6 Ways Good Communication Improves Team Collaboration

Princess O. Edokpayi and I are constantly learning Spurt! that regardless of how awesome our tools are, building effective pathways and habits around communication has benefits beyond easing frustration. Building more effective communication culture helps us generate better ideas, make smarter decisions, and advance more quickly with our venture. I've been feeling generous about sharing our practices, so I've put together this little overview on how communication can be used to improve team collaboration.

1. Gain CLARITY from Listed Expectations

Clearly communicating team expectations, the roles assigned to team members and the deliverables they are responsible for, equips teams to perform in line with the organisation’s goals. When a team member knows their roles, they can better plan their time, measure their progress and collaborate with other team members with similar duties or useful skills. Team expectations can be communicated in different formats, including using a team expectation template, OKRs, KPIs, Job Descriptions and Checklists. When expectations are clear, team members will spend less time confused about what to do, duplicating output or conflicting on how to collaborate.

2. Incorporate TRANSPARENCY in Structures and Systems

Building on clarity, is the importance of transparency. In the workplace, transparency refers to the ease with which employees can share, access and track data. In a team, transparency becomes critical for building trust and accountability. Team leaders can better support members facing challenges, flag setbacks and even provide proactive feedback when they have visibility on team progress/delays. Moreover, visibility allows team leaders to be more understanding, improving overall productivity since less time is spent on reporting or micromanaging.

The best productivity tools like Sync! have a shared checklist feature that is especially useful for synchronising deliverables for stronger collaboration.

3. Greater OPENNESS is Achieved Through Multiple Lines of Communication

Whether an intern can speak directly with the CEO, or not, speaks to an organisations’ line of communication. While taller and more traditional organisations tend to be stricter, start-ups and flatter organisations are more flexible in their communication guidelines. Yet, whatever the case, the routes need to be clear so problems can be quickly flagged, grievances can be swiftly addressed, and leaders can provide relevant feedback to their peers. All this drives progress and builds trust in the workplace.

At Spurt! all conversations, including one-on-one interactions, happens in themed group chats. A great benefit to having such open communication is that there is a greater sense of shared responsibility. Spurt! employees are ever ready to support each other towards achieving the bigger goal.

4. Promote RELIABILITY with Proactive Reporting

By now, you must have noticed that trust is a key ingredient in collaborative teams- and you are right! For effective collaboration, team members want to know that their peers have their backs, and they can count on each other. A big part of that is knowing that other members will actively flag anything that needs noticing in a timely manner. This culture is called proactive reporting. It is best cultivated where employees are rewarded for taking initiative and proactively problem-solving.

Having a standardised template, like company memos is another best practice. In my founder’s office team, we have implemented a succinct template for task updates that makes it easy to spot high-priority updates throughout the day. These messages have a word limit of 100 words, which facilitates the frequency of reporting, since it is not cumbersome.

Remember to act on updates, or you risk disincentivising reporting.

5. Build CAPACITY using Tools and Frameworks.

It is not enough to have a series of informal systems to uphold culture. These traditions should be supported by mandatory training programs in auxiliary skills such as conflict resolution, program management, problem solving, empathetic communication and DEI. Auxiliary skills are important for building the capacity to effectively collaborate. While team members may be open to collaborating, they may lack the technical capacity to deliver feedback in a constructive manner.

This is where your people operations team comes in to drive best practices. Frameworks like Tuckman’s stages of group development, helps teams proactively troubleshoot potential conflicts and build around obstacles, or tools like Sync! provides enhanced project visibility, careful budgeting, and seamless payment processing. By focusing investment on developing technical skills, a more formal structure can be created to sustain a collaborative culture.

6. Prioritise BONDING to Boost Support and Relationships

The team leader’s role is to establish a sense of “us” which helps cooperation within teams. The leader must willingly guide team members and practice verbal and non-verbal modes of appreciation like gift-giving, a shout-out or a personalised thank note. One of my favourite HBR articles references findings from a study that shows collaboration is easier to develop when there is existing rapport between team members. Naturally, a friendly relationship will minimise conflict and power struggles. Infact teammates are more communicative when they share interests or have a sense of community.

A great way to bond is to learn a little bit about someone, so taking a quiz answering, “what type of employee are you?” or “what is your collaboration style?” will get you going in the right direction. It worked for us!