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In a world that’s more connected than ever before, you’d think we’d be pretty good at communication by now.
Sadly, that’s not the case. Poor communication is the biggest reason why UK employees want to leave their jobs, with many people feeling they aren’t given clear objectives or having their voices heard.
Poor communication can drive an otherwise great team into the ground — so how can you overcome it? We’ve put together 7 key ways that you can unpick the communication problems within your team so you can feel happier and more productive.
Before you start casting wild aspersions on your team members for their failure to communicate, remember this: they could be following your lead.
Turn the lens inwards. How do you naturally communicate? Do you tend to dominate conversations or do you let them run on too long? Do you avoid confrontation or tackle everything head-on?
Being able to pick out these little flaws means you can set the right example for your team to follow. Here are a few things you should work on.
The worst thing about email inboxes is they become a dumping ground for all sorts of useless stuff, whether that’s the latest pizza deal or another article from the blogger you meant to unsubscribe from months ago.
Now, your team are so used to skimming through our inboxes that they can often skim-read important emails and miss vital information.
Here’s what you can do to help that.
A clear clue that your team needs help with their communication is how meetings tend to go. If you tend to come out of them feeling frustrated and unclear what the next step is, then there’s certainly some work to do.
Thankfully, there are a few quick ways you can improve communication in meetings that will have a positive knock-on effect for everything your team does afterwards.
It might seem like pop-psychology to some, but the use of personality tests in businesses has proved incredibly valuable over the last decade or so. Now, 89 of the Fortune 100 companies use personality tests to build stronger teams.
If you want to learn about the personalities of your team, there are a few popular personality tests available. The most widely used is Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test (MBTI); there’s a free, less in-depth version of the test available at 16Personalities. Typically, teams are comprised of a mix of personalities, and a higher variety of types will perform better than a team that is too similar.
Once your team members have all taken the test, you can take the time to learn how each of them typically communicates and like to be communicated to. You might discover why two team members just don’t seem to share information well, or why some teammates feel misunderstood.
From there, you can work with each team member individually to help them communicate with other members of the team more effectively.
Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why (2009), once said: “A team is not a group of people that work together. A team is a group of people that trust each other.”
The biggest communication problems often arise from a lack of trust, rather than a failure to work together.
To build that trust, you need to go beyond the every day and put your team in unfamiliar situations where they must rely on each other to succeed.
A team that communicates well are not only far more effective than poor communicators, but they’re a lot happier, too. They’re free of the stresses that come with a lack of clarity, which means they can be more creative and enjoy getting to know one another in a more relaxed way.
Want more advice? Find out how encouraging your employees to speak up can drive your business forward.