From construction to sports to business teams every single one has a single element in common and that is in order to be effective in what they do they must have great team communication. There are more things involved in being an effective communicative team other than just being a good talker and listener.
In order to understand how to effectively communicate as a team we must first observe the advantages and disadvantages of a having a team as opposed to going at it solo. One major advantage of having a team is the fact that your weaknesses could most likely be your teammates strengths which gives access to more abilities and information. Another advantage of working in a team is the increased performance you will have due to not having to encounter as many issues that may affect performance negatively since you have a bigger group of minds that can solve complex problems more efficiently. However, there are also disadvantages to working with a team. A major disadvantage that could affect performance is peer pressure. For example, an individual may feel pressured to keep opinions or ideas to themselves if it may seem that the rest of the team seems to agree on an idea even if that idea may not be the best possible one. Another big problem that could occur in teams is if any member of the team has their own hidden agenda and has their own ideas and motives on how and why they want to do things even though the rest of the team is oblivious to it.
Now that we know some advantages and disadvantages we can see how to make sure we still keep a team as efficient as possible. One idea we can implement in ourselves to be better team players is the idea of active listening. We allow ourselves to just turn off any notion of wanting to speak while a person is giving us their opinion on a matter and just listen and pay full attention to what is being said. As simple as it may sound this is actually something that requires practice. A team must also have specific roles for each member so to avoid conflict and also so that each member knows his specific role and what exactly that individual needs to do. Another major issue that affects teams all the time and everyone in them is when a conflict arises. There are however good efficient ways to resolve conflict. The first thing that must be done when a conflict seems to be brewing is to deal with it before it gets out of hand the question is though how do we properly deal with it. To resolve a conflict without making it worst requires attention to finding out what seems to be the reasons for the problem and what are possible solutions. When there is a conflict the team needs to remain open to hearing everyone's opinion on the matter and be fair to giving everyone's input equal attention.
Another way to make your team a more productive one is by planning productive meetings. To set up a productive meeting the first thing is to make sure you know the purpose of why you are having a meeting so you do not need to waste time figuring out what to talk about last minute. Also, a meeting with less people would be better for discussion so do not invite anyone to the meeting who will not benefit from it or will not benefit you. And lastly, a proper time and place must be chosen that will guarantee everyone involved will be at their most attentive and productive point. For example, it is probably not best to have a meeting after a long day of work and right before everyone heads home because as you can probably guess there will be too much thought on when is it over so everyone can go home more than what needs to be done.
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