DISCLAIMER: It goes without saying that corporate teams must have already developed trust and camraderie before they can truly begin communicating.
Do you have teams which don't communicate well as a group? Are you on a team where perhaps people don't always get along, or maybe there's a clear hierarchy which makes group discussions difficult? Then this article is for you.
In a recent set of communications within my team, lets say with people called Matt, Nick, Rasheq, and Denise, there were a lot of 1-1 communications taking place, although the topic being discussed was pertinent to ALL of US. But the majority of the communications were 1-to-1, and not with the group as a whole. At the time, I was wondering that not everybody is involved in every communication, and why is it that way? Wouldn't it be better for everybody to be on the same page?
Here's the situation: When we speak to a person openly, we expect them to communicate something to other people, and for that communication to be communicated to other people. So when we're being OPEN, we are expecting a SPREAD of information. So Denise may tell Rasheq something, who in turn might state something to Matt, and who might converse with Nick. And people will communicate that out until it's known by many.
But often what happens is that being OPEN causes distrust, because people feel responsible as the "word bearer". They might not know the next best person to communicate with, or feel as they they've been burdered with another's task/issue. In the past, I also used to think that people communicating that information out were wrong to do so, but SHARING OPENLY, it's just a fact, actually makes your life a lot easier because once you have communicated that information to Denise, you can expect it to go to Rasheq and to Matt, and then when you actually talk to Matt, he's already gotten the message and all they need to do is figure out what to do next.
That's how we must envision corporate communications to be done in the future: assumed that once you have told something to somebody, everybody knows about it. And you have to make your decisions based on that. You can't make your decisions based on the fact that you hope nobody's heard about it and that there aren't going to be able to anticipate the path forward.
This method does put the onus on everyone to communicate effectively - with INTEGRITY, CLARITY, and HONESTY.
If your team can't communicate with this method, then it's not really a team. But if your team has TRUST, and CAMRADERIE, then use this method to make your communications OPEN and easily DISCUSSED.
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