Nearly every leader understands that team communication is key; they know the importance of it. When I speak to leaders, they’ll tell me, “Colleen, I get it. In fact, I have really good team communication. I meet with my team regularly, we have weekly meetings, and I even meet weekly with each one of my direct reports. I’ve got those one-on-ones in place.”
On the surface level, that sounds fantastic, but as I dig in and ask more questions, I find out that their team communication is actually suffering. In some cases, their team communication is worse than leaders who are not holding regular meetings like these leaders are. And it’s because team communication, effective team communication is not about having more meetings and doing more talking. That doesn’t result in better team communication.
If just having more of something made it better, we all know that we would be the most intelligent people on the planet, because we have access to all of this information via the internet.
We know that that’s not the case. Effective team communication goes beyond just that frequency, just beyond how much we’re talking. It comes across first by building mutual respect and trust. Only once leaders have those, can they provide the clarity and alignment that’s needed. These four components are at the core of effective team communication, and just having more meetings does not necessarily garner those four things.
So as you as a leader today are thinking about your team communication, you’re getting ready for that next weekly meeting, what are the challenges that you do see? What’s that number one communication barrier that you’re currently having? Could it fall under one of those four gaps? Comment below, I would love to know!
But perhaps there isn’t that mutual respect that then gets the trust, that then allows for you to have clarity – and how clear are you in the information that you’re disseminating to your team? Only then can you have the alignment, because it’s not about people leaving with hearing what you said, it’s about whether or not they’re acting upon what you shared.
Having that team communication is more than just a soft skill. It’s about having that alignment, so people take action coming out of it.