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The Five Rules of
Effective Team
Communication
Season 2005
Volume III, Issue 4
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Sharing the Sandbox
It is amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares
who gets the credit.
- John Wooden, UCLA Basketball Coach, 1948-1975
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I am fascinated by teams.
My fascination comes from the simple fact that I know, from first-hand experience, how
much more we can achieve if we can understand and harness our own skills and mesh them
successfully with the skills of others. To use the cliché, the whole of a functional team
can greatly exceed the sum of its parts.
I have written many times in previous issues of The Beacon about my six- year effort
to qualify for the 2000 US Olympic Sailing Team. I was part of a team of three sailors,
and we did well - we won several important events leading up to the Olympic Trials. But
despite our many successes, we fell just short of our ultimate goal, finishing a close
second and narrowly missing a spot on the Olympic Team. My greatest lesson learned from
that experience is that I never would have come so close to the Olympic Games without good
teammates, and without a positive team dynamic. A good team allowed me to outperform my
own natural abilities.
During the five years since those Olympic Trials, I have been diligently studying the
notion of team communication in the workplace, and the manner in which those lessons learned
from my Olympic experience apply to professional life. I have developed five guidelines
for communication that every successful team has in common. Are there other traits that
successful teams share? Certainly. However, personal experience has led me to believe that
these five are universal.
Rule #1: Create Common Goals
Teammates on successful teams share common goals. Good teammates work towards the same
end result, and with everyone focused on the same figurative destination. In our Olympic
campaign, the goal was easy - win an Olympic medal at the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia.
Everything we did was in pursuit of this goal. In the professional world, the goal is not
always so easy to identify - sometimes it requires discussion, debate, and selfless effort
to create agreement. But regardless of how difficult it is, agreeing on a common goal is
a critical and necessary first step.
In my work with The Latimer Group, I often witness the work of dysfunctional teams. To
help them understand the breakdown, I always ask a few questions about goals. Often, the
dysfunction was an inevitable part of the “DNA” of the team, because clear
goals were not agreed upon and communicated at the outset.
Rule #2: Subordinate Your Personal Agenda
Teammates on successful teams put the team goals ahead of personal goals. These are easy
words to say, but often difficult to execute. Human beings are, by nature, ambitious. We
all seek advancement. But I have seen many examples where the pursuit of a personal agenda
has stunted the progress of the team. Conversely, when the team goals remain in the forefront,
individual teammates are often in a better place to achieve their personal ambitions along
with group success.
Case in point - during my Olympic Campaign, one of my teammates was clearly on the rise
in our sport. He had a great reputation as an excellent sailor, and he was in demand. Often
he had to decline other opportunities that may have benefited him personally because they
were in conflict with our training schedule. He stayed true to our team goals, and even
though he missed several good opportunities along the way, our team’s success has
led to far greater personal success since then.
Rule #3: Validate Your Teammates
Teammates on successful teams build each other up and help each other become the best
that they can be.
In April of 2000, my teammates and I were competing in our class World Championship in
southern Spain. Fifty of the best teams in the world were present and everyone was at the
top of their game. On the morning of the first day of the regatta, the wind was blowing
about 25 to 30 knots - very windy indeed. These conditions previously had been
a challenge for our team. I, in particular, had struggled, and needless to say, I was quite
nervous on that first day.
Our helmsman, who had recently joined our team, could sense my nerves. He realized I
needed a boost that morning and pulled me aside to say, “Dean, there is no one in
the world I would rather be sailing with today than you.” Now whether he was being
absolutely truthful with me is essentially irrelevant to the story. He knew I needed some
validation, and he gave it to me. We went out and began the regatta with a 1st in race
one, and a 2nd in race two. We excelled in the big wind like we never had before. The same
thing is true in business. When you let your teammates know that they have your confidence,
anything is possible.
Rule #4: Carry Your Own Weight
Keeping Rule #3 in mind, teammates on successful teams are more than just cheerleaders
for each other. They each add something significant to the collective product.
I was a relative novice when we began our quest for the Olympics. I was completely
unqualified to compete at that level. For the first two years, I tried to make up for my
inexperience in other ways. I raised all the money, and I tried to be a “cheerleader” for
my two teammates. We achieved some success, but until my skills rose to the necessary level,
we would have kept bumping into a performance ceiling. Over time I improved and eventually
acquired the skills necessary to be an Olympic-caliber sailor. Once I developed the skills
to carry my own weight, our performance rose significantly.
In the business world, just as on the water, everyone on the team needs to have a role,
and be able to contribute to the final product.
Rule #5: Keep the Dirty Laundry “In House”
Teammates on successful teams don’t always get along well. But they know to keep
their problems among themselves rather than advertise it to the rest of the world.
During our six-year campaign, my teammates and I trained with and competed against many
of the same teams over and over. We got to know our competitors quite well. One talented
team, in particular, was having some growing pains and was struggling to improve its performance.
Their fatal flaw as a team was that the individual members always let us know when they
were frustrated with someone else on the team. This gave us the competitive advantage of
knowing the psyche of their team, and their flaw ultimately led to under-performance.
Frustrations with teammates are inevitable. Under-performance is common. But if you let
the rest of the world know of the under-performance of someone on team, you diminish the
entire team, including yourself.
While these examples all come from the world of sailing, they also apply directly to
our ability to succeed professionally. No one lives or works in a vacuum. Effective team
communication skills are critical to personal and professional success. And it is the people
who can share the sandbox, so to speak, and function well with the people around them,
who are much more likely to achieve positive outcomes.
In my work with The Latimer Group, I have encountered clients who are persuasive communicators,
yet still struggle to enjoy the success they seek. In these situations, I remind these
clients that their success is reliant upon more than their own individual skills. Their
success is also dependent on their ability to work well with the people around them. If
you are in sales, and are difficult to work with, you may not get the support you need
to succeed. If you are a business executive who cares for clients and manages finances
well, but treats employees poorly, you may not inspire the highest level of performance
and productivity. If you are a manager charged with completing an important project, and
cannot create a functional work environment, the success of the project is immediately
at risk.
Professional success requires many things - individual skills and personal motivation
among them. But it also requires the ability to communicate with the people around you
and function within a team.
On the water and in the office, the greatest way to enhance your own abilities and increase
your own performance is to become a world-class teammate.
Dean M. Brenner
President |
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© 2005 The Latimer Group. All Rights Reserved.
Dean M. Brenner -
The Latimer Group: 203.265.4344.
Feedback or comments: dmbrenner@thelatimergroup.com.
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