Any successful team project depends on solid communication between the team members. If you’re not communicating with your coworkers efficiently (or if you aren’t communicating at all), it’s next to impossible to know whether everyone is progressing according to plan.
In a typical business scenario, taking the next step in the process requires everyone to have finished their current tasks. If one or more team members are lagging behind, moving on becomes impossible and, worse yet, may bring the entire project to its knees if deadlines are not met in time.
Even though you might fully realize this as the business owner, motivating your coworkers can be an entirely different story.
Communication is more than just task monitoring
Task monitoring is something anyone can do. While it’s important for making sure that your business is running smoothly, it doesn’t really contribute anything to the team communication either, except for viewing the project status.
In fact, the first step you should make is to install some sort of a monitoring system, if you haven’t already. Sometimes a simple Google document is all you need. But the true secret of great project management lies in having an open discussion with your coworkers. In other words: you should encourage them to discuss any issues they may be facing directly with you.
Planning for the unforeseen
Regular communication between you and your team members ensures that you’ll be able to plan for the unforeseen. If they’re stuck on a particular issue, not only will you be alerted of it immediately, but there’s also a chance you will be able to help them overcome it. In other words, this is a win-win arrangement.
The coworkers should function as a team and help each other
Even though it consists of individual members, often highly specialized in a particular field, the team needs to function as a whole. In certain cases, the work progress of one team member may depend on the work progress of another.
Responsible team members realize this without really stating it, so it’s important for your organization to establish some sort of a communications system that allows a team member to alert another in case some delays are imminent. And, in certain cases, they may be able to solve the problem together without you intervening!
Requirements workshops are the next step towards better team collaboration
There is a way to improve the collaboration in your team, and it’s through facilitating a requirements workshop. The requirements workshop techniques that you’ll learn will allow your team members to recognize their role in the process, understand their tasks, and recognize how they can successfully solve the issues they encounter while achieving a greater productivity.
Conclusion
Team communication is both a science and an art, but if you take the time to understand its importance and learn how you can make it even better in the future, you’ll quickly be able to increase the productivity as well as the satisfaction levels of your entire team.
