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I
have a few questions about work team communication skills:
1. What are the best strategies to promote team communication skills in the workplace?
2. What can be done to ensure effective workplace teamwork?
3.What strategies can be used to ensure that team tasks are done successfully?
Signed,
Teaming Up
Dear Teaming:
I'll try to briefly answer your three questions–briefly because if you will examine our Q&A Archive, you will find detailed answers woven throughout a host of such queries pertaining to work team communication skills.
1. What are the best strategies to promote team communication skills in the workplace?
Strategy #1 is the encouragement of meta communication.. By that, I mean promoting the ground rule for work groups to frequently devote a few minutes to answering the question: "How well are we working together and communicating as a team?" Such communication behaviors thus come to the surface as too much or too little listening, negativism rather than vigorous and rigorous testing of ideas, and willingness to be innovative. The promotion of this ground rule becomes important when teams are challenged and rewarded as a group, rather than as individuals, for quality improvement efforts.
2. What can be done to ensure effective workplace teamwork?
There are some discretionary employee behaviors that can not be ensured. Teamwork is one such behavior. But setting work group baselines and larger work group baselines for productivity, and keeping track of the numbers can help. The most important numbers are returns and re-dos, customer satisfaction and complaints, cuts in waste, and increases/decreases in sales.
3. What strategies can be used to ensure that team tasks are done successfully?
Freeing up employees from fear of failure and creating team self-inspection are needed to avoid cover ups and biting one's tongue for fear of saying the wrong thing. Getting feedback to those who do the work regarding the numbers of customer rejects and repeat orders will generate a commitment to work on cutting defects and doing high quality work. The best research is to ask questions of those who work on teams. So don't expect to learn only from books.
WEGO is an expansion bridge linking co-workers' and management's hearts, minds and voices.
Bill Gorden