Tips for Improving Your Team Communication to Succeed

There’s an opinion that poor staff-manager communication causes great troubles for companies when managing the staff. Are you a manager? We’d like to help you prevent those issues, so we’re presenting you the solutions to strengthen your internal communication by means of digital technologies.

Sounds interesting? Let’s begin.

#1. Start “at home”

Starting from yourself is overriding. All the people are familiar with those simple advice. Just remember the following:

• lead others by your own example;
• listen carefully and be responsive;
• read people’s body languages;
• bear in mind communicative inclinations;
• avoid issues’ personalization;
• be specifically referring to individuals, and not groups;
• delegate tasks in a clear and direct way;
• stay away from criticism personalization;
• always strive for improvements and progress.

It’s not rocket science, is it? Moving on…

#2. Build a hospitable working climate

Help your employees feel comfortable. Remove any taboos. Support your people when they express their opinions or feelings. Remember that you’re dealing with living persons, not machines.

Here are a few ideas to inspire you:

• establish the open-door policy;
• show the example of the kind and pro-active interaction;
• encourage various social communication;
• help your staff provide their feedback as constructive criticism (e.g. various surveys).

Speaking of surveys, you could apply SurveyMonkey, OfficeVibe or 15Five. They’re reliable.

Show some care to your staff members, and they’ll respond in kind. In fact, no matter what business you own – a small UI/UX design company or a huge trading corporation – it works for everyone.

The next step would be…

#3. Ensure your meetings’ efficiency

Meetings could be productive only when prepared and held properly. Looking for your meetings high performance? Then assure they abide by such three requirements:

1. All parties concerned know the agenda;
2. The meeting time is regulated and limited;
3. Every attendee shall get prepared in advance to discuss issues on the agenda.

Moreover, your meetings will get only more efficient, if you carry out a few more actions:

• Establish meetings’ fixed timetables for the staff to build a habit. And habits reduce stress, by the way. Regular chatting with your people shall show you at what stage they are and how they can get better.
• Think of establishing a video meeting environment. While applying certain solutions – say, Google Hangouts and Skype – remote personnel will feel a particularly personal touch of yours. In addition, that’s a great approach to save money on phone calls and travels.

Eye-to-eye meetings matter critically. However, meetings in groups (including video ones) shall enhance productivity. Just remember about every point mentioned earlier.

Multiple studies prove that communication by means of various gadgets and technologies prevails, and it’s not surprising. So, enjoy those solutions for your benefit.

And we shall continue…

#4. Must-have means to reinforce your team collaboration

Regular newsletters every month used to be effective. Nowadays, the rules of the game are different. At the same time, sending feeds every day isn’t an option either. It’s all about the golden mean to follow. Feel the appropriate time interval for your communication strategies.

Instruments to encourage and uphold your inner communication

• Sync interaction

Instant messengers are at your disposal. Synchronicity is essential here. Give your people possibilities to immediately exchange opinions, discuss issues, receive answers, etc. Devote due time to find a certain communication approach to meet your needs in the best possible way. Explore its features to verify it’s the one.

Here you could go for Slack or Chanty. Those are decent tools to help you out.

However, prevent over-communicating! Meaning, if your workers install certain platforms into their personal devices, try not to send messages after the working hours. Most likely, those issues could wait until the next day.

• Convenient working environment

Most probably you already know that teamwork might turn into something chaotic, thus, especially devoted space is required to organize everything properly. Such an aspect becomes even more important when you need to coordinate the operation of multiple offices, as well as in case you employ remote staff.

Some kind of a planning instrument shall help every employee be on the same page to see what’s happening, where the info is, what’s the stage of a certain project, and so on.

When not having such a roadmap, managers waste their precious time figuring out the details. Various tools, like, Droptask or Basecamp, shall assist you with activities coordination.

• Specific clarification on a specific instrument application

When the decision’s made and a handy tool’s chosen, explain to the personnel your demands on how a given platform has to be applied. Set your expectations from the outset. Create the guideline to write down your requirements. When utilizing a single framework, every staff member has to have confidence and to understand the rules.

• Robust communication dynamics

After defining the instruments and setting specific rules of their usage, what shall be the next move? Your team represents a living organism with its changes and movements. You hire newcomers, launch your products… Some people might decide to leave looking for a better place… The company is constantly in the dynamics.

That’s the reason to review your guidelines from time to time to guarantee their relevance and validity. Your task is to keep it updated to engage your staff at any time.

Okay, last but not least…

#5. Measure the progress of applying your team communication techniques

The results of implementing communication approaches are to be reflected in higher staff engagement, which, consequently, shall bring you more income in the long term perspective. To ensure it all happens as intended, you being a manager shall monitor intermediate results. There exist several means to track your progress:

• keep track of any latest variations in your efficiency, sales volumes, revenue, etc.;
• regularly perform some surveys to figure out your staff satisfaction level;
• calculate your employees’ retention rate.

When those parameters indicate some positive changes, you’re good to strive even harder. Otherwise, if those results aren’t good enough for you, you could think of adopting other techniques seeking to refine your staff communication.

So, are you ready to get down to business? Go ahead and try!