2+2=5 Team*WORKS

Reader Question: My colleagues often come to me when I am not ready for them and have a conversation with me. Most of the time, I don’t have enough time to respond to them with what I really want to say. I have tried email and other forums to respond and it seems as though things just get worse. What can I do?

Our Response: Most of the time, it is hard when colleagues bombard us when we are caught off guard, and sometimes we feel taken advantage of in the conversation. It is hard when you feel as though people don’t allow you to communicate back with them when they are so eager to communicate to you on their terms. So how do we find a way to communicate with our colleagues when we feel as though we are not able to when they want to?

Effective communicators understand that the actual words that are spoken only amount to about 10% of what we are communicating. The other 90% of our communication comes from our tone, voice inflection and emphasis, body language, gestures, and posture; these are all components of communication that are completely lost in an email or instant message. Ultimately, technology can be a facilitator of communication or a barrier to communication. As we can see, it has been a barrier in this case. We must be fully conscious about how we leverage technology as a
communication resource and understand how that vehicle of communication is being received by the other person.

Think back to the last time you received an email where there may have been a misunderstanding that could have been avoided with a phone call or face to face visit. We must be conscious that emails, text messages, and instant messages come with an inherent price: misunderstandings. If we are aware of these potential pitfalls, we can be more effective in our electronic communication and understand the appropriateness and necessity of face to face conversation for certain situations. It is alright to talk with a colleague and ask them to talk later. Even better, let your colleague discuss and get back to them, but in person or on the phone.

Communication truly is the oil in a car. It keeps a team running smoothly. It’s not something that we think of as being a critical component of teambuilding but it’s the foundation that we hardly ever think about. Most of us think about the oil in our cars about once every three months. If communication is so critical to effective teambuilding, we must be
more conscious about the ways in which we communicate. We must think about communication as not only speaking but also communicating non-verbally and actively listening. We send signals each moment of every day. Team members have an acute ability to pick up on these signals so we must be sure that what we communicate is truly what we intend. Marilyn, age fifteen concluded, “Communication seems so simple, but there’s a lot more to it. There’s a lot to think about.”

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidking/3774493555/