From the course: Managing Teams

Communicate with your team

From the course: Managing Teams

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Communicate with your team

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- When managers effectively communicate, teamwork is more efficient and given all the different ways you can communicate these days, it's important to have a clear plan for when, how, and where you'll communicate with your team. In this brief video, I'll share tips to help you communicate effectively with your team. One of the most important things you can do as a manager is establish team norms for communication. At any given moment, you probably have information you need or want to share with your teammates. Given all of the communication channels at your disposal, which ways do you communicate with your team? Have you established norms as a group? Rather than reactively communicating with your teammates, take a few minutes to proactively consider how to best share information within your team. For example, when it comes to general updates, do you prefer face-to-face meetings, where you can share information and have a discussion? While that might be more convenient to you, it could be that your teammates prefer for you to email updates and schedule a follow-up discussion if and only if there are questions or points that need to be discussed. If someone needs to ask a quick question, would you prefer they call you on the phone, send a text message or chat, or what about an email instead? Rather than reach for a communication method that might be most convenient for you, use a channel and timing that works best for your teammates. Pause the video here for a moment and consider, what are your teammates communication preferences? How do their preferences compare to your own? If you aren't sure of your team's preferences, schedule a meeting to discuss team communication. Next, make your in-person and video meetings count. If your agenda items don't require immediate feedback or discussion, consider sending an email or memo instead of holding a meeting. If you're gathering the group in person or virtually, make sure this is a good use of everyone's time. Provide an agenda in advance of the meeting and list questions or discussion topics on the agenda. This gives the people on your team who need time to process their thoughts the opportunity to prepare and engage in the discussion. The more dispersed your team, the more you need to regularly and proactively communicate with each other. Not having pre-established methods for this can easily result in miscommunication and unnecessary conflict. As a manager, it's important to determine how and when you'll communicate and which channels you'll use for the varied messages you need to send. A hallmark of high-performing teams is effective communication. Make sure you're communicating with your team to help maximize everyone's performance.

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