WORKSHOPS >> team communication

Team communication takes the credit, and blame, for almost every team success or crisis. That's because almost everything we do hinges on communication. When we have a performance review, we're most nervous about delivering, or hearing, bad news. When a customer complains, it's hard to listen without bias.

When we debate differing ideas, people getting defensive and closing down is our worst fear. When it's our turn to present a business proposal, what unsettles our nerve is the one question we may not have asked, or answered, before it's time to stand and deliver.

There's not a more legendary maxim in business or relationships when something's wrong than, "communication breakdown."

Team communication is a major factor when performance falls short; strategies backfire, people aren't on the same page, or teamwork hits a dead-end. It's not the only thing that matters.

It's the main thing.

And the main thing is also the hardest to fix. But not for the reasons you might think. When you ask most business people if they've been through teamwork communication training, the answer is a resigned, "Yes." They've been taught how to listen. Ad nauseam.

When you ask the same people if they listen when it's difficult, but needed, the answer is... uh, well, sometimes.

When it's critical that we listen but don't, it's not because we don't know how, but because we don't want to listen. Improving team communication is rarely about technique or "style" alone. Underneath it all, what needs to change is us.

For any team communication technique or strategy to work effectively, it must:

• increase motivation to listen openly
• provide the right framework to talk candidly and passionately
• clarify intentions so people don't leave meetings guessing about what was said
• align agendas so everyone is reading from the same page.

3 vital team communication traits

Those team communication must-haves rest on three elemental, but uncommon traits.

The first trait that shapes effective team communication is humility, what we call healthy egonomics. Humility may come as a surprise when talking about business communication. Here's how we uncovered humility and why it matters. In 2001, research expert Jim Collins revealed eye-opening, new science for the business world.

In 1996, Collins began a quest to uncover why some companies make the leap to great performance, and others don't. Of the 1,435 companies he studied, only 11 made the cut.

Those 11 outperformed their competitors by an average of 688% over a 15 year period in key measures like revenue growth, profitability and stock price. One of the most startling discoveries of Collins' work was about the leaders of those 11 organizations, who exhibited two, rare traits that allowed them to transform their organizations:

1. Fierce professional resolve
2. Extreme personal humility

He labeled that recipe of traits "Level 5" leadership. Even with equal ambition, talent and resources, those missing "Level 5" couldn't make the cut.

But the unanswered question of Collins' work also happened to be about "Level 5"; can you learn Level 5 leadership?

Our latest book, egonomics from Simon & Schuster, is our direct aim at answering that one question. As part of our research for egonomics, we explored how top team players and leaders communicate differently. Team communication built on leadership humility gets great results precisely because people:

• Listen with open-minds and open the minds of others to different ideas
• Passionately debate ideas without getting defensive
• Don't hoard knowledge and business expertise.

Humility is the most crucial difference between average and great communication, but it doesn't explain everything. Our investigation uncovered two other critical components of exceptional team communication.

The second trait is intense curiosity:

• debate with a higher level of intensity and diversity of thought
• structure discussions that lead to action, not endless meetings and conversation
• balance free-thinking and creativity with business discipline.

The third unique trait of top business teamwork is "water-cooler honesty." There is a difference in the ability of elite teams to:

• say what's really on their mind at crucial points during important meetings, rather than later at the water cooler
• freely speak their mind without fear listen to feedback without hesitation
• remove politics from conversations

Without those three traits of humility, curiosity and water-cooler honesty, every conversation that counts is at risk, which makes decisions, strategies and execution equally at risk.

5 levels of team communication

In pursuit of great performance, every team is at a level of communication that either pushes them back, keeps them locked where they are, or moves them ahead. There are 5 Levels of team communication that indicate what direction a team's performance is headed.

Level 1 team communication is isolated; people and their ideas stay isolated while team performance declines.

Level 2 is characterized by indifference - people don't really care about performance. Individuals may communicate and collaborate with one or two people, but it ends there.

Team communication at Level 3 is independent - people work on a team, but not very effectively as a team. People at Level 3 recognize the need for effective communication, but it's often clumsy and inconsistent because of competing, personal agendas. About half of all teams operate at Level 3.

And finally there are team dynamics at Level 5 - interdependent . According to research by Logan, King and Fischer-Wright of USC, Level 5 represents 2% of teams in business.

Based on the original, eye-opening work of David Marcum and Steven Smith, our Team Dynamics workshop teaches how to build effective team communication that leads to Level 5 results:

• people are engaged; a 48.9% improvement in team effectiveness
• retain top talent and lower turnover by up to 63%
• productivity-per-employee picks up
• increased customer loyalty and client trust
• less status-quo, more innovation

You can register for one of our LiveWeb workshops, or call us at 801.492.9009 to schedule an onsite workshop or keynote. You can also download one of our latest whitepapers, Water-Cooler Honesty, above or take our Team Dynamics survey to find out how close your team communication report card is to an "A" or "F."

We also have webcasts, tools and articles you can access and distribute to your team from our All Access page. You can watch a short Flash presentation of our Team Dynamics work and research here.