I have found in my consulting career that one of the biggest obstacles to teamwork is effective team communication. Solid team communication skills are usually lacking for a variety of reasons. I am outlining what I call my five B’s to effective team communication. If every team could master these five B’s a lot of problems could be avoided, especially in regards to work team communication
obstacles to teamwork
I have seen this with teams that I have developed over the years. The leader with good intentions decides that he or she will begin to introduce competition among the team. So individual productivity based rewards are introduced to the team based as a way to drum up “healthy” competition. What the leader gets instead are team members not willing to give help, ask for help, provide best practices etc… Much like many of the team based reality games on television today like the “Biggest Loser” or “Survivor” team members will turn on teammates if it means they might win the game.
I personally believe that lack of understanding team members should probably be number one if not a close second in the rankings. With lack of understanding comes lack of trust. When there is a lack of trust on the team there will be focus on anything but the issues during team conflict, which will create all kinds of inefficiencies on the team. What do you think? What have you done on your teams to increase understanding among team members?
