedback on performance.
Implement Best Communication Practices to Improve Team Effectiveness and Build Trust
Immediate sharing of relevant information to the team
- We receive lots of information about the business. Do we hold on to it? Do we share everything? A team member may be able to fill in a missing piece to a problem with the information we have.
- Keep in mind that some information is a “close hold” due to quarterly performance reporting or major pending business decision. Be diligent but don’t hold on to information for unethical purposes.
Influence positive collaboration
- Most people do not know how to practice effective collaboration, so the leader must be the catalyst. Invite meaningful discussion.
- Around your team, each person probably has information that others need. It is your job to build trust on the team that positively influences the team to discuss the obstacles to solve problems.
Periodic constructive feedback and guidance on critical tasks
- Periodic course corrections with complex problem solving offers a way not to waste time and to become more effective. If you have a team member working a difficult problem, conduct a check up on what is done and what obstacles may be present. This helps to move things along toward the deadline.
- Feedback should always be about empowerment and growth. Provide the right amount of feedback that helps the problem along without doing all the work. If a deadline is looming to a senior leader, then get more involved to meet the deadline.
Solicitation of personal performance feedback from the team
- Your team will trust you more once you start to ask for feedback on your own performance and leadership ability.
- Implement the best advice you learn from your team.
As leaders, we must continually strive to improve how well our team works well together. Implementing best communication practices can increase the chance that our team will work well together. Take action to facilitate positive and relevant communication within the team.
How can you implement these communication practices within the team?
Please comment or email me at comment@stephenmclain.com.
Copyright 2019 – Stephen McLain
