The Health of Your Team is Determined By the Importance of Communication

The importance of communication is generally overlooked by most teams and businesses. At some point everyone on your team will need to communicate what they know-they should be able to communicate well.

Not only is the way you communicate important to effectively sharing your ideas within your team, how you speak, write, and relate sets the guidelines by which your organization will operate.

Effective communication is the key to getting the results you want.

In the hierarchy of building a strong business, the importance of communication is the number one factor determining your success.

What Do You Expect?

Having high expectations for how you and your team communicates and reinforcing these expectations with focused training and communication exercises will go a long way in determining how effectively your team communicates.

Which in turn determines the level of cooperation, happiness, content at work, productivity.

Look at the teams that struggle. How do you think their employees would characterize communication within the organization?

• Positive or Negative?
• Honest or dishonest?
• Cooperative or hostile?
• Open or guarded?

The Self-Imposed Barriers To Communication Success

Successful communication starts by getting real with yourself, you must start really making deep connections with your team on an emotional level. Some people will resist this suggestion. But if you want to break down the barriers that are stopping your team from achieving it's goals, you must first break down the barriers to honest effective communication.

The place to start is determining where your team's communication challenges and hang-ups lie:

Is information shared openly and honestly? Do you have an "open door" policy or at least a way that your team can communicate with you?

Increasing Commitment and Connection

The closer someone feels to a specific group the more commitment and affinity they will have to engaging and helping out within the group. If you want your team to act and produce results for the betterment of the whole, you must acknowledge the importance of communication skills.

So what obvious benefits will increased communication have?

• Healthy conflict resolution
• More effective decision making
• Improved perception of your business
• Long-term employee retention

If you can not communicate you cannot lead.

You set the standard for your team, how you communicate will naturally rub off on others. You will be emulated and reflected by your employees, so it pays to act in such a way you maximize everyone's effectiveness.

Does this mean you can't be yourself?

No. All good leaders have their own unique style of leadership, be your authentic self, but keep these three things in mind:

• Always be consistent: Everyone loses when the rules of the game change day after day. If you want people to trust you, and want them to be consistent in their words and actions, keep the rules the same everyday.
• Clarity is Key: Like consistency, clarity is essential to understanding your wants and needs. You must be clear in your intentions, wants, and needs. Strive for clarity in your communications and have people repeat back to you if there's question.
• Respect others: No one person is more important than anyone else, regardless of title. People deserve and respond when they're treated with respect. Always. This sets the tone for how your team will communicate with one another, clients, and customers.

The importance of communication is not always clear, but it's always a significant indicator of a team's health. Discovering how to lead people is essentially a matter of learning how to communicate effectively.