IT'S TRUE. EFFECTIVE communication within a project team will grease the group processes, making problem solving, decision-making and conflict resolution much easier. Effective communication is also the glue holding together a high-performing project team. Clear messages are sent, received and accurately interpreted. Individual team members understand how they fit into the project, what others need from them, when and how information should be conveyed.
But the gum?
Communication can easily gum up the works of a project team if it is the wrong type, poorly presented, or insensitively delivered. The world is awash in information. There is more data out there than anyone can possibly retrieve, distill and productively use. The challenge, in a project team at least, is to communicate this information effectively and with intention. This is the subject of this article.
Effective Communication—Exactly What Is It? Quite simply, effective communication occurs when a message is sent, received, and understood as intended. It is a two-party process, requiring willingness, motivation and discipline on the part of both the message sender and receiver.
So effective communication necessitates the use of feedback to confirm that the message was received and understood as intended. Interactive questioning—the use of paraphrasing and summarizing—is the primary method of achieving this confirmation.
Do I understand you to say …? So we have decided …, right? By briefly restating the key points, as you understand them, when you are on the receiving end, you provide the sender with the confirmation he or she needs to know the communication has been effective. As the sender you should expressly ask the recipient to paraphrase or summarize important messages. The risk of communicating what was not intended is very high— especially on project teams that cross functions, distance and cultures, which are the majority of project teams out there today.
Michelle Keiserman has over 12 years of management/training experience with an international roster of clients. She has developed instructor-led and self-study soft skills and sales training courses, in addition to managing the training and coordination of development projects involving multiple vendors and customers. Direct comments on this column to [email protected].
Intentional Communication—Exactly What Is It? Intentional communication requires forethought and advance preparation. There are three major ways for a team leader or member to plan a project-related communication:
Structure the message for easy comprehension.
Avoid communication blockers.
Use formal plans to remove some of the guesswork and elevate the importance of clear communication to the success of the team and the project.
Adopting a readily comprehensible structure may require drafting written messages and then editing them before they are sent. Or it could involve front-loading your message with information that is of the greatest interest to the receivers, grabbing their attention and motivating them to read on. And it could mean breaking long messages into digestible chunks, adding an overview at the beginning and a summary at the end. But it almost always will require the use of repetition. If it's important, repeat it. If it's important, repeat it. If it's important, repeat it.
Communication blockers are words and phrases that shut down the listener quicker than you can say, “You aren't listening!” Assumptions, generalizations and confusing individuals with issues (Joe is a slow worker versus Joe missed the deadline) are all examples of communication blockers. Perhaps the most effective blockers are what I call “Killer Comments”—words like but, however, although. Consider the difference in these two sentences:
“I agree, but let me point out … versus “I agree, and let me point out ….”
By using but to connect the two thoughts in the first sentence, the speaker undermined the positive message (I agree). As soon as the word “but” is heard, most of us anticipate a downside or negative remark. In contrast, the initial positive message (I agree) is not undermined when the two thoughts are linked by and. Better still is to break the sentence into two: “I agree.” “Let me point out….”
Phrases can also block communication. Remarks like “That's not how we do it around here” or “That's a dumb idea” will usually affect the listener in one of these ways: possible defensiveness, likely annoyance, almost certain shutdown.
Finally, the use of a formal communication plan for both your intra-team (within the core project team) and inter-team (between you and the project stakeholders) communications will force you to do two very important things:
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Commit to a schedule of communication.
Take the information needs of the various groups (team, sponsor, clients, users) into account.
By creating and publicizing the existence of a formal plan for keeping people informed, you are declaring a commitment to avoid one of the biggest complaints heard on projects: I wasn't told, No one tells me anything, I am always the last to hear. Such complaints probably won't be eliminated, but having and following a plan of regular communication should reduce the likelihood of them occurring.
Taking the information needs of various people and groups with whom you must communicate into account will actually simplify your life and increase the chance that your communications will be read and understood. Asking the client what type of information and level of detail, frequency and format are preferred will enable you to streamline the process of communicating with him or her. And the answer you get from that client may well differ from the answer you will get from the project sponsor, the resource managers or your core team. People read (and remember) what they are interested in. Focus on what people say they want, in a format they say they prefer, and you are already heading toward more effective communication.
Communicating Across … Does your project team include members who are located elsewhere? or are from a culture different from yours? or hail from a variety of functions? or even work for another organization?
Probably. In that case you must factor into your approach the impact such “across factors” may have on the effectiveness of your communication efforts.
… Distance. The proliferation of communication technologies enables distributed teams to keep in touch. But this capability comes at some cost (and I don't mean monetary). Electronic mail, like other oneway communication methods, is associated with a higher risk of message misinterpretation. That is because the sender is not able, at the moment of communication when the reader is reading the e-mail, to confirm the accurate understanding of the message. For this reason, important, easily misunderstood, or emotionally charged messages should probably be delivered through a two-way communication method such as the telephone.
… Cultures. Team members from high-context countries, such as those in Asia and Latin America, may tend to value the building and nurturing of relationships more than members from low-context countries, who may favor facts and information over relationships. Obviously many of the distance communication methods are more suited to the dissemination of these facts and information, and are less suited to nurturing relationships. Keep this in mind when considering how your project team will communicate. Can conference calls supplement the use of email? Can a videoconference session occur once a quarter so that the faces behind the voices behind the names may be seen?
… Functions. Context orientation may differ according to the function a team member hails from. You may know of a technical expert who was strongly low context (just the facts, ma'am) having trouble communicating with a sales or marketing person who preferred high-context communication. This is an example drawn from stereotypes, so it may be true, but then again it may not. The only way to know for sure is to ask people their preferred method of communication and then monitor its effectiveness.
THERE'S MUCH TO be gained by getting good at communicating. The grease will make the team operate more cohesively, and the glue will help hold people together when schedule stress and competing priorities create divisiveness. And if you don't attend to project and team communication, it can quickly become the gum. Avoiding that glob on the sidewalk is a lot easier than scraping it off your shoe after you've stepped in it.