Team Communication: Principles and Stages

Principles of Effective Team Communication

• Focus on performance
• Go through four stages to reach high performance
• Build a work culture around values, norms and goals
• Meet often
• Focus on psychological safety and ensure all voices are heard
• Recognize and actively seek to avoid groupthink
• Embrace diversity
• Solve problems and generate creative solutions
• Provide positive feedback and evaluate performance often

Stages of Development in High-Performance Teams

• Forming: Team members focus on gaining acceptance and avoiding conflict.
• Storming: Team members open up with their competing ideas about how the team should approach work.
• Norming: The team arrives at a work plan, including roles, goals, and accountabilities.
• Performing: The team operates efficiently toward accomplishing its goals.

Team Culture

• Shared perceptions and commitment to collective values, norms, roles, responsibilities, and goals.
• Typically during the norming stage.

Team Charter

• Provides direction to the team.
• Includes purpose or mission statements, values, goals, team member roles, tasks, ground rules, communication protocol, meeting protocol, decision-making rules, conflict resolution, and feedback mechanisms.

Symptoms of Groupthink:

• When groups verbally or nonverbally agree to ideas without gathering enough information and exhaustively evaluating their options, the following symptoms may apply:
• Collective rationalization.
• Moral high ground.
• Self-censorship.
• Illusion of unanimity.
• Peer pressure.
• Illusion of invulnerability.
• Complacency.
• Mindguards.
• Stereotyping.

Behaviors that Drive Diversity of Ideas

• Making sure everyone is heard.
• Making it safe to let team members express novel ideas.
• Giving team members decision-making authority.
• Sharing credit.
• Giving useful feedback.
• Putting feedback into action.

Divergence

• Working independently can increase the number of ideas and solutions generated.

Convergence

• Evaluating the proposed ideas and solutions and narrowing them to a small set of feasible solutions to address the problem.

Ways to Develop Trust

• Get to know each other.
• Self-disclosure.
• Hold an effective launch meeting.
• Commit to working together and separately.
• Set up a deliverable schedule and evaluate performance regularly.

Planning for Meetings: Essential Questions

• What is the purpose of the meeting? What outcomes are expected?
• Who should attend?
• When should the meeting be scheduled?
• What roles and responsibilities should people at the meeting have?
• What will be the agenda?
• What materials should be distributed prior to the meeting?
• When and how should others be invited?
• What logistical issues need addressing such as reserving rooms, acquiring equipment, and printing materials)?

Least Productive times for meetings

• Research suggests that the best times for meetings fall between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Types of Meetings

• Coordination Meetings
• Primarily focus on discussing roles, goals, and accountabilities.
• Problem-Solving Meetings
• Typically involve brainstorming about how to address and solve a particular work problem.

Agenda Components

• Agenda items.
• Time frames.
• Goals/expected outcomes.
• Roles.
• Materials needed.

Running Effective Meetings

• Create tradition, culture, and variety.
• Set expectations and follow the agenda.
• Encourage participation and expression of ideas, where a facilitator may be in use.
• Build consensus and a plan of action.
• Closing of the meeting.
• Deal with difficult people.

Meeting Follow-up/Minutes Components

• Date and time.
• Team members present.
• Meeting roles.
• Key decisions.
• Key discussion points (optional).
• Open issues (optional).
• Action items and deadlines.

Virtual Teams

• Generally consist of team members located at various offices (including home offices) and rely almost entirely on virtual technologies to work with one another.

Working in Virtual Teams

• Focus on building trust at each stage of your virtual team.
• Meeting in person if possible.
• Get to know one another.
• Use collaborative technologies.
• Choosing an active team leader.

Maintaining Trust over the Life of a Virtual Team Project

• Stage of project: Forming, Elements of trust: Competence
• Key action to foster trust: Asking and responding to questions about one another's professional accomplishments, strengths, and weaknesses.
• Stage of project: Forming, Elements of trust: Caring
• Key action to foster trust: Showing interest in teammates and Expressing a desire to work with teammates.
• Stage of project: Forming, Elements of trust: Character
• Key action to foster trust: Making commitments to high team performance and Discussing shared values for a team charter.
• Stage of project: Norming, Elements of trust: Competence
• Key action to foster trust: Demonstrating strong performance in early deliverables and Preparing well for initial meetings.
• Stage of project: Norming, Elements of trust: Caring
• Key action to foster trust: Sharing information, offering to help teammates, and staying accessible to teammates and Responding promptly to the requests of teammates.
• Stage of project: Norming, Elements of trust: Character
• Key action to foster trust: Living up to commitments in the team charter.
• Stage of project: Performing, Elements of trust: Competence
• Key action to foster trust: Completing all tasks with excellence.
• Stage of project: Performing, Elements of trust: Caring
• Key action to foster trust: Encouraging and supporting teammates to complete tasks near final deadlines when the pressure is highest.
• Stage of project: Performing, Elements of trust: Character
• Key action to foster trust: Ensuring all team outcomes are fair to team members and stakeholders.

Running Effective Virtual Meetings

• Tips to make the meeting more productive:
• Start the meeting with social chat.
• Start with a contentious question.
• Ask "what do you think about" questions.
• Make sure each team member is involved.
• Articulate views precisely.
• Take minutes in real time.
• Focus on your teammates and avoid multitasking.
• Use video when possible.

Group Writing

• Tips for effective group writing:
• Start right away.
• Work together at the planning stage (Important!).
• Make sure your roles and contributions are fair.
• Stay flexible and open.
• Meet in real time consistently and ensure the writing reflects the views of the group.
• Discuss how you will edit the document together.
• Consider a single group member to polish the final version and ensure a consistent voice.

Managing Difficult Conversations

• Difficult conversations often center on disagreements, conflict, and bad news.
• Many people prefer to avoid difficult conversations because they want to avoid hurting the feelings of others or want to avoid conflict.

Principles of Difficult Conversations

• Embrace difficult conversations.
• Assume the best in others.
• Adopt a learning stance.
• Stay calm/overcome noise.
• Find common ground.
• Disagree diplomatically.
• Avoid exaggeration and either/or approaches.

Components of Difficult Conversations

• Start well/declare your intent.
• Listen to their story.
• Tell your story.
• Create a shared story.

How to Disagree Diplomatically

• Validating others means that perspectives and feelings are viewed as credible or legitimate. Validation does not necessarily mean that there is agreement between parties.
• I-statements begin with phrases such as:
• "I think"
• "I feel"
• "I believe"
• Soften comments to sound more conciliatory and flexible and less blaming and accusatory.