2. Why Team Communication is Important
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Team communication is important to develop for any
successful business or organization. Teammates must
develop trust and be more open in everyday life.
Teams can communicate in a quicker and more
efficient amount of time than other individuals.
The effective communication allows team members to
understand their roles and other team members’ roles. It
gives the benefit of understanding among the team
members for what needs to be done.
3. Components of Team Communication
and Effective Teamwork
Team Communication
Sensory Data
Emotional Response
Clear Vision
Effective Teamwork
Positivity
Recognition
Feedback
Trust and Respect
Communication
Roles
Support
Leadership
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4. Characteristics of Team Communication
Good Communication
Engaging
Trust
Honest
Truthfulness
Good listening skills
Leadership
Safety
Appropriate body language
Clear and concise opinion
and lecturing
Bad Communication
Defensiveness
Confusion
Too much information
Pointless
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5. Team Guidelines
Prepare a Plan and Meeting
Actively Team Player
Establish the Environment
Build Communication
Use effective appraisals and incentives
Analyze needs for training
Anticipate the effect of change
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6. Tools to Improve Team Communication
Organizational Practice
Team Leadership
Team Practices
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7. Managing Team Communication
Communication Needs
Sharing Skills and Knowledge
Motivation Cycle
Getting Results
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8. Techniques for Team Communication
Conducting and Participating in Meetings
Listening
Using the Phone
Communication
Sender Message
Communication
Channel
Recipient
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9. Characteristics of an Effective Team
Clear Purpose “The vision, mission, goal, or task of the team has been defined and is now accepted by everyone. There is an action
plan.”
Informality “The climate tends to be informal, comfortable, and relaxed. There are no obvious tensions or signs of boredom.”
Participation “There is much discussion and everyone is encouraged to participate.”
Listening “The members use effective listing techniques such as questioning, paraphrasing, and summarizing to get out ideas.”
Civilized Disagreement “There is disagreement, but the team is comfortable with this and shows no signs of avoiding, smoothing over, or
suppressing conflicts.”
Consensus Decision “For important decisions the goal is substantial but not necessarily unanimous agreement through open discussion of
everyone’s ideas and avoidance of formal voting or easy compromises.
Open Communication and
Trust
“Team members feel free to express their opinions on the tasks as well as on the group’s operation, coupled with a
high level of trust. Communication also takes place outside of meetings.”
Clear Roles and Work
Assignments
“There are clear expectations about the roles played by each team member. When action is taken, clear assignments
are made, accepted, and carried out. Work is fairly distributed among team members.”
Shared Leadership “Although the team has a formal leader, leadership functions shifts from time to time depending on circumstances,
the needs of the group, and the skills of the members. The formal leader models the appropriate behavior and helps
establish positive norms.”
External Relations “The team spends time developing key outside relationships, mobilizing resources, and building credibility with
important players in other parts of the organization.”
Style Diversity “The team has a broad spectrum of team player types, including members who emphasize attention to task, goal
setting, focus on process, and questions about how the team is functioning.”
Self-Assessment “Periodically, the team stops to examine how well it is functioning and what may be interfering with its
effectiveness.”
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Name: Jenna Drodt
Title: Team Communication and Effective Team
Course:Teams and Teams Development
Date: February 23, 2012
Team communication is important to develop for any successful business or organization. Teammates must develop trust and be more open in everyday life. Teams can communicate in a quicker and more efficient amount of time than other individuals. The effective communication allows team members to understand their roles and other team members’ roles. It gives the benefit of understanding among the team members for what needs to be done.
The components of team communication give the ability to team members to lead, connect and understand one another as they develop their skills and unit.
The sensory data is how team members observe each other verbal and nonverbal communication. Sensory data is facts without any interpretation as a leader in the team gives instructions, policies, and emails by his or her actions. The independent thoughts play in the group dynamics after receiving the sensory data. Each team member on the team has their own independent thoughts that are not caused by feelings or emotions but give the guiding principles in team member’s personal life and their own interpretation of receiving the sensory data.
The emotional response is part of the team member’s reactions by observing the sensory data. It can either benefit the team or destruct the team depending on how they react to their own emotion. In addition, the clear vision is the connection of the of the team communication.
Clear vision is part of understanding the leader of the team and being aware of any confusion or misunderstanding that conflicts with the vision and by delivering it with a clarity and direction that leads the effective team communication (Papa).
Another component is effective teamwork. Effective teamwork gives teams the ability to achieve their goals by them working together on any of the specific teamwork components. The effective teamwork components are positivity, recognition, feedback, trust and respect, communication, roles, support, and leadership.
Recognition means seeing the individual team members improving their performance by praise.
Feedback is when a team gives feedback to other team members about the areas they need to prove on or the progress they made at the end of the project. It helps to identify and motivate to improve their productivity.
Trust and respect is another component that team members’ need to have with their team members. Every team members’ ideas and information need to be evaluated fairly without being dismissed.
Communication is when team members have open communication with another with sharing ideas, knowledge, skills, and information that helps understand each other’s roles. Roles are another component that means each team member has their individual roles that have been given by the leader of the team. Roles relates to a team member’s strengths that increase their productivity. Leadership is one of the roles taken by the leader of the team. The leader of the team helps communication and actions with the team members.
There are several characteristics that make a good team communication. Characteristics of good team communication are engagement, trustworthiness, honesty, truthfulness, good listening skills, leadership, safety, appropriate body language, and clear and concise opinion and lecturing. With positive characteristics of team communication, team members need to engage their ability to work together and be a part of the whole process of team dynamics.
There are several characteristics that make bad team communication. Some team members show defensiveness, confusion on topics, offers too much information at once, and communicate in a pointless way. They can have lack of accountability and lack of engagements due to having no rules set up in meetings in results in having a few arguments The causes of bad communication problems can be lack of eye contact, one way commination only to one particular team member, lack of understanding of goals and results, and conflict feelings or concerns that have not been conveyed.
Prepare a Plan and Meeting
It is best to prepare a plan or an agenda for each team member to learn and understand its goals to accomplish as a team. They should discuss about the main goals of the projects, the communication styles and identifying team members’ roles and responsibilities. They should be more proactive to know which roles they should adapt to base on their knowledge and skills to reach for a successful goal. Team leaders should have a weekly plan or agenda individually a weekly meeting to work together as a team and see how they are progressing in the process of completing the goals in a timely manner. Following a plan helps keep the discussion on track and any new topics that pop up during the meeting, is best to discuss at the end of the meeting or postpone for a future meeting. The team needs to have a limited meeting time. It is best to cover each item that is on the agenda. After finishing the topics, it is best to summarize what has been discussed to review what the meeting was about.
Actively team partner
In a team environment, individuals team members’ needs to be active and participate as a team. They will need performance standards to measure in their effectiveness in working as a member of a team. It is important because, they will be evaluated by each team members during the performance appraisals. As a result, team leaders were precluded from providing feedback about individual staff performance that could be used during the performance appraisals. Both staff and management reported that this restriction placed an unreasonable constraint on the work of the team leaders and generally impeded work.
Establishing the environment
Environment includes the physical layout of the overall work space as well as working relationships and work flow. Once the teams are established, it helps them to create opportunities to gain responsibility and knowledge in experiences in the work process. Those working within team leader option particularly emphasized the need for training to better understand this new role” helps them enhance their knowledge in employment and team skills
Build Communication
In order to build communication with team members, the communication must be more specific, accurate and honest. It could help team members to learn how to communicate with other team members who are diverse. Team members might come from a different environment, culture or have a disability. It is best to understand who your team members are and how to get down to their level down communicating with them in a proper way.
Use effective appraisals and incentives
The team needs the use of effective appraisals and incentives to function as a powerful team. One way is to increase the team in skill-building opportunities in a best team-based approach. It is best to use effective appraisals and incentives to have team members share is own routine functions and responsibilities that were formed by the leader. “The team may determine the distribution of work or develop the budget for team activities” and “such new tasks can greatly enhance the variety and level of work conducted by staff and can serve as good motivators.
Analyze needs for training
Training needs is a must for all team members. To be useful, training is best provided immediately before it is to be used. Training team members’ help them achieve understanding to gain knowledge and receive the expected outcomes. The training in a team-based environment helps them in team building, resolving conflict, meeting mechanics, administrative office work, or any other business related environment.
Anticipate the effect of change
Some team members can be affected by changes in their work environment and work culture. The impact of the changes to the work can result in to having awareness in an organization. They prepare and plan for changes in the work environment such as “office priories, staff skill mix, and assignment of high-profile
Organizational Practices is one of the tools that help team members get the job done with a small learning objective about employees. It is important for team members to build up their knowledge that require more effort. Teams have tools to work together more successfully than other teams that only have one tool. Organization offers teams to have options that can be able to solve and work together well and choosing what is best for them in order to produce better work. Teams have choices to be free and have several new tools in the organizations to meet the needs of the team.
Team Leadership is another tool to help team members to improve their skills. Most teams have a main person who takes the role as a leader in the team. There are ways to take the team leadership for virtual teams. Team leaders should have positive communication to coach and mentor team members’ ability to engage and be productive in their work. A team leader must aware of the team’s satisfaction in the team’s work process and encourage team members solve issues that pop up.
Team Practices is the third tool to help team members have the sense of an open communication structure. There are several practices to help team members identify and perform better as a team.
online. Online work environment helps teams feel comfortable with engaging in discussions about their work.
technology. Teams seek behavior that helps team members find answers to questions by testing their theories and ideas that helps find solutions to any challenges or problems.
routines of conversations. Teams that know they can rely on each other’s conversation in order to get the job done in a more cohesiveness efficient way. It is beneficial for teams to have expectations during their work process and have better team practices. The conversations activity helps team members to be accountable on their shared expectations.
context. Context helps team members seek information on webcast while they are performing non-routine tasks. A webcast is part of giving information to the team group.
clearly defined goals. Teams need online work with clear defined goals and boundaries to help them be successful. Tools and to-do items are assigned to teams and help them be accountable to stay on task for themselves and among other team members in the team.
encouraging others. Team members are best to encourage others or each other by giving feedback and have discussions to reach goals and deadlines.
communication needs. Employees have just as much responsibility for speaking up, setting expectations and communicating barriers and opportunities. It is important to ask any team members to speak up and be more proactive if they are confused or misunderstand so that other team leader or team members can step up to help them understand clearly.
sharing skills and knowledge. Encourage team members or employees about your job specifics” (McCann) and what kind of knowledge and skills each team members have by learning from each other in a team. It is important to discuss with team members about ideas and actions taken place. They can also discuss about the time limit on the projects and roles and responsibility of each team members during weekly meetings.
creating a motivation cycle. The motivation style is part of motivating employees or team members to communicate clearly and reach goals. There are ways to say “thank you” or having an informal conversation with another team member by showing compassion for their motivation. It is part of input plays a big part in motivating employees to communication you and reach goals.
getting the results. Every team member who is educated with other team members had shared their responsibility and knowledge to complete their roles and duties. It is part of seeing how everyone is proactive in the process by involving other team members to complete their goals. Getting results is part of getting the positive outcome and knowing the quality of the communication. Make it a shared responsibilities for everyone to educate each other, express what they need and show how specific duties affect the bottom line. When you get everyone actively involved in the process, your team will operate more efficiently and you’ll achieve greater success.
Conducting and Participating in Meetings
advance preparation, it is best to know who is attending to the meeting. Planning the agenda is choosing topics that do need to be discussed.
The leader must speak clearly while following the plan.
controls the agenda, it is important to move the discussion along in a timely-manner. The leader must always control members who discuss too much during the meeting.
encourage other members to participate. The leader should always control time during the agenda and discussion during meetings.
cover all items in the agenda within the time-limit during the meeting
items are discussed, summarize all the information again in brief.
Team Members’ Responsibilities
open minded in open communication.
listen to other team member’s conversation being said.
to give feedback in what is being said.
chance to communicate their opinions and ideas.
agreement during decisions after solving any agreements or problems.
Ownership of commutation.
aware if they are being heard and understood. It is important to show their body language in an appropriate way to communicate with others.
To maintain trust and confidence in other team members, good communication needs to happen.
Message Across
The purpose of getting the message across is part of understanding the message itself. There are some rules about getting the message across: state the purpose of your message, communicate your message, listen to the response of others, clear up any misunderstandings and summarize and move to action.
Listening Techniques
In addition, there are some practical guidelines for listening:
1.Stop talking
2.Put the talker at ease
3.Show the talker you want to listen
4.Remove distractions
5.Empathize with the talker
6.Be patient
7.Hold your temper
8.Go easy on argument and criticism
9.Ask questions
10.Stop talking!!
Using the Phone
have a clear friendly voice because it is easier to be understood clearly and have convey good manner.
The effective phone procedure states, “at the beginning of a phone conversation that you have initiated, state the purpose of the call, then cover systematically all the points involved.
using the effective voice mail techniques. you will be able to leave a voice message by using the overview of details such as name, reason for calling, and stating the details. It is important to speak clearly so that the listener can understand the overview message in order to take action to return the call. Communication
Communication is part of giving ideas, opinions, concepts, orders or instructions and feelings. It is important to send those as messages to team members so they can stay on task as a team.
Communication involves a feedback between the sender and the recipient.
Members are encouraged to input for other team members.
The team members share responsibility for communicating effectively.
everyone should be pro-active to understand team goals in meetings.
the communication should be specific, accurate and honest to use information reliably and question during discussion as a team.
Communication should also send out messages as logically and completely as possible. Ideas must be concise and brief in wording and relevant. Last of all, communication should always
Here are the list of the different characteristics of an effective team.