How to Develop a Team Communication Strategy
The daily challenges of running a department, a working group or a research team start with asymmetrical communications. Every member of a business team has a different set of job responsibilities, experiences and goals when entering into a new project. The tie that binds these disparate viewpoints is an effective team communication strategy. In order to develop a team communication strategy, all parties involved in a project must gather and develop strict guidelines and timetables acceptable to all involved.
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Instructions
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Establish Ground Rules for Team Communications
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Identify the primary and secondary goals of team communications as you draft your strategy. If your group is meeting to solve a budget shortfall, your primary goal might be to address the concerns of each participant before making recommendations. Departments and long-term working groups should set secondary goals such as generating new product or service ideas to demonstrate the value of clear communications.
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Solicit a statement from each participant pertaining to his experiences, job responsibilities and expectations from team meetings. Your team communication strategy should feature a section of testimonials from each participant to open the eyes of fellow participants to new viewpoints. Ask for these statements to be read at your first meeting to ensure everyone's voice is heard before a strategy is complete.
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Construct several formats for team communications that address disputes, emergency issues and a need for consensus. Every communication strategy should have provisions for third-party mediation in case of an unresolvable dispute between two or more participants. Your strategy should assign employees, clients and outside parties to subcommittees that can handle various aspects of emergency situations. A good strategy will also contain a process for editing public statements to ensure that the outgoing message reflects the feelings of team members.
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Establish the primary medium for team communications in your strategy. While face-to-face meetings are preferable, team communications software such as TeamSpeak allows participants to chat and share documents without convening in a central location. Your media strategy should include phone contacts and email addresses of all team members to ensure quick communications.
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Define the time limit for your team communication strategy if the document is designed for a temporary committee or working group. Your strategy can feature a timetable of meetings, reviews and deadlines for group reports to get work done ahead of this time limit. If your team strategy spans an indefinite period, substitute the time limit provision with a set of quarterly or annual objectives that must be met to keep the strategy in effect.
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Assign leadership roles for team participants in your communication strategy. Your team's most important role to assign, in terms of communications, is a spokesperson who can convert industry language into plain words for public consumption. Request volunteers for chair and vice-chair positions on subcommittees to deal with editing, publication and strategy review.
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Send your team communication strategy to long-time clients, outside consultants and internal staff for review. Ask readers to point out areas of redundancy, blind spots and confusing provisions in the team communication strategy. Attach a checklist of editing points to each copy and request initials from readers in case of questions or points of clarification.
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Disseminate your team communication strategy in print and electronic form for easy access. Send a printed copy of the strategy to each participant as well as outside departments that might be involved in the team's activities. Publish your team communication strategy on the company's Intranet to encourage positive communications among employees.
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Tips & Warnings
Adjust your team communication strategy to reflect membership changes, product recalls and other challenges. Include a provision for monthly or quarterly strategy reviews to identify outdated or ineffective provisions in the document that need amending.
Resources
- Photo Credit Photo by ThinkPanama (Flickr)
