More Is Not Better; Better Is Better
At the time of his passing in 2018, Joel Rubuchon had accumulated more Michelin stars than any other chef. If you’ve never been to L’Atelier, his restaurant at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, we recommend you go there. Request a seat at the counter that surrounds the kitchen, order the tasting menu, and watch and hear the culinary crew in action. You’ll enjoy a great meal and, if you’re alert, might glean some interesting insights about teamwork and communication.
A typical evening at L’Atelier is a busy affair. On one particular night, the restaurant was full. Given the reputation of the restaurant, each dining party expected a smooth, impeccably prepared meal, with multiple courses of complexly designed food arriving on-time—often paired with different wines. The team had to coordinate many moving parts to meet high customer expectations. Yet interestingly, the amount and volume of communications emanating from the kitchen were quite low. Despite a continuous flurry of activity, the kitchen was surprisingly quiet. There was no superfluous conversation; mostly short, quiet, targeted requests and confirmations along with the occasional gentle “bell” rung by a kitchen expeditor.
Throughout the evening, team members kept an eye on one another, often sliding over to help someone else with a task such as wiping the rim of a plate or adding a garnish to keep things moving and ensure that quality remained high. There didn’t appear to be a defined pattern of when this occurred; rather, team members seemed to make small, real-time adjustments to help as needed.
Late in the evening a boisterous party of six arrived with an unusual request that the staff could not handle through the same quiet coordination they had been demonstrating. The special request involved incorporating large portions of shaved white truffles in an “off-the-menu” manner. White truffles are expensive, and this appeared to be an important table, so what did the team do? A few of them quickly huddled up and brainstormed solutions. It appeared that the people with the most expertise, regardless of their role on the team, were involved, and a person who knew a lot about truffles did a larger share of the talking. At one point the team reached out, and a gentleman in a suit and tie joined the huddle (we jokingly wondered if it might be their accountant to help calculate the price!). Once a solution was reached, they confirmed that everyone understood the plan and quickly shifted into execution mode, shaving truffles and creating the dish. The kitchen returned to its quiet efficiency.
This culinary team illustrated how a well-trained, coordinated, high-performing team can communicate. Note that they communicated efficiently when performing standard tasks (more communication isn’t always better!), recognized the need to change the way they communicated when deviating from routine conditions (huddling up and increasing communication), listened to the team member who had unique information to address the challenge, reached outside the team to bring in additional expertise when needed (“boundary spanning”), and confirmed that everyone understood the plan (“closed-loop”). In this chapter, we’ll learn more about these and other aspects of communication and will surface some of the most common communication risks.
This chapter is about communication, or the sharing of information and knowledge to enable effective team performance. Of course, communication is essential for effective teamwork, but it isn’t as simple as telling your team to “communicate more.” When it comes to communication, quality is more important than quantity.
Thought Experiment. While reading this chapter on communication, ask:
One of the most prevalent requests we get from leaders is to help their teams communicate better. For some of them, communicating and teamwork are almost indistinguishable. An unstated inference is that if their team members would just communicate more with one another, then magically their teamwork and performance will improve. But what does the research tell us about communication? Does communication really boost team effectiveness, and if so, how does it work?
At a minimum, we know that communication breakdowns make teams vulnerable. This is quite evident in healthcare. Hopefully you never experience a “sentinel event,” an unanticipated mishap that results in death or serious harm to a patient, unrelated to the natural course of the patient’s illness. The Joint Commission, an institution that advocates the use of patient safety measures, the measurement of performance, and the introduction of public policy recommendations, reviewed all reported sentinel events. They found that from 1995 to 2005, communication problems were a root cause in nearly two-thirds of all mishaps and remained one of the top causes of sentinel events from 2010 to 2013 as well. Communication is clearly critical in healthcare.
A particularly scary example of a subtle communication breakdown was seen in the case of Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. In that case, the emergency room nurse used a Centers for Disease Control–supplied checklist to screen Duncan for signs of Ebola, accounting for his feverish symptoms and recent travels. Collectively, the cues associated with his case suggested that he was an Ebola risk. The nurse duly documented this information but, unfortunately, did not communicate it to the rest of the team. As a result, the patient was simply treated for a standard stomach virus. An opportunity for early diagnosis and containment was missed.
Communication failures also contributed significantly to the loss of lives when the Costa Concordia cruise ship overturned after striking an underground rock off the coast of Italy in early 2012. Among the many failures exhibited that day, at least three were directly related to poor communications. First, the bridge crew didn’t warn the captain that they were too close to shore (a failure to speak up); second, after the ship ran aground, when the Italian Coast Guard’s Gregorio DeFalco called the Concordia’s bridge, the ship’s officers told DeFalco, “It’s okay; it’s just a technical problem” (a failure to share unique information about the problem); and third, the communication to the crew and passengers to evacuate was unnecessarily delayed, so the ship was listing too severely at that point to deploy the lifeboats successfully (a failure to communicate in a timely manner). As in many team failures, communication wasn’t the only issue. Most of the Concordia’s crew were entertainers or service staff rather than qualified mariners, and the passengers hadn’t received their safety training yet, so a lack of capabilities was also a contributing factor during the evacuation.
Contrast the Concordia tragedy with what happened during USAir flight 1549 on January 15, 2009. On that day, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and his crew were forced to land their Airbus A320 jetliner in the Hudson River after the plane struck a flock of Canadian Geese, disabling both its engines. The crew had only met three days before teaming up for a four-day flight schedule, but they communicated and coordinated seamlessly during this unanticipated emergency.
When the captain announced, “Brace for impact,” the crew immediately knew they had to switch to emergency mode and prepare passengers for a water landing. The crew quickly shouted out instructions to the passengers, “Brace, brace, brace, heads down, stay down.” Captain Sullenberger and co-pilot Jeff Skiles each understood what the other needed to do, so the cockpit was relatively quiet—there were no superfluous communications. Skiles helped reaffirm the captain’s decisions as he was making them and called out the plane’s speed and altitude, which enabled Sullenberger to focus on landing the plane as smoothly as possible.
These contrasting examples illustrate how communication can influence a team’s ability to handle an emergency. A great deal of empirical research supports that contention, and it also reveals that communications are important even under routine conditions. Jessica Mesmer-Magnus and Leslie DeChurch conducted a meta-analysis that examined findings from 72 prior studies, and Shannon Marlow and her colleagues (including Eduardo) conducted another one that analyzed findings from 150 studies and almost 10,000 teams. Collectively, these two meta-analyses confirm what we assume to be true: communication influences team performance and cohesion. In general, if a team fails to share information that needs to be shared (about a hole in the ship or about a simple delay in a customer’s order), team effectiveness will suffer. Which means that, as a bare minimum, a team needs to communicate enough. But contrary to popular wisdom, simply communicating more does not necessarily improve team performance.
A key lesson from the meta-analyses is that communication quality is far more important than communication quantity. Encouraging your team to “talk to one another more frequently” may not yield the results you’re hoping for. In many cases, that will simply create noise. Research shows that in high-performing teams, the quantity of communications can be lower than in poor-performing teams, as we saw in both the top-performing kitchen crew in Vegas and in the heroic USAir cockpit. Instead of trying to boost the total amount of communications, what we should be striving for is higher quality communications. Let’s take a closer look at what “higher quality” really means.
Let’s start with the basics. Quality communication means sharing useful information clearly, accurately, and on time to the right people. Of course, a communication that would be considered necessary, clear, and timely in one situation may be superfluous, confusing, or late in another situation. That doesn’t make those factors any less important; it just means that something like timeliness can only be understood in context.
So let’s look beyond the basics. One consistent finding is that it is the sharing of unique information that drives team performance. By unique, we mean information and knowledge that other team members do not currently possess or may not fully understand but could benefit from knowing. In the case of the quiet kitchen, one or two of the kitchen staff knew things about truffles that the other chefs did not, and the guy in the suit probably knew more about food costs than anyone else. That team was able to make a better decision because the unique information they possessed was shared with others. In the Ebola case, only the nurse knew about the patient’s history. An opportunity was missed because that unique information wasn’t shared. Unique information can be related to an area of expertise (e.g., truffles or accounting), the status of a situation (e.g., the hole in the hull is creating flooding), or an action that is needed (e.g., brace for impact). In the prior chapter, we discussed the importance of maintaining situation awareness. Communicating unique information is what enables situation awareness to be shared among team members.
While it can be helpful to remind teammates about things they already know, if all that is being communicated is redundant information (and not unique information), it doesn’t matter if we double the amount of communications within the team, performance is unlikely to improve. Unique information doesn’t have to be complex. It isn’t necessarily based on deep expertise. It can be very basic. A statement as simple as, “The service request is waiting for your approval,” can be unique information. Communicating that information helps ensure that the request gets fulfilled.
We’ve worked with many senior leadership teams (SLTs). The members of an SLT typically come from different functional backgrounds, and while they are supposed to represent the overall enterprise, on a day-to-day basis, they all lead their own teams. Each SLT member typically possesses unique expertise as well as a deep understanding of the area for which their own team is responsible (e.g., a function, product area, or region). They are aware of things that no one else on the team knows about. Unfortunately, when they fail to share that information in a timely manner, the team can’t make a well-informed decision. This happens with great regularity in SLTs.
Another key element that can drive team effectiveness is the use of closed-loop communications. A teammate may share unique and valuable information with me, and she may do so “on time,” but if I misunderstood what she said, that misunderstanding can adversely affect our performance. And the risk is even greater if the message sender incorrectly assumes that I understood. George Bernard Shaw supposedly said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” If he didn’t say it, he should have!
Closed-loop communication is a way to avert that type of communication breakdown. It involves three quick steps: (a) the call out (initial communication), (b) the check back (the recipient conveys their understanding of what they heard), and (c) the close (the message sender either confirms or corrects what was conveyed). Research shows that closed-loop communication is associated with higher team effectiveness. For example, Clint Bowers and his colleagues found that high-performing flight crews use closed-loop communications more often than low-performing teams.
A team of researchers at the Hofstra School of Medicine examined videotapes of 89 pediatric trauma cases, looking for instances of closed-loop communications. While you might think that the time it takes to go through the three steps would delay speed of response, the researchers found that tasks were completed 3.6 times faster when communications were closed-loop. Not only do the three steps reduce miscommunications, when treating trauma patients, they also increase task efficiency.
Medical teams and aviation crews usually have a clear leader, and specific requests for actions are quite common (“Hand me the scalpel”), so training programs in those fields often teach closed-loop communication techniques. But how does closed-loop communication play out in other, less structured work settings?
In any setting, the part of closed-loop communication that is readily within everyone’s control is the second step in the process, the check back, or what we like to call “the convey.” You can’t control if the other person communicates a clear message, but you can control whether you convey. Conveying involves reflecting your understanding of the other person’s opinion, point of view, or even their feelings, allowing them to confirm or correct your understanding. There are two types of “conveys”—intellectual (head) and emotional (heart). Intellectual conveying shows you are aware of the person’s position (“So the deadline next Friday can’t be changed”). Emotional conveying expresses your understanding of what they are feeling (“And you’re under a lot of pressure to deliver”). Both types of conveying can be valuable.
Conveying isn’t the same as expressing agreement; it is just an attempt to communicate your understanding of the other person’s intent. In fact, when you need to disagree, conveying is particularly important. If you disagree without conveying first, anything you say may be perceived as, “You obviously don’t get it.” You can often tell that is happening because the person you are talking with repeats his position, slower and louder, as if you each speak a different language.
People are troubled when they think others don’t “get them,” so when they feel that way, most of what they say is intended primarily to make their view and opinions very clear. Until they feel understood, they may continue to pound away, repeat what is already known, and re-emphasize their point. Conveying is a simple, powerful way to break through that common, but counterproductive response.
The motivation to be understood can be even more powerful than the motivation to convince others. In a well-designed study, Nadira Faulmüller from the University of Oxford and colleagues in Germany showed that when people feel understood, they spend less time communicating information in support of their position. That allows everyone to focus on problem-solving and determining what’s best, rather than rehashing what they’ve already said.
Our observation is that everyone conveys on occasion. However, most of the time, rather than verbalizing what they’ve heard, people reflect and summarize inside their head. Their inside voice is doing a great job of conveying, but on the outside, they are simply nodding their head or saying something like “I understand.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t assure the other person that they really do “get it,” and it certainly doesn’t give the other person a chance to say, “That’s not what I meant.” Conveying is a simple, proven communication technique, so we encourage all team leaders and members to use it a little more often. You might also want to try this technique at home. It generally works well with spouses, less so with teenagers.
We’ve focused on communications within a team, now let’s take a moment to also consider communicating with people outside the team. Psychologists like to use the term boundary spanning to refer to communicating and maintaining relationships with people outside the team, both within their own organization and with outsiders such as customers, suppliers, or regulators. Some of the earliest research in this area was conducted by Deborah Ancona and David Caldwell, who observed that two of the most common purposes served by boundary spanning are to be an ambassador—for example, convincing people in authority to provide the team with resources—and to coordinate tasks with other people or units. Other researchers have since noted a third purpose, which is to seek input and expertise.
The way work is performed in most organizations, almost all teams need to communicate beyond their borders. Most teams can’t be insular. A meta-analysis by Shawn Burke and her colleagues revealed that in better performing teams, leaders demonstrate higher quality boundary-spanning behaviors. Leaders often play a significant role in boundary spanning, particularly when ambassadorship is needed. But other team members can engage in boundary spanning as well, for instance, to coordinate tasks and seek input.
Earlier in the book we noted that teams vary on the degree to which team members rely on one another to get work done, from low interdependency (like a wrestling team) to medium (like a baseball team) to high (like a soccer team). Similarly, you can think about the extent to which a team must rely on others outside their team. For example, if a team must first receive work products from another team to complete their work, there is likely to be a strong need for clear, ongoing, communications between the teams. In contrast, when a team is working fairly independently, boundary-spanning communications are less critical. A skunkworks team working in isolation on a secret new product won’t need to focus as much attention on outward communications.
What makes for effective boundary-spanning communications? The main ingredients apply—clear, timely, closed-loop communications of unique information is needed. But in cross-team communications, you’ll often need greater clarity about the “touch points” than you do in day-to-day communications within your team. If your team relies on (or impacts) people outside the team, it is worth allocating time to answer the three following questions, first among your team members and then in conjunction with key outsiders. With boundary spanning, it is usually insufficient to identify who needs to know what; you also need to clarify who will be responsible for providing it:
• Who does our team need to communicate with outside the team?
• What do we need to communicate about? What types of information should be shared?
• Who will be responsible for communications on both sides of the boundary?
Note that some research suggests that incessantly engaging in boundary spanning on top of other job responsibilities can lead to individual burnout. So you need to think carefully about which people are being asked to fulfill this key responsibility and ensure they have the capacity, information, and role clarity they need to handle it. Distribute some boundary-spanning responsibilities among team members, if needed.
At one level, communicating seems straightforward. It’s not about how much the team communicates; it’s about the quality of their communications. To ensure quality, we need team members to share unique knowledge and information, with the right people, in a timely manner. And we should periodically convey our understanding back to others so they can affirm it or correct us, if needed, before we do something based on false assumptions. If it’s so simple, then why are communication breakdowns so common in team settings? Because people have human limitations, and teams work in situations that create communication challenges. The better you understand these limitations and challenges, the better you’ll be to deal with them.
After a lack of communication created a problem, have you ever thought, “Why didn’t he just tell me about that?” Sometimes it can appear that a person is intentionally withholding information from us. While occasionally that’s true, usually the omission is inadvertent.
One unintentional reason why someone doesn’t share a useful piece of information is a common cognitive bias that can be thought of as the “everybody knows” bias. It is a very human attribute to assume that because we know something, others know it as well. Research has shown that even when someone has been told that they are the only person who knows something, they still interact with teammates in a manner that would only makes sense if everyone else knew what they knew! It may seem irrational to act that way, and perhaps it is, and yet people often fail to consciously recognize that they have distinct knowledge that others might not possess.
If you start to look for the “everybody knows” bias, you’ll see that it’s quite common. Most important, be alert that you, as a human, are prone to it as well. It is natural to assume that others know what seems like common knowledge to you. But what seems common to you may not be as common as you think. One simple tip can help mitigate this risk. We teach team members to develop a habit of asking themselves and their teammates, “Who else should know this?” This simple question can immediately reduce a common cause of communication breakdowns.
While we are all prone to “everybody knows” bias, people with deeper expertise sometimes fail to communicate their unique knowledge for another reason—automaticity. Do you remember when you first learned to ride a bicycle or drive a car with a stick shift? Initially, it was cognitively demanding and required all your attention. But after performing the task for a while, something clicked, and it became far easier. You no longer had to think about releasing the clutch as you stepped on the gas or how to balance to keep from falling off the bicycle. You became enough of an expert to perform the task without thinking. You developed automaticity.
A different part of your brain is activated while you learn a task than when you perform that task after developing automaticity. As an oversimplified analogy, automaticity is as if several lines of computer code have been compiled into a subroutine, and your brain evokes the subroutine without having to look at each line of code. The good news is that automaticity frees up cognitive capacity. The bad news is that it makes it difficult to access details quickly. That’s why experts sometimes fail to share unique, detailed knowledge with their teammates. They don’t need to think about the details to do what they do. When you ask an expert, “How did you do that,” she may provide a superficial response. Please recognize that she isn’t being difficult on purpose; she just wasn’t able to quickly access the compiled code and, as a result, couldn’t share a detailed explanation at that moment.
There is a useful way to help reduce communication risks associated with automaticity. When working with an expert, be prepared to ask “dig deeper” questions and, at times, rephrase a question that originally yielded a superficial answer. This approach, when applied patiently, helps the other person begin to “unpack” their automated expertise. Interestingly, Korrina Duffy and Tanya Chartrand from Duke University found that people who ask more questions, including more follow-up questions, are perceived as more responsive and likeable—if the questions are relevant and not rude. By asking more questions, you not only help an expert unpack their unique information, you’ll also be more likeable—and there’s nothing wrong with that!
In addition to human limitations, a variety of factors commonly create communication risks for a team. One is a lack of psychological safety, a recurring theme in this book. When psychological safety is low, people are reluctant to speak up, appear wrong, voice an opposing position, acknowledge that they don’t know something, or ask questions that might make them appear unknowledgeable. Unfortunately, that reluctance to engage keeps them from sharing important information and reduces the opportunity to correct false assumptions. We talked about psychological safety extensively in the chapter on cooperation, so we’ll simply note here that applying the tips we shared previously to build psychological safety can also improve team communications.
A second risk factor relates to rewards and recognition. What happens when you’re the only person on the team who knows something? Are you treated as a hero, even if others would have benefited from you telling them about it previously? When you do share your expertise, are you then considered expendable, because others can now do what you do? Is knowledge treated like a currency that loses value when given away? When these things happen, it isn’t irrational for people to hoard what they know. When information hoarding is rewarded more than information sharing, whether subtlety or overtly, team members will learn to hoard. We discuss this further in the chapter on conditions.
Teams are also more susceptible to communication breakdowns in the following situations:
• When team membership is dynamic. When new people join a team, they are unfamiliar with how information is typically shared, and they don’t know who to go to on the team to get the information they need. Due to the “everybody knows” bias, existing team members often fail to provide information to those new team members, particularly information that is known by all the “long-timers.”
We’ve noticed that this is particularly prevalent when the new team member is highly experienced. An assumption, often erroneous, is that because that person is experienced, they are “ready to go,” as if their knowledge is fully transportable from the old to the new team. In reality, however, when someone joins a new team, they require more communications for a period of time, even if they are highly experienced. On the other side of the equation, when an experienced team member leaves the team, she may take unique information with her, creating a knowledge void.
• When tasks are changing. When a team performs the same task for a while, in a relatively stable manner, they can develop a shared understanding of how things work. But when work requirements and conditions are more dynamic, the shelf-life of any shared understanding is shortened. As a result, there is usually a greater need for ongoing communications in highly dynamic work environments—it is harder for the team to operate like that quiet kitchen in Las Vegas. There is a greater need for situational updates to maintain a shared awareness of what’s going on.
• When team members work at a distance. When team members are all co-located, there are more opportunities for informal, unplanned conversations. When team members are dispersed, they can’t rely on spontaneous communications as much. It is also easier to pick up on nonverbal communication cues in person. Such cues are invisible via phone or email and not always apparent when communicating over video.
When team members are split between two or more locations, each location builds its own “common set of knowledge” and is less aware of what’s known in the other locations. As a result, each location should get in the habit of asking, “Who might need to be aware of this in the other locations?” In general, there is a need for greater intentionality in communications when team members are working at a distance.
• When team composition is heterogeneous. A team made up of people with different backgrounds—for example, a cross-functional team—is prone to certain types of communication problems. People who possess similar educational and work experiences or who share similar expertise and cultural backgrounds can initially find it a little easier to communicate with one another.
For example, people with the same training and expertise can often use jargon and “shorthand” in their communications without creating confusion. Automaticity is less likely to interfere with communications between experts in the same field, since they implicitly understand why things are being done. But in a more heterogeneous team, the use of jargon and a failure to provide details and explanations can create ambiguity. In those teams, the use of the “convey” and the ability to ask “unpacking” questions are even more important.
• When there is a clear hierarchy in the team. A clear, hierarchical power structure can create an obstacle to communications within a team, particularly for communications up the hierarchy. Junior team members or those with less power may be fearful of being perceived as “questioning authority” or asking a question that might indicate they don’t know something. We’ve seen this happen quite often not only in military and medical teams that are inherently hierarchical, but also in corporate teams that operate in hierarchical environments or in national cultures that skew toward deference to authority.
In such teams, it is not unusual for the team leader to do most of the talking when the team is together. That can be a problem if, as a result, team members fail to share unique information that the team leader doesn’t possess. And let’s face it, a leader rarely sees and knows everything.
In hierarchical teams, leaders must work hard to sustain their team’s sense of psychological safety, because without it, most team members will be reluctant to speak up. It is insufficient in such teams for the leader to “allow” team members to speak up. We’ve had leaders tell us that they want their team to speak up, but team members don’t seem to have anything to say. We tell them that they need to actively ask team members for their input, and they need to consistently encourage team members to share their perspective and ask questions. In hierarchical teams, “allowing” is insufficient.
• When handoffs need to occur. When work responsibilities are passed from one person or subteam to another, communications are needed to avert coordination breakdowns. Handoffs are high vulnerability points. An example of this is when a team member is expected to execute a plan that they weren’t involved in establishing. When they are told only “what” to do and not “why” to do it, the recipient is often ill-equipped to handle any unexpected challenges that might emerge.
Handoffs can also happen across team boundaries. When a shift change occurs, the team that is wrapping up for the day often has a very limited window of opportunity for communicating what transpired to the next team, including any problems or items that need attention. The quality of that communication can greatly influence how well the next shift performs. It is important to recognize that any handoff creates a vulnerability.
• When deviating from routine conditions. Remember the quiet kitchen example, where a stable, qualified team was able to perform their jobs effectively with relatively minimal conversations? That worked until an atypical request emerged. In their case, it was a boisterous group of demanding customers. That was an inflection point, where the team needed to shift from normal mode to a nonroutine mode. More severe examples include when the cruise ship hit the rock and when the airplane lost both its engines. But teams also experience subtler “deviations,” like when the CEO tells your team that she needs a report two days sooner than originally planned. No one will lose their life in that instance, but the pressure and stress still rise significantly, and with that comes the risk of a communication breakdown.
The type of communications that works well when things are proceeding normally may not work when an unusual situation or emergency arises. Sometimes, the deviation requires the team to communicate with people they don’t talk with during normal times (e.g., the food expense expert, the Italian Coast Guard). Other times, a temporary increase in communications may be required to ensure all team members know what is going on and to establish a coordinated response that may diverge from standard operating procedures. In many team settings, a quick team huddle can help. Given the heightened urgency associated with emergencies, emotions run higher and misunderstandings become more common. In non-routine situations, closed-loop communications can help avert some of those misunderstandings.
When your team experiences any of these risk points, it is more susceptible to communication breakdowns. We encourage you to anticipate the risks your team is most likely to face and discuss how you plan to handle them when they arise.
One question we’ve been asked is whether trust leads to better communications or if quality communications produces higher levels of trust. The answer we give is “yes.”
The relationship between communication and trust is best thought of as a cycle that can spin up or down at any point. When team members openly share what they know, it helps build trust. Higher trust makes it is easier to communicate in a genuine manner, and so on. When working that way, trust and communications reinforce one another and create a virtuous cycle. But a breakdown can convert that into a vicious cycle. If something happens that adversely affects the trust level among team members, then team members become reluctant to share potentially sensitive information. If a team member learns that one of their colleagues withheld information, they may start to distrust that person, and so on. While it is hard to say which one comes first, we can say that improvements can begin by encouraging communications or by taking actions that build trust.
What should be the goal when it comes to team communications? The goal isn’t to ensure that everyone gets to speak an equal amount of time or that all opinions are weighed equally. Rather the goal should be to ensure that everyone is comfortable speaking up and asking questions, that communications are understood, and that unique information and expertise are shared.
• Since quality is more important than quantity, saying “Let’s communicate more” is not a helpful way to boost team effectiveness.
• Quality communication means sharing useful information clearly, accurately, and on time to the right people. Of course, a communication that is necessary, clear, and timely in one situation may be superfluous, confusing, or late in another situation.
• What drives team effectiveness is communicating unique information and knowledge that others may not possess or fully understand. That builds shared awareness among team members. Unique information can be related to an area of expertise, the status of a situation, or an action that is needed. It doesn’t need to be complex or highfalutin.
• Engage in closed-loop communications. Use the “convey” to express your understanding of the other person’s intent and allow them to correct you if needed. Convey out loud and not just in your head!
• Be alert for a few common human limitations that degrade team communication quality, such as “everybody knows” and “automaticity.” Combat “everybody knows” by getting in the habit of asking, who else needs to know this? Combat automaticity by asking more follow-up questions to help experts unpack what they know.
• If your team needs to engage in boundary spanning, be clear about what needs to be communicated to whom, and who will be responsible for doing so. Effective boundary spanning often requires more intentionality that communicating within the team.
• If you are the leader of a hierarchical team, recognize that it is typically insufficient to “allow” your team members to speak up and ask questions; you need to actively encourage them to do so.
• Anticipate and plan for some of the common communication risk points, such as changes in membership, working at a distance, and when handoffs occur. Identify which ones your team are most likely to experience and discuss how to mitigate or overcome them.