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Teams rely on effective communication, yet there are many factors that can inhibit communication. When these factors are present, the team leader needs to proactively manage the team communication processes to overcome them.
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Quick reference
Communication Constraints
Teams rely on effective communication, yet there are many factors that can inhibit communication. When these factors are present, the team leader needs to proactively manage the team communication processes to overcome them.
When to use
Whenever the team leader or other team members become aware of communication constraints, steps need to be taken to account for the constraints and ensure effective communication continues.
Instructions
Team leaders need to be aware of communication constraints to team communication and proactively manage the communications despite those constraints. Constraints such as team location, size, and contractual obligations can significantly impact communication options available to the project leader.
Team Size
The larger the team, the more important it is for the project leader to proactively manage the communication process. With 5 team members, there are 10 communication paths, but with 10 team members there are 45 communication paths, and with 15 team members there are 120 communication paths. The larger the team the more critical it is for the project leader to control communication and not leave it to chance.
Communication Technologies
There are many ways to communicate with team members, and each of these has advantages and disadvantages. The most commonly used approaches at this time are:
- Formal Meeting – full and interactive communication, hard to schedule
- Informal Meeting – dialogue for clear communication, hard to predict
- Personal Phone Call – focused verbal communication, uncertain connection
- Voice Mail – quick delivery of verbal communication, limited content, and unpredictable connection
- Conference Call – widespread consistent message, limited interaction
- Web Meetings – verbal and visual interaction with team, technology challenges
- Email – quick, comprehensive information, limited feedback
- Text Messages – immediate, short focused communication, limited content
Hints & tips
- Create a project communication plan and follow it.
- All technologies can be useful, use the technology that works best for your team.
- You may need to make a minor investment of project funds to pay for a common communication platform.
- 00:04 Hello, I'm Ray Sheen.
- 00:05 We don't live in a perfect world with perfect people.
- 00:08 Sometimes there will be constraints that limit a team's communication options.
- 00:13 The team leader must recognize and overcome these constraints.
- 00:18 >> There are constraints that are functions of team size and organization.
- 00:22 First, size matters.
- 00:24 The number of possible communication channels between team members grows with
- 00:28 the size of the team.
- 00:30 But if there are only 2 team members, there's only 1 communication path.
- 00:34 If there are 3 team members,
- 00:36 the number of possible communication paths is now increased to 3.
- 00:40 With 14 members, the number goes up to 6.
- 00:43 With 5 team members, there are now 10 possible communication paths or channels.
- 00:48 If the team size doubles from 5 to 10 the number
- 00:51 of possible communication paths increases from 10 to 45.
- 00:55 With a team this size the team leader cannot rely on ad hoc or
- 00:59 word of mouth communication.
- 01:01 The leader must be proactively managing the team communication to avoid confusion.
- 01:07 Another factor that could constrain communication is if
- 01:10 the work is being done under contract for a customer or another organization.
- 01:15 In this case there will be required contract communications both in terms of
- 01:19 content and timing.
- 01:20 And the communication approach may also be specified as to who is allowed to
- 01:24 communicate and who is not allowed to communicate.
- 01:27 All these become constraints on how communication happens on that project.
- 01:32 Finally, there are several other factors that have created communication
- 01:36 challenges based upon my experience.
- 01:38 Extensive use of vendors or contractors may inhibit communication because they may
- 01:43 not have access to the same systems or had the same applications available to them.
- 01:48 Another is security, when the subject matter of the team activities
- 01:51 is classified or contains personal and confidential information there will
- 01:56 be heightened security restrictions on communication.
- 01:59 This creates limitations on access to systems and what information is shared.
- 02:05 And finally, when the team is virtual, and that's frequently the case these days,
- 02:09 a number of communication options may not be available to the team.
- 02:13 Due to the virtual team members not having the same application or
- 02:16 having bandwidth issues.
- 02:19 Next, I would like to comment for a moment on communication methodology.
- 02:23 In today's business environment technology is becoming a dominant factor.
- 02:27 Well, I like technology, it's a big help to communication within the project team.
- 02:32 We need to also be aware of the limitations of different types of
- 02:35 communication technologies.
- 02:37 The technology can either enable or
- 02:39 inhibit some of our communication methodologies.
- 02:44 One communication methodology is the old fashioned face to face project meeting.
- 02:48 This approach has the opportunity for the richest communication,
- 02:52 as you have verbal cues, visual cues, body language.
- 02:55 And you can directly interact, asking questions and getting answers.
- 02:59 But scheduling this can be a real pain to get everyone in the room at the same time.
- 03:05 Next is the informal face to face meetings.
- 03:07 This is a great opportunity to directly communicate and
- 03:11 ensure that your communication is effective through dialogue and discussion.
- 03:15 But these are hard to plan and arrange.
- 03:18 You have to meet each other in the hallway or at the coffee pot at the same time.
- 03:23 The third level is the personal phone call.
- 03:26 Again, it's focused but now you only have verbal cues, no visual cues.
- 03:30 So you miss the eye roll or the confused look on their face.
- 03:34 And like the informal face to face,
- 03:36 it's hard to predict whether they're at their phone and will actually pick it up.
- 03:40 So connection is uncertain.
- 03:43 Another approach is to leave a voicemail.
- 03:45 This avoids the unpredictable connection element of a phone call.
- 03:48 You can communicate at any time.
- 03:50 But the difficulty starts to show up based on when they actually pick up
- 03:54 the voicemails and get your message.
- 03:56 In addition voicemails usually have to stay very short and
- 03:59 of course you get no immediate feedback.
- 04:02 The common option is the conference call where three or
- 04:06 more people are on the line at the same time.
- 04:08 This gets the message out to a broad audience and
- 04:10 you can provide a consistent message to all.
- 04:13 But there is the problem of whether anyone is actually listening or
- 04:16 are they just logged in on the call?
- 04:19 If the call has a large number of people, there's often no feedback.
- 04:22 So you don't know if they actually understood the message.
- 04:26 Web meetings have become a dominant form of communication with project teams.
- 04:30 I'm often on half a dozen of these meetings in a day.
- 04:33 They are almost as good as a face to face meeting without nearly as much difficulty
- 04:37 of getting things scheduled.
- 04:39 The downside is that some people struggle with the technology or
- 04:43 they have bandwidth problems.
- 04:45 Although that problem is not nearly as bad as it was just a few years ago.
- 04:48 I'm finding that this has become the dominant form of project team meetings.
- 04:53 There are a few more technologies to mention.
- 04:55 One is email, this is great for
- 04:57 sharing documents and providing a searchable record for communication.
- 05:02 You can also send the same message to many people to ensure consistency.
- 05:06 But you have the problem of uncertain feedback.
- 05:09 In fact, you may be surprised to know this, but
- 05:12 there are some people who don't read all their emails.
- 05:17 And even if they do read their email, they may not read it for a day or two.
- 05:21 Another technology that is becoming much more prevalent in the last few years is
- 05:25 text messaging.
- 05:26 These are quick, focused, interactive, and are great for short messages.
- 05:30 I find them difficult to use with long messages or
- 05:33 when trying to send large documents.
- 05:35 But for day to day, hour to hour status and coordination it's a great approach.
- 05:40 >> There are many things that constrain team communications.
- 05:43 Fortunately, most are manageable.
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