Do your team under-communicate?: Look for these three things for team success

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Have you ever experienced a team that just doesn’t seem to get each other? Well, making a great team is all about the personal aspect. Because, you can have all the greatest talent in a team but, if they aren’t interpersonal connected then it will be difficult to make it a high performing team.

The first thing a manager should check is these 3 things:

  • Is there energy in the team?
  • Is the team engaged?
  • Do the team dare to be explorative?

In this article you’ll meet Jacob who is a manager in a large multinational company – securing the wellbeing and performance of 4 teams in the IT department. You’ll hear about his journey and what he did. The example in article is written upon various experiences – made anonymous.

If you prefer reading in Danish, then you can read that version right here.

Jacob’s headache – an under communicating team

Jacob has a headache. In one of his teams the communication doesn’t work. Things get stuck, tasks are slipping, misunderstandings arise more frequently, and the overall wellbeing are starting to be at risk. He had tried every communication tool he knows but nothing had helped. Therefor he reached out to me asking for coaching. Wanting new perspectives to bring back.

“I feel there is a lack of energy” – he outbursted. “It’s like no one really cares…”.

The lack of energy was my key word because, maybe that was actually the case?

When there is a lack of energy in teams, you’ll also experience that the communication flow will decrease and maybe even in some part of the processes or tasks totally stop. In our work it’s not uncommon that people tell us about teams where the communication feels like hitting in a pillow – the response is slow and sometimes non existing. In those teams, just as in Jacob’s team, we see that there is another reason than just unwillingness that forms the basis der for the decrease in communication, we talk about the energy level.

The lack of energy will decrease engagement & communication

In teams, personal energy plays a pivotal role in driving performance and achieving goals. When each team member brings a high level of energy to their work, it lifts the entire group. Because, energy is contagious. When one person brings positive energy, it can spread across the group, creating a more vibrant and dynamic working environment. On the flip side, low energy can drag a team down. Research from e.g., practitioner Katzenbach and Smith shows that when team energy is high, communication flows more naturally, becomes more engaging, and helps maintain alignment around shared goals.

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Communication Breakdowns

On the other hand, low energy and no engagement can lead to breakdowns in communication, misunderstandings, or even silence. As you read before. 

When team energy is low, it affects the engagement and the communication can suffer. Team members may become passive, leading to reduced interactions or even avoidance of important conversations. Low energy and low engagement can result in unclear or incomplete communication, as people may lack the motivation to thoroughly explain ideas or listen actively. This can create confusion, misunderstandings, and a lack of alignment around goals. Teams with low energy and little engagement are also less likely to have proactive communication, leading to information silos and missed opportunities for collaboration. If you want your team to communicate better then maybe team development with us would be great. You can read more here.

When I shared this with Jacob, he felt like I just had mirrored what was at stake in this team. But what could he then do? We always start out with real examples from the worklife. Findings on whether this is the case or not. Therefor I asked him to go looking for these 3 aspects that needs to be present in a team for the communication being a success.

3 things to look for that foster great communication

Successful teams are made up of individuals who are fully engaged in both their own tasks and in supporting each other. I shared with Jacob these 3 aspects that does a great team and create a great foundation for successful communication:

  1. Energy – number and nature of exchanges among team members. Exchanges are defined as a comment or some acknowledgement e.g., a nod or a “yes”. Members listen and talks with equal patience. This is both in meetings, over a cup of coffee or in other forms of gatherings. Members face each other and their gestures are energetic. With energetic gestures means that they use body language to exemplify the spoken word.
  2. Engagement – the distribution of energy among team members. How much energy do a team member provide between one another? They connect with one another not only with the team lead and have “side conversations” within the team. Side conversations can be about interests, hobbies, personal dilemmas, kids, society etc.
  3. Exploration – team members take in new knowledge or new aspects and share it with the rest of the team. Or they explore together. Members continuously have break outs where they explore news things together and bring new information back. This can be book clubs, conferences, sparring with other teams etc.

Jacob then brought these new learnings back and now new what to look for. We agreed on him observing his team the following two weeks to gain concrete data on whether this could be the case in his team. He returned with observations that supported our assumptions. He shared that this team definitely had issues with the energy and engagement aspects but great at the exploring part even though he found a lack of energy in the conversations here too.

He observed that they were listening to each other, but with nearly no energetic gestures. They had almost only a connection with him as the team lead, asking him questions that another team member would be the right person to answer. And lastly, he observed no side conversations at all.

“Why haven’t I seen it before?”, he asked in a frustrated tone, but started laughing right after. “I know that the personal aspect is so important but nevertheless I oversaw it.”.

“We’re all like that, it’s totally normal”, I said. “Sometimes we get stuck but then the best thing to do is to reach out and have some other perspectives. That is what defines great leaders – those who want to develop and learn new ways of doing.” 

So, what did he do about it?     

3 Things You can do about the Lack of Team Communication

In the session we explored some different opportunities for solutions. Jacob ended up with this three:

  1. Begin using personal energy check-ins in their daily stand meeting every morning – working on increasing each’s personal energy level and having a common understanding of the overall energy level in the team.
  2. Begin being a role model having more personal side conversations about everything else than work.
  3. Begin to foster in-team-connections by not giving the answer right away when a team member come to him for an answer but pointing at a colleague from the team to ask instead.

Over the next month’s Jacob saw an increase in the energy level and hence also an increase in the communication flow. He saw that when the team’s energy is high, people are more engaged, and when they are more engaged, they communicate more effectively. Now they actively participate in discussions, ask clarifying questions, and offer input. He told me that he can see that this level of engagement ensures that communication goes beyond surface-level exchanges; it becomes deeper and more meaningful. And suddenly this team started asking for feedback training for them to learn how to give and receive feedback constructively, which we know by fact will strengthen overall performance and trust within the group.

I hope that this article was useful and gave you some insights upon how you can increase  your team’s wellbeing and performance.

If you want to increase your teams wellbeing and performance I’m happy to have a chat.  You can take a closer look at me as a coach, Josefine as a coach or our Leadership Community.

And remember that we help people in multinational companies developing leadership to realize dreams. If you would like to be updated with new articles and videos, sign up for our mailing list. Your mail is not shared with anyone and there are advantages to being on the list e.g., getting the first chapter of Josefine Campbell’s book, Power Barometer – How to Manage Personal Energy for Business Succes

References

Kratzenback, Jon K. & Douglas Smith (1993), The descipline of teams.
https://hbr.org/1993/03/the-discipline-of-teams-2

Kratzenback, Jon K. & Douglas Smith (2015), The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization, Harvard Business Review Press. ISBN: 9781633691070

HBR (2013/2022): HBR’s must reads on Teams, Harvard Business Review Press. ISBN13: 9781422189870 

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