Building Effective Team Collaboration, and Eliminating Numerous Messages and Unnecessary Calls

Communication is a daily component of any manager's work. We have compiled a list of aspects that will help build effective team communication. These rules are known to many, but the key is to always remember and adhere to them.

Be passionate about your work

A leader ignites enthusiasm within their team, encouraging them to constantly strive to improve the project and make the product better. In the endless flow of tasks, assignments, and communications, it is important not to forget about this aspect. If you don't have a passion for your work, what can you expect from your team?

Chats

A significant part of our communication takes place through messaging. To ensure that group chats are as beneficial as possible and avoid the desire to mute them, it is necessary to establish and always adhere to several rules.

• 1. One message is always better than a series of impulsive messages
  You can create and document this rule in the chat's description. When adding a new team member, draw their attention to this aspect. If the rule is violated, highlight the advantages of a "clean and organized" chat and clearly formulated messages on a daily basis.
  Text messages are great because they allow you to review what you are about to say, check for unnecessary information, ensure the problem/question is described correctly, and ensure that the message is clear to our colleagues. This tactic allows you to better get your pint across to the team and not make them waste their time sorting through your messages.
• 2. Threads
  If the messenger you are using has comment threads, I encourage you to take advantage of them. This prevents the chat from drowning in unread messages and makes sure you do not lose important information.
• 3. Ask all questions in the group chat
  Ask questions in the group chat, not in DMs. Different people may approach you with the same question privately. By discussing the issue in the general chat, the entire team can see the answer, and the leader doesn't have to spend time explaining it to each individual. There is also a chance that one colleague asks a question, but another colleague answers it. Once again, this saves your time because other employees also have the same information.
  And lastly, make sure people aren't afraid to ask questions for fear of sounding silly. In our company, we say that a silly question is the unasked question. However, colleagues may ask the same question ten times. It's understandable that this can be frustrating because "I've already explained it to you, don't you read the chat?!" In such situations, it is necessary to analyze whether it is crucial information that deserves more attention than being lost in the chat. It is better to document it in a knowledge base, pin the message, or send a corporate email notification.

Meetings

Daily status meetings and meetings aimed at solving complex problems and tasks take a lot of time. Here are a few things you can do to make sure this time is not wasted.

• 1. Clearly define the topic and objectives
  When organizing a meeting, clearly communicate its purpose in advance.
  For example, discussing deadlines for implementing a new feature. By informing your team about the topic and goals of the meeting, you give them a chance to prepare and open the necessary task.
• 2. Limit the number of participants
  We all want maximum transparency to keep the whole team up to date with the project. But the larger the project, the higher the likelihood that the team will spend their entire workday in on the phone. Fifty people gather to listen to a discussion of five participants for an hour.
  Choose the meeting participants in advance. To invite people, tag them or send them emails. And to keep things transparent, send a recap of the meeting to the group chat.
• 3. Moderate the process
  If you are the one organizing the meeting, it is your job to keep track of time and make sure everyone sticks to the plan (do not deviate from the topic of the meeting; other issues can be discussed at different meetings).
• 4. Recap the meeting
  Don't forget to recap the meeting: sum up the issues you have discussed, the decisions you have made, the deadlines, and the people responsible.
  Depending on the topic of the meeting, you may post the recap in the group chat, add it to the knowledge base, send it to everyone via email, etc.
• 5. 1+1 meetings
  A leader must always stay in touch with their team, and not just get status updates from them. It is important to monitor the team's mood. If any of your colleagues are annoyed or upset, this will affect their work.
  The task of a leader is to identify problems and find out if they can help. Is the problem a complex task? Or is it a conflict within the team? Such cases fall within the leader's responsibility. It becomes more challenging when it's a personal issue. However, it is important for the leader to show involvement and make the person feel valued and cared for, rather than just a resource or a cog in the machine.

Retrospective

This is a broad topic. In this article, we will focus on praise. And you can do it not only during retrospectives. Acknowledge the personal contributions of each individual. For example, "Thank you very much, colleagues, for the wonderful work in this sprint. If it weren't for you, the release would not have been possible." These are nice words, but they feel as if they are addressed to everyone and to no one at the same time.

A good practice is to recognize the contributions and achievements of each team member during the sprint and highlight them during the retrospective.

Collaboration with other teams and departments

If the team has questions regarding analytics, development, or testing, or if they need to learn something from related specialists, it is the leader's task to establish "communication bridges" so that everyone knows who to approach and with what questions.

Let there be someone in each team who can provide guidance to colleagues from other areas or systems. This way, no question will go unanswered, and people will not have to bombard their colleagues with DMs trying to find something out.

Assigning tasks

Clear and simple tasks are the dream of most employees. A leader can make it a reality by putting each task in a task tracker. Even if it's "just" writing a demo script, conducting documentation reviews, reorganizing a database, or trying to implement a new tool, and so on.

By documenting tasks in a task tracker, you ensure that they won't be forgotten and are clear to the team. And to make this magic work, remember that a task name alone is not enough! The task should include: its description, deadline, performer, and any necessary additional information. For example, a link to the section in the knowledge base that needs reorganization.

Summing up

Building communication is just like developing an application or doing anything else in your area of expertise—it's work that you improve through experience. The more you engage in it, the better you become. To develop your communication skills, you need to take the initiative and tackle any task that will allow you to improve them head-on.