Working as a Team: Reaching Your Goals

Another key to having a successfully working team is one that reaches its goals. To reach your goals, means that the team players are working on one accord, following a strategic plan, and working through any issues that may arise. Having these in place along with a vision, can help a team be successful in reaching their goals.

Image: Newscom.com

One of the essential components that can help a team reach their goals is having a communication plan in place. According to the article “Want to Be More Effective? Learn to Listen” which is located on Inc.com by Sarah Fenson, there are three areas that can help team communication by learning to listen:

• Be present: be in the moment of communication and not “thinking ahead” to figure out your own solution.
• Bracket: keep an open mind when listening to the ideas of others.
• Reframe: from developing supposition by making sure you are clear on what is being communicated

Being an effective listener not only can help make sure communication stays open but also that it flows smoothly. If you have found on your team that there are communication problems, it’s not to late to bring everything into order. In another article found on Inc.com by Jamie Walters and Sarah Fenson and entitled “A Crash Course in Communication“, the following is part of a list of things that you can do to restore communication.

• Don’t take another person’s reaction or anger personally, even if they lash out at you in what seems a personal manner.
• You don’t have to have all the answers. It’s OK to say, “I don’t know.”
• Respond (facts and feelings); don’t react (feelings) — e.g., “Tell me more about your concern” or “I understand your frustration” instead of “Hey, ‘m just doing my job” or “It’s not my job” (which is sure to cause more irritation).
• Understand that people want to feel heard more than they care about whether you agree with them.

This is just a sampling of the communication tools that you will find as part of the article by Jamie and Sarah. Make sure you visit Inc.com to read the rest of the article so that you can learn about all the tools that you can use to help your team’s communication and to reach your goals.