How to set up quality and effective communication within your team

Communication plays a key role in the productivity and success of any  team. And it is the team manager who serves as a role model and creator of communication within the team. Unfortunately, many managers focus only on giving orders and do not work long-term on quality communication with team members. This article will describe what such communication should look like so as to enable effective cooperation of the team as a whole and bring individual members together.

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Defining mutual expectations

For an employee to be able to perform well and fulfil expectations, they must first know what the expectations are. In order to prevent potential misunderstandings, manager and team members should clarify what they want and expect from one another.

Building of trust

For communication between manager and team to be trouble-free, it must be based on mutual trust between the manager and individual employees. According to the Business Matters magazine website, no manager should underestimate the importance of informal "one-on-one" talks with team members that help build trust and understanding.

Prevention of negative behaviour

Meetings of the manager with employees should also serve to prevent negative, ineffective or inappropriate behaviour on both sides. Every team has someone whose behaviour can potentially have a negative influence; such situations should be dealt with by the manager as soon as possible before they explode.

Feedback from the employee

Many managers make the mistake of relying only on the annual evaluation meeting to get feedback from employees. But the manager should try to get feedback continuously, and set up such communication systems and an atmosphere within the team that its members know they can always immediately give feedback to the manager.

Ideas and visions for the future

Last but not least, it is necessary for the manager to talk to individual team members about ideas and visions for the future. Similar to the aims set by the whole company, these aims should also be set by the manager individually with team members.

 

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Article source Business Matters - website of a leading British magazine for small and medium sized companies
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