Team Communication

Effective communication is very important at every stage of our lives. Communication, in general, is a means of expressing feelings, views, suggestions and ideas. To deliver an effective and influential message, good communication skills are essential. These skills help in negotiations and increase leadership qualities. Bad communication leads towards conflict and misunderstandings. Regular interaction with people and activities like debate and public speaking polish your communication skills. A team constitutes of members working for a common goal. Team communication is highly required for an effective working of a team. Team communication simply means communicating among small group of people. A team generally has minimum of 3 and maximum 15 members. This team can be a social, educational or professional in nature. The members who are a part of the team have a common motive, goal and work on similar strategies. Team communication brings out the effectiveness of the team as a whole, by enhancing the personal characteristics the members. It makes the team more productive and establishes networks. Team communication makes the team operations flawless, smooth, healthy and effective. Pointers on effective team communication skills are given below.

Effective Team Communication Skills

Team members should always be respected and given equal importance. It does not matter whether you are a team leader or a team member. Each one should have a say in the team decisions and team working.
Make each member of your team clear about the strategies and goal of the particular project the group is working on. There should not be any doubt in the mind of any member and that may delay the achievement of the goal. To overcome this problem and make sure that everybody has understood the goals thoroughly, always welcome questions and queries and give solution to the same.
Team communication is highly essential in defining the role and responsibilities of the members of the team. Each member would know what he/she is responsible of and what is expected of him/her.
Communicate with the members of your team regularly and keep on updating them with the latest changes (if any) and general proceedings. This could be through e-mails, chat, video/telephonic conferences and so on. A regular update would help the team members focus on the goal better and instill in them the will to attain the said goal or objective.
Meet your team members on a regular basis. This is the only way each member would have a clear idea about the proceedings of the work. Also, meetings help team members clear doubts, if any. Proper communication leads a team to come out with flawless work.
Make the meetings interactive by giving team members a chance to speak. If only one person or the leader speaks, then the meeting would not be successful. Remember, for effective team communication, one should have the capability to listen to other members. Ask for suggestions and implement them, if they are good enough.
The most important aspect of good team communication is feedback. Ask for feedbacks from time to time to abolish the faults. This way the team members would think that they are important and their opinions are being listened to.
While speaking, do not go very fast. Be slow and clear while speaking. Whatever you explain or say to your team members should be followed by reasoning. This would help the team members know as to why a particular process is taken up or why something should be avoided.
Never use rude tone and offensive body language. For an effective team communication, always be polite and positive. Do not give unnecessary expressions or speak unpleasant language.
Don’t keep any personal grudges; it may have a bad impact on team spirit and work. Communicate well to resolve the issue.
Appreciate team members on their good performance. Encourage them and inject positive vibes in them towards better working. Motivate them regularly; it can be interpersonal, through e-mails or during a team meeting.

With these team communication skills, you can feed motivation and increase efficiency of team members. Know that effective team communication leads the team towards success and victory.

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