The worst nightmare of any team leader is walking into a team meeting full of arguing, inconsiderate, and apathetic employees. All these factors make any team dysfunctional. Eventually, the business fails to attain its goal. A successful team consists of purposeful members in their interactions and mindful of their behavioral differences. A successful team is also where members communicate effectively.
As a team leader, you should focus on improving communication among workers. There are unique ways to boost healthy co-worker relationships. One way is to involve fun team-building activities. Whether your team is in-house or remote, you may be surprised by the many available options. Escape rooms, virtual trivia, and charades are just a few.
Below we discuss team-building and other effective ways to enhance communication between team members.
Keep an Open-Door Policy
An open-door policy sets the precedent that anyone can ask questions, voice concerns, and pitch ideas anytime when the team is involved in a dialogue. It is a part of building trust within your team. When you make management inaccessible, it makes your team members think they are not valued.
Keeping the doors open for communication is crucial. For instance, if some new members have joined the team lately, you can start with team introduction ideas and activities to make them comfortable with each other.
Welcome Feedback
Any type of constructive criticism is healthy for the team to grow. Thus, as a manager, you must be open to feedback. To get the most out of feedback, it is essential to reach out to every team member for their opinions.
Feedback needs to be clear and detailed. When you carry out a team meeting, encourage each member to voice their feedback publicly. It is helpful because everybody gets to learn something from such feedback.
Host Some Fun Activities for Your Team
One of the easiest ways to boost morale and encourage interaction among your team members is to host fun activities. Team building exercises and activities are long used to improve effective communication between the team members. Thus, you can arrange any fun activity for them, and the interaction will flow.
Some of the best fun activities that you can host for your whole team include board rooms in the break room, interactive sessions talking about their interests, after-work hanging out at the cafeteria, pizza party, etc. It is good to conduct such programs and activities once a month. Besides building better interaction, it also allows all the team members a break from mundane office chores.
A Communication Training for the Whole Team
Communication training is one of the best ways to reset interaction between your team members. Many studies have stated that communication training is highly effective in improving group communication.
This idea covers basic conversational skills and includes many other approaches to improve the work performance of your team, such as instructions on business writing, managerial skills, presentation skills, and so on. Hosting such programs for your team members will improve their performance.
Decide on the Best Form of Communication
Different situations demand different forms of communication. For example, if a project involves your team members working remotely, a video conference is the best way for everyone to keep in touch about milestones and progress. Similarly, for in-house projects, face-to-face meetings and conversations constitute the best method of communication.
Whatever your project is, it is good to decide upon an effective form of communication to activate better interaction.
Know Diversity Issues
When people of all races, nationalities, ideologies, and languages collaborate, it is sure that unique ideas will come together to create something out-of-the-box. However, the difference in language may sometimes create a communication gap.
The role of a team leader is to understand these diversity issues and bridge the gap so that the ideas are shared on a common platform without any obstacles or judgments.
Takeaway
An interactive and robust team can overcome even the most difficult challenges effectively. Make notes of all the above-listed points and motivate your team members to keep the communication flowing.
