My Five Favorite Communication Mistakes

In today’s article, I want to share my best practices in terms of communication within the team and offer to analyze 5 situations, understanding of which will help increase the effectiveness of communication and speed up the “gluing” between the “new” and “old” parts of the team.
The article will be built in the format: “problem – solution”.

Here there is Video from speech to Podlodkawhere I talked about this – if you don’t have time to read, you can watch it.

For almost 12 years of work in various fields: government agencies, education and IT, my colleagues and I have encountered a number of problems in building communications. These complexities led to slower interactions both between different departments and within the same team, which ultimately reduced the productivity of work, the effectiveness of training and / or information transfer. What I want to share is the summarized structured result of my experience in the field of communication. Perhaps there is nothing breakthrough in it for most of you, but often such ordinary things are forgotten for some reason. Let’s brush it up and break it down into the following five situations that you can use to increase communication effectiveness and quickly “glue” the “new” part of the team to the “old” one.

The main purpose of communication in a team is to solve a specific problem. The task may be related to the execution of a script or the solution of a specific problem, which in this context does not matter. In any case, efforts are aimed at achieving some very specific goal. Even if we just want to know how a colleague is doing or in the mood. Of course, the result depends on both parties, but I am convinced that communication properly built on the part of a manager or manager is 85% of the successful completion of any task. Moreover, this approach can be applied absolutely everywhere, including outside of work.

1. Do you speak English?

One of the biggest problems I have encountered is related to nomenclature and anglicisms. Such situations are especially common in international companies, when colleagues begin to speak different languages. Difficulties are also created by the fact that people who are united by one idea and have their own unique experience work on each individual project. (In a back-end company, you can never be sure exactly what they mean when they say “pull the handle.”) Moreover, often even communication between colleagues in the same industry or company is difficult. And now the team faces a new task, in which someone has experience and tries to “help and explain” to the others, or a new person has come. What happens when communication is built in a language that is not understandable to a person? Part of the information that is intended for a person will pass him by. Moreover, the person begins to feel stupid and the sinking process will slow down even more.

What can be done? SIMPLIFY

Pay more attention to the wording of questions and explanations. Try to make them clear and transparent. Complicating communication and wasting extra time on terminology issues is, at least, not the most rational use of project time. And that means money.

2. Obvious – not obvious.

Are there many of us who came to IT and were immediately middle or senior? Units. The fact that someone may not know something is periodically forgotten. Especially when setting goals. We all, for sure, often perform daily routine actions and work steps with the tools used on the project automatically. That’s just not all team members it is completely obvious and absolutely clear in most cases. Especially this moment shoots at various kinds of interviews, when she answered the question in 2 words, and the interviewee decided that the person was not in the subject.

What can be done? SPEAK

Take for granted things! Absolutely any person, having instructions, will begin to navigate the team processes much faster and master the tools necessary for work. Moreover, pedagogy tells us that new material in most cases is 100% absorbed only when we encounter it 3 or more times. Instructions are also about freeing yourself from having to endlessly answer repetitive questions and eliminating the emotional consequences of this awkwardness. And of course, there is no better onboarding editor than a new team member!

3. Silence – gold (s)

Periodically, there are days when at work we become the most irreplaceable people. Especially before the holidays! The only one who can answer all questions.

Of course, Outlook, jira and many other tools help in planning working time. But the final decision on how to distribute your attention remains directly with the person. Naturally, colleagues will ask a certain number of questions. The scope of these questions tends to increase with our experience. At some point, we are too busy to fully respond. No one expects 24/7 responses from a colleague. Everyone has important and urgent tasks, however, it is also impossible to leave your favorite team member completely unattended. What to do?

What can be done? let the person know

Let the person know that you will be free in N hours and will be able to devote time to him. For the time being, he can be engaged in another part of the task in which there are no questions or switch to alternative activities. Again, you can always tell who else has the information you need. To understand the importance of this communication, you can imagine a situation in which you yourself tell an amazing fresh gossip about your boss to your best friend, and in response – silence. A bit of toxicity, but: the question involuntarily arises about the abduction of a loved one by aliens in this case.

4. And so it will do!

One of the most common questions in my experience is “Why do all this”? Does the team really understand what you want from them? Under a mountain of tasks necessary to complete, a colleague may not realize the need for one or another of them, the importance of any action and the value of the result for the team. Why is it dangerous for the team? It can affect performance and lead to an increase in the percentage of “errors”.

What can be done? STRUCTURE communication

I’m using the answer chart:
“Why are we doing this?”
– “How do we do it?”
– “What do we want to get as a result?”

In this case, a puzzle is formed of the importance of various tasks for the project and prioritization of personal actions without micromanagement.

5. Magic in action

One day one of my colleagues said: “In Russia, they scold instantly, but never praise.”

Over time and experience, I discovered several spells from the series: “come on quickly!” and other variations on this “dry gingerbread” theme. Impostor syndrome, demotivation and other “charms” of work, which are talked about a lot in various sources, are a big problem at the moment. In this case, constructive feedback is of particular value, highlighting not only negative aspects, but also strengths! Including the review of MPs.

What can be done? SPEAK!

Pay special attention to saying “Thank you” for completed tasks. Give people feedback that the results of the work do not go unnoticed. In practice, this worked out as a huge incentive for new achievements and continued development. In my team, I started one great tradition: on Fridays or after some significant events in the evening, in a common chat with colleagues, write targeted thanks to each of them. At first there was a lot of surprise and misunderstanding, and then some colleagues joined in and began to look for their own reasons to say thank you.

What happens in the end after applying all these rules in practice? The good mood of the team, well, and the benefit for the company.