Good Communication Good Team

Good Communication, Good Team

When one thinks of team he or she thinks of one unit, one organization or a group acting as one. The main purpose of the team is to come together to form a final conglomerate and product. When a team forms for a school or work project, it is understood that a goal is to be accomplish, but the biggest road block to a team is the lack of communication.

Communication is the golden key to the success of a team in sports or on a project. Some feel intimidated, scared or afraid of rejection to involve themselves in the communication of a team. While others may be too confident or feel they need to be in charge, which also inhibits the communication within the team.

This paper will exhibit some issues common in today’s team meetings and group assignments. It will display how communication break down leads to the demise of most groups and projects. Much like the classic novel “The Lord of The Flies”, anarchy, hostility against other members and cliques form if no structure is in place. But with the proper guidance, instruction and “conch shell”, teams form a unity and work toward one goal.

What is communication?

Communication is the process that allows people to exchange information by one or several methods, as defined on Wikipedia.com. Communication comes in many forms such as speech, sign language, touch, eye contact or motion. Sports teams such as football use huddles to communicate plays or in baseball the pitcher and catcher communicate using hand signals. In work or school most communication is through voice and talking to each other. People communicate to resolve issues, display feelings and develop ideas. In teams that work on projects in school or work, communication is in a meeting room or round table, where the expression of ideas to solve a problem is communicated through talking. When issues arise and people disagree, what happens to the team, more off what happens to the communication.

Team Communication Issues

Communication breakdown is the reason or source for most conflicts in a team. There are many underling causes for communication breakdowns within a group, inadequate training, misunderstandings, differing backgrounds or a mere lack of respect for others within your group or a particular person within the group. Oftentimes when more than three people form a group or team, cliques begin to form and take sides against others, utterly forming their own team against the group. Because this happens it often results in the team members withholding information and losing trust. Other recourses can be reduced cooperation and productivity, person attacks and complaints.

A good example of a lack of communication is the North American Blackout of 2003, where the power plants did not communicate the status of the power grids causing more than 100 power plants to go off line and 40 million Americans and Canadians to lose power. Not including how many billions of dollars was lost by American and Canadian companies.

Richard J. Mayer came up with the hypothesis that “Virtually all communication problems and conflicts between people, no matter how serious they appear, are due to an accumulation of un-confronted and unresolved minor issues, each of little or no apparent importance.”

He also states that communication breakdown is inevitable due to our nature as human beings. A little conflict within a team is good, if no or little conflict occurs it most likely means that all members think alike or have just given up hope and abandoned the team. Both of these factors are not good for the effectiveness of the team.

Effective communication within a team will not and does not happen over night; instead, it requires delicate planning and good organization on part of the team leader.

Communication resolutions

If the team leader or project manager does not sense there is a communications problem within the team, it is their responsibility to correct it. If the team cannot get its job done, the blame is ultimately going to fall on the leader. Developing a set of guidelines is essential for creating self-discipline in a team. Developing a set of ground rules and assigning tasks that each rule is followed by all team members is a start. Off of that time should be spent discussing disciplinary actions if any rules are broken. Once ground rules and the disciplinary action is set, most of the annoyances of team communication is crushed. Building trust within your team is essential, which will