Resolving Team Communication Issues

By Author: Amos Bragg
Total Articles: 5
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Whether it is a group of college students working together on projects or a team of educated professionals working together in an office environment, all teams have issues that keep erupting that need to be fixed before the team falls apart. A team always has a mix of personalities each with different skills and different working style. Individuals may be great at their work when working alone, but a lot of them are not able to perform when they work in teams. They simply can’t handle the pressure of constantly communicating with so many individuals all at the same time.

Within a group, there would always be individuals who fail to listen to instructions and are always distracted. Some have poor written and oral communication skills due to which they use words out of context and create confusion within the team. In such situations, poor or lack of communication skills lead to failures in the team and the whole team crumbles. There is a feeling of ...
... distrust among group members and within minutes the blame game begins. Therefore, for a cultuurverandering within the group, it is essential to involve them in some team building activities and communicatiespel.

Some effective communicatiespel are listed below:

=> 60-second speeches: The goal of this game is to know one another in the team and improve speaking skills. The game is simple; the coordinator has to write different topics on pieces of paper about anything random under the sun like cars, sitcoms, fast food, education etc. One after the other, each participant picks up a topic and must give a speech for 60 seconds. However, the only rule is that the participant has to speak non-stop without hesitating.

=> Impulse: The goal of this particular game is to encourage communication and team building. Make the group stand in a circle formation and hold hands. Then ask the group to send a pulse signal throughout the group i.e. one person sends the pulse signal, which travels across the group and is received back by the person who started it. The objective is to achieve this task in the least time.

=> Play a sport: The goal of this particular game is to encourage communication and team building. Challenge your team to play a sport on a competitive level. It could be any sport that all team members are comfortable playing. It could be outdoor sports like cricket, basketball or beach volleyball or indoor games like bowling. Playing together as a team will help them understand the loop holes in their current communication cycles and will be a great icebreaker if this is a newly formed team. Team members will be able to know each other better as well.

These games are bound to change the cultuurverandering in your team.

Amos Bragg is a Netherland Author. Tragaluz is specialist in designing, producing and realizing of experience-oriented games, team trainings and culture development pathways.He has applied his knowledge and understanding to a wide variety of communicatiespel and cultuurverandering.