If you want to improve your team’s communication skills, there are many options – reading books, training, coaching, mentoring, role modelling, subscribing to Tuesday Tips, publicly praising good communications, privately criticising bad ones, and so on.
These, and other methods, all have merits. But here is another way – a fun, collaborative one – to achieve great results. Get your team together, and...
Step 1: ensure their buy-in to the exercise - Ask if they think the team’s communication is as good as it can be (they will say “No”)
- Ask what benefits the team will get if it was better (they will list many things)
- Say: “so, would you agree it’s worth exploring ways that we can improve our communication?” [“Yes”]
Step 2: do the exercise - Give everyone a piece of paper with a horizontal line drawn across the middle
- Ask them to write (in big letters) two communication techniques they feel they are good at above the line, and ...
- ... two they struggle with below
- Ask them to turn their pages round, so everyone can see everyone else’s
- Tell them to find “pairs” i.e. where something you’re good at corresponds to something that somebody else struggles with
- The team splits into these pairs, and the “good” person advises the “struggling” person how to improve
- After a few minutes, they swap partners and the new pairs help each other
- Re-split if it feels appropriate
- Ask everyone what 1-2 actions they're goint to take, to improve
Step 3: follow-up - Ensure they act on their actions as you usually would. This is important. Without follow-up, it won't stick
Action Point
If you think it will help your team, run the above session, and see what happens...
| 
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment