A team’s success is determined by how well it manages internal communication; in other words, a team’s performance is determined by how well it sets up, delivers, and reflects through its talks.
Specific aspects of a few crucial questions result in effective communication, how a team approaches crucial issues; how it reaches findings and takes choices; how work is allotted; how disagreement is managed; and how members are held accountable.
All of this is influenced by how individuals interact, i.e. how they communicate.
High-performance teams have clarity that the majority of the team time can be utilized in emails and meetings if the same is not managed much more effectively. High-performing teams try to harness effective communication through emails and meetings unless it is absolutely imperative to their goals.
High performance also ensures to not create a huge mail trail copying everyone on everything. When communication between team members occurs through emails, only the intended parties are involved to keep the communication short and crisp. The reason this works is that the mutual trust among the team members in high-performance teams is quite high.
Email Management in High-Performance teams:
It’s all about responsibilities and accountability.
High-performance teams have a clear definition of the roles and responsibilities of each team member. This enables them to reduce unnecessary emails to parties who have nothing to do with a certain aspect. For instance, a Marketing Manager has nothing to worry about accounting discussions of the team.
Short and quicker mail handling, instead of pouring time over any mail, high-performance teams quickly forward the mail to the concerned person or give a quick solution if it’s in their capacity.
Stricter Email Policies:
High-performance teams are quite vocal about unnecessary mail practices. Whether it’s internal or external mail, they make it clear that they do not copy all mail. Core team members are not shared with external parties. When it comes to internal mail, team members either use the practice of not responding to unnecessary mail. Additionally, it is made clear to have a quick chat for important issues rather than using email.
No matter the position of a team member, he/she has enough to clearly respond to the sender of mail being unnecessarily sent to him/her.
Another practice that these teams follow is, there is no protocol to compulsorily check emails at specific times. Complete independence is allowed the team to check their emails after the completion of their work. They follow a simple rule; if something is a high priority, a quick call or in-person chat should be done.
Management of Meetings:
Handling of meetings in a high-performance team can be categorized into three phases.
Preparation:
Preparation for the meeting starts before the meeting, Here the team members participating in the meeting get the necessary information with reference to the said meeting beforehand. These details have general information about the meeting, main points of discussion, participants, etc. High-performance teams typically have a clear structure about these intimations, with typical information like:
Agenda –
This simply states the reason for the meeting.
Decision –
This meeting is tried to be kept short and to the point, if any critical decisions are to be taken, participants are informed well in advance to avoid these meetings turning into brainstorming sessions.
Establishment of authority:
Meeting among high-performance teams, have a clearly established authority before the meeting, so that it becomes clear, about the decision-making authorities.
A facilitator for the meeting is identified and informed. The role of the facilitator is to prepare an effective presentation and circulate it among the participants. This ensures that everyone has the necessary information about the agenda of the meeting.
The whole purpose of preparation for the meeting is to ensure that participants quickly identify the problem statement and discuss it to arrive at an actionable conclusion.
Meeting:
High-performance team meetings are managed quite efficiently, with all the team players acting in accordance with the team code of conduct.
Some of the noted aspects of meeting among high-performance teams are:
- They are empathetic listeners.
- They communicate their logic clearly.
- They respect the time and try to keep it short.
- They raise queries.
- They take criticism well.
These traits of high-performance teams enable them to discuss very effectively and help them a lot in arriving at good decisions.
Post Meetings:
Typically, post-meetings are given equal importance in high-performance teams. The participants are all provided with minutes of meeting documents, stating the agenda and points illustrated by each participant. It also details the decision taken and the steps for the same.
Few high-performance teams follow a culture of evaluation of the meetings, which includes the view of members on the way the meeting was conducted, where they have been able to put forth their point, and whether they agree with the conclusion/decision. Evaluation helps these teams to maintain their efficiency in conduct.
Conclusion:
The above points state the way high-performance teams carry out their email and meeting practices. But there is another factor that we should consider; high-performance teams are extremely busy; and they typically do not have time for frequent emails and meetings. Additionally, we should also understand that most of the time meetings and emails are conducted to improve performance. The lesser the performance, the greater will be the number of emails and meetings, a high-performance team already has set ways of doing things, so the frequency of both reduces.
Industry professionals with experience can prove to be efficient mentors for candidates who are looking to start their careers. This exposure and guidance can make you a suitable candidate for high-performance teams. Seekho is a community of experts that can help you achieve the most effective ways of good communication in a professional environment. Join Seekho Membership Select today!
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