The 5-Minute Manager - How to improve Team Communication

This involves making changes to the way team members communicate. It is based upon Psychological Safety, something that fundamentally changes communication behaviours.

Open Communication

If you want to create chaos where confusion runs rampant, and production is low, have a team that does not know how to communicate. We all know that poor communication is at the root of all problems.

What is required is open communication which means practising mutually beneficial and honest discussions. This doesn't just refer to discussions during meetings or other work activities but also to keeping others appraised on important matters, sharing fears, and seeking counselling from others.

Open communication means being able to speak your mind, being listened to and respecting your point of view.

Open communication is a higher form of communication-based on trust and mutual respect. Team members must be able to voice gripes, complaints, praises, predictions, concerns and especially fears as long as they do so positively. Team members should never refer to an individual team member as the cause of a problem (the concept of never laying blame) but rather only refer to a broken process or function, which is nearly always the actual cause of any problem. Teams need encouragement to indulge in communication to discover improved ways of reaching the team's vision and resolving differences through collaborative problem-solving and sharing of experiences. It is also important to know that misunderstandings can be a good thing because they prevent groupthink and spurn innovation.

All meetings must have open and honest communication where team members explain progress or setbacks and frustrations and disappointments, and suggestions for improvements in the way the team works. When there is tension in the team -bad air – this must be allowed to escape, which only happens through sponsored dialogue. Team members must openly communicate everything—good and bad—if there is to be open and honest communication. It is a matter of not what you say but how you say it.

Team members need to accept critical feedback and provide constructive input to others. Feedback should answer questions, provide solutions, or help strengthen the task or project at hand. You cannot have a high-performance team without strong relationships and genuine communication. These traits are essential for high-performance teams because, without honest communication and the strength of the relationships that follow, it becomes near impossible to fix problems with performance. Strong and open relationships allow team members to talk honestly about successes and failures areas for improvement and without fear of animosity.

How to practice Open Communication

1. It is a matter of not what you say but how you say it.

2. Accept critical feedback and provide constructive input to others.

3. Allow everyone to voice gripes, complaints, praises, predictions, concerns and especially fears as long as they do so in a positive manner.

4. Never refer to an individual team member as the cause of a problem - never lay blame. Refer only to a broken process or function, which is nearly always the actual cause of any problem.

5. Accept that misunderstandings can be a good thing because they prevent groupthink and spurn innovation.

6. Allow everyone to explain setbacks and frustrations and disappointments, and suggestions for improvements in the way the team works.

Psychological Safety - Being able to safely speak your mind

We are all reluctant to engage in behaviours that could negatively influence how others perceive our competence, awareness, and positivity. Although this kind of self-protection is a natural strategy in the workplace, it is detrimental to effective teamwork. On the flip side, the safer team members feel with one another, the more likely they are to admit mistakes, partner, and take on new roles.

Being able to speak your mind is not as easy as it might sound. Many of us, especially depending on our workplace situations, feel that we cannot speak up about what we truly think. We do not speak up for fear or ridicule, humiliation, not being respected, not being taken seriously, being held back by our position or status and a feeling that we will not be listened to. All of these things hold us back. They are aspects of workplace culture barriers, meaning that these are the things that need to change if we are to feel confident about speaking our minds.

To overcome these barriers, a team must adopt what is known as psychological safety – “a shared belief held by team members that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking". It is the ability to present oneself and act without fear of negative consequences for self-image, status, or career. In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected.
Low psychological safety is a foot on the brakes when someone wants to say something controversial, resulting in apathy or anxiety. High psychological safety equates to taking your foot off the brakes and putting your foot on the accelerator, allowing everyone to speak their mind safely. This puts teams into a learning zone where workplace well-being is high and performance is high.

Psychological safety is a critical factor in team learning and high-performance team development. It is a workplace, an environment where team members feel a sense of inclusion which creates conditions that enable individuals to speak their minds, take moderate risks and stick their necks out without fear of having it cut off. An all-inclusive and understanding environment is a breeding ground for new ideas. Team members feel they can put forward risky or innovative concepts because they know they will be taken seriously. Hostile business environments lead to the stagnation of creativity, poor work ethics, dogmatic policies, and low retention. It is particularly relevant in the modern business world, which counts on teams to innovate and perform in a chaotic environment. Team members who have no sense of psychological safety are unlikely to collaborate efficiently and effectively, and productivity will be hampered as a result.

An atmosphere of psychological safety means that people are content and able to admit and discuss mistakes; a healthy, positive learning and high-performance environment is created with team members more likely to ask questions and speak up to express issues and concerns, leading to quicker identification of problems and search for solutions.

When a team creates a sense of psychological safety, it will see higher levels of engagement, increased motivation, more learning and development opportunities, and substantially better performance. Team members become more energised because they feel they can be truthful and take risks. These types of behaviour lead to market breakthroughs without fear of judgment or reprisal and facilitate effective collaboration and creativity. In simple terms, psychological safety supports the belief that you won't be punished when you make a mistake or make an honest comment.

Psychological safety is a workplace environment where team members feel a sense of inclusion which creates conditions that enable individuals to speak their minds take moderate risks, and stick their necks out without fear of having them cut off.

The research is now abundantly clear that psychological safety is a powerful differentiator of teams. The best teams are the ones that have trust and belief in each other. Team members who don't feel safe will keep their problems to themselves and be unwilling to share information. This lack of openness may slow a business down, preventing it from responding as agilely as it might, as collaboration and communication become impaired, and individuals are reluctant to share the problems and opportunities they see. At its worst, senior managers can be left unaware of problems until they become so serious that an external regulator or government body is forced to step in.

High-performance teams do not allow grudges to build up and destroy team morale; they also replace blame with curiosity and autopsy. If team members sense that blame or criticism is being assigned, this leads to defensiveness and then to disengagement. High performance is about having team members settle and decide between competing ideas noting that no team can progress until all team members believe they have a voice that is heard. Conflict arises from differences when individuals come together in teams; their differences in power, values and attitudes contribute to the creation of conflict.