How Great Teams Communicate

 

Summary:

David Burkus, creator of this video, is a organizational psychologist and author. He writes books on how to help teams and leaders be more productive. The video begins with David stating the importance of communication when working in a team. He states that communication is where most teams struggle and where conflict begins. He discussing the study conducted by Alex Pentland. Instead of using surveys or doing experiments, Pentland examined a real-life team. He examined each member of the team and identified how good teams communicate. During this examination, Pentland and his team were able to determine four major factors in how great teams communicate.

1.     Communicate Equally: Allow everyone to share their ideas and have a turn speaking. Often in groups, one or two members may be taking over or dominating the conversation. Having an effective team leader may be a solution to this problem. They can jump in if someone is talking too much or not sharing their opinion enough. As the team grows and begins to bond, each person will have a strength or specific job and will all communicate and contribute equally.

2.     Communicate Informally: The study showed that great teams don’t always discuss work but will work better if they get to know one another on a more personal level. People may look at this as time wasted because they could be working on their project instead of chatting, however, being able to build a friendship with your teammates will create respect and will be more willing to help each other.

3.     Communicate Externally: When creating a great team, you can send members out to other teams to learn from them. Remember that it is not your team against all the other teams. This can help in many ways. It can help create trust between your team and others, whether this is teams in your company or another company, suppliers, customers, etc.

4.     Communication in Bursts: Allow members of your team to work on their own and undisturbed. This will allow for more productive meetings. David states that “great teams know that they need to balance time spent talking about the work, with time actually doing the work.” Communicating in bursts may feel unproductive because the meeting will start off with a lot of informal communication (talking off topic) but the study from Pentland showed that the teams are more focused and will use the best of their time to share all of the information they have gathered.

Finally, David ends with ensuring you are setting boundaries with your team. Although it may seem awkward, it is very important to create a good team dynamic and feeling comfortable with each other. Using these steps will help you create a great team!

My Opinion:

            I really enjoyed this video. David explained Alex Pentland’s study very simply and went over each step.

            When working in a team, communicating informally is the step that has helped me the most without even knowing it. I did not think it was necessarily the most effective step when communicating in a team. However, my team for a class has been able to grow so much because of this step. We have been able to bond over music and movies. This has overall elevated our communication when it comes to work. I feel more comfortable sharing ideas, asking questions and overall, just giving my opinion. We have been able to grow from a group to a team.

Video Link: 

Burkus , D. (2022, July 25). How great teams communicate. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfLYEs_cHYs

How Great Teams Communicate - YouTube