Let’s say, you have in mind several valuable and brilliant ideas but you lack the ability to share them effectively with your company or team. If this is the case you ideas just might get passed right on by and then become useless. This is one of the reasons that effective team communication skills are essential. There are of course many others.
You’re in a team therefore you must work as a team. But how can that be possible if you can’t even share your thoughts with them? Or how can your organization be empowered if you as the leader have insufficient effective team communication skills?
The truth is that not all people are gifted with effective communication skills. Certain skills do come naturally for some individuals while there are other people that need to take the time to develop them. However, there are many skills that can be greatly improved upon even for those fortunate to have the natural “gift of gab.” And remember, for communication skills to be truly effective, practice is definitely needed.
So, how do we learn this great art of effective communication?
Even before we were able to walk as a child, we had our own dose of learning how to get our message across. As a baby, of course we cried or smiled to catch the attention of our parents. At some point, we learned to imitate the words we heard around us, and then finally we managed to develop our own oral communication skills well enough to at least survive as time passed by.
However, now it’s time to unlearn those behaviors you have brought with you from childhood that aren’t working very well and add to the ones that are not quite as effective as you would like them.
So, here are a few effective communication tips that can help you get started:
1. Organize Your Thoughts
Learn to organize the thoughts that are rushing through your mind.
Before you begin to express your ideas, be sure of what you want to say and how to say it. If you organize your thoughts and plan out step by step how to get your point across, you can work on creating an interesting and thought provoking communication that will motivate your listeners. Furthermore, the details in your message will be more easily grasped by all who are listening.
2. Communication Is to Express and Not to Impress
This is the common fault of many people. They perceive that being able to use complicated sounding words gives the impression of being an intellectual. This actually is a fallacy. A person with good communication skills is someone who uses the language in a manner that allows everyone to be able to understand the message.
3. Communication Is a Two-Way Street
Effective team communication skills is not only about the way you get your point across to other people in the team but also about addressing the concerns of the other members of your team and letting them express their ideas while you learn to listen. Both parties in any communication should listen to one another and then offer ways to improve the conditions faced by the team and each other.
4. Know Who Your Team Members Are
Get to know and understand the members of your team. Especially if you’re the leader, you should be able to study the profiles of all of your members. How can you reach out to them and understand where they are coming from if you don’t understand who they are personally?
5. Sharpen Your Memory
A good memory when it comes to remembering the names of your staff and what their concerns are will go a long way towards building effective team communications. And if your memory isn’t quite as good as you would like it to be, keep a journal on each member so you can brush up on what’s important to each of them personally.
Effective team communication skills are worth developing. You can get a proper education by participating in communication skills training courses or reading books or ebooks with information to help you sharpening your skills. You can always lessen the risk of misunderstandings when you have effective team communication skills.