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Effective communication is key to the efficiency of the entire team. If communication in your team is inadequate, unclear or too slow, it will always have a significant impact on the productivity of the whole group. Unnecessary communication is also a major hindrance: if employees are spending time uselessly on having to verify or confirm things with colleagues that should not need any confirmation, this is a problem that can build up long term and cause considerable damage to the team's overall efficiency and productivity. Here are five tips on reducing and ideally eliminating unnecessary communication within your team.
These tips were published by Addicted2Success.com.
The most valuable source of information are regular team members themselves. Hold a meeting to discuss the issue, then give employees a chance to express where they perceive unnecessary communication is taking place.
Based on feedback from employees, identify when ineffective communication happens most often: at what stages of the project, between which team members and during which parts of the day? How does unnecessary communication come about, why does it happen, and what does the communication concern?
The next step is to identify the root of the problem. Why is unnecessary communication happening in the first place? What is the root cause? Possibly roles in the team are poorly divided. Or maybe the agendas of some employees overlap; therefore, they often have to recommunicate with one another about who will do what. Perhaps some members do not know how the processes in your team work, or approval from supervisors is required even though it need not be that way. Or you could simply be using inappropriate communication tools or duplicating communication.
Based on all your findings and analysis of why unnecessary communication occurs, propose solutions to these problems as a team. Go for solutions that will solve the problem in the long term.
After implementing the solution, monitor the situation. Continuously check whether the solution is working for everyone or if there are any problems, delays or, paradoxically, even more administration or communication problems as a result. If necessary, adjust the solution.
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