5 Team Communication Strategies That Make Collaboration a Breeze

Effective communication is the be-all and end-all of every successful business. 

So, to get your team to work together better, forget about winging it on the spot, and start creating actionable strategies for approaching your internal and external communication. 

Read on to find out: 

• What communication strategies are,
• Why your business needs one, and 
• How to implement it.  

What is a communication strategy

A communication strategy is any set of actions aimed at improving how a message is delivered to a predetermined audience. 

This can be considered internally, as a plan on how management and employees communicate to ultimately improve teamwork and minimize miscommunication and delays. An external communication strategy, on the other hand, outlines a set of rules and actions on how an organization shares its message with the outside world.   

Why you need a clear communication strategy

Your business success relies on good organizational communication. Plus, today, you need to align with remote and hybrid work models and find a perfect mix of asynchronous and synchronous communication to maintain a strong collaboration. 

So, a clear and straightforward communication strategy can help your team work together better by: 

• Facilitating knowledge sharing. When employees have all key information and documents at their fingertips, along with clear guidelines on how to share these with their teams, working together becomes a breeze. 
• Aligning teams with business goals. Keeping your team in the loop directs them toward the main objectives, minimizing misunderstandings and delays. 
• Driving innovation forward. Clear and streamlined communication ensures everyone is on the same page, creating an environment where innovative ideas flourish. 

5 Best communication strategies to boost your teamwork 

You can use different strategies to improve how your team communicates and works together.

Here are our 5 recommended ways you can build your team up with effective communication. 

#1: Understand your team’s needs and preferences 

Different team members may prefer different styles and communication channels. For example, your remote coworkers will probably lean more toward asynchronous communication than your in-office staff. 

So, before you start crafting a universal plan, be sure to first understand and take into account the makeup of your team and their specific needs and preferences. 

Remote work has also paved the way for multicultural teams, which is all the more reason to make an effort to consider various approaches and perspectives to your internal communication, to help your teams sync more effectively. 

When in doubt, check your team’s pulse to find out how they’re feeling. Run a quick poll survey in your team communication app and get a better understanding of how to serve different audiences. 

#2: Segment your audience

To keep the collaboration running smoothly, you need to forget about overwhelming your teams with too much information not directly intended for them. This only exacerbates the problem of information overload.

Instead, keep your information relevant to your audience. Just like you’d do with your external messaging, make the right audience segmentation in your organization to ensure the relevant messages reach the right people — no more and no less. 

If you’re using an all-in-one communication tool like Pumble, you can easily categorize different topics and teams with its built-in feature — channels — and enjoy more organized and purposeful conversations. No more irrelevant discussions and email chains you have no business being CCd to.

#3: Encourage interactions and engagement 

Your team might not always be mindful of keeping up a certain level of communication without a little nudge from you.

As a leader, it’s important to model the ways and the volume you want your team to interact with one another.

This can look like scheduling regular one-on-one discussions for private feedback or any conversations regarding individual workload, goals, or issues. According to the latest workplace communication statistics, these sessions are beneficial in reducing employees’ stress levels by 17%.

Team-building activities are another great way to encourage more interactions in your workplace. Informal get-togethers with fun activities and games build trust and inspire a sense of belonging, improving overall communication and collaboration.

But, don’t knock the virtual format either. You can host a virtual team building for your remote team in your team collaboration app and have all team members join in on the fun. 

Organize a group video call and share your screen or files so that everyone can keep up with the rules. Team members can indicate it’s their turn by raising a hand, and have side discussions via in-call messages.  

Healthy and effective communication is the basis of any successful team collaboration, so, don’t hesitate to push your people in the right direction when you notice they could use some more engagement. 

#4: Use the right tools

When looking to create communication systems that fuel effective collaboration, one of your key strategies is to set up a solid communication environment both in-office and remotely.

One of the most straightforward ways you can achieve this is by offering a reliable and feature-rich internal communication app like Pumble that lets your team work together anytime, anywhere.  

For example, a powerful tool helps you keep track of every piece of knowledge or information shared with unlimited message history and a readily accessible knowledge base with advanced search.  

Moreover, instead of burdening your international teams with navigating work and meetings across time zones, you can share meeting recordings and have them weigh in on their own time. Audio and video messages are also great resources whenever a team member needs to share updates asynchronously. 

#5 Measure progress and celebrate success

To make sure your communication strategies are making a turn for the better in your team communication, you’ll need to track your progress. 

But first, you need to have your main goals and objectives sorted out. Whether your North Star is improving profit and client retention rate or boosting employee engagement and improving cross-departmental collaboration, you need to set the relevant KPIs and measure your progress against them. 

Finally, don’t forget to celebrate wins — both big and small. Every small step in the right direction counts — be it the company revenue growth or employee satisfaction rate. 

So, make sure you acknowledge every bit of improvement company-wide. Research on The Impact of Positive Reinforcement on Employees’ Performance in Organizations shows it encourages positive behaviors by: 

• Improving employee engagement and team spirit and 
• Maximizing your team’s performance.  

Overcoming potential barriers to effective communication 

In addition to implementing effective communication strategies, be sure to also identify and nip in the bud any barriers to effective communication that may have taken root in your organization. 

This could be anything obstructing a smooth communication flow in your workplace, causing misunderstandings, delays, and loss of productivity. 

Luckily, you can successfully overcome these barriers and improve how your team communicates and works together. 

Let’s get a closer look at some of the most common communication barriers in the workplace and learn how to address them. 

• Physical barriers often have to do with time, distance, space, or workplace design and environment. You can overcome these barriers with tweaks in your workplace setting and by applying a reliable employee communication app to cater to different work models and schedules.  
• Perceptual barriers include perceptual filters, i.e., mental blocks that affect how people perceive specific people, events, or topics, and nonverbal language. To avoid these barriers from hindering your team collaboration, encourage clear communication and open body language in your team.  
• Emotional barriers activate whenever heightened emotions halt people’s ability to understand and process information. Mediators, neutral third parties, as well as cultivating emotional intelligence in the workplace can all help your team manage their emotions more effectively. 
• Cultural barriers imply different cultural norms, languages, beliefs, stereotypes, and prejudices that result from these differences. So, to make sure the people in your team feel comfortable and included, make an effort to learn about communication needs and preferences related to different cultural norms and embed these in your internal communication policy.    
• Interpersonal barriers can happen when there are issues between people collaborating, such as a lack of trust and any kind of misalignment and difference of opinion. To combat these barriers, you can instruct your team on how to stay transparent and respectful toward each other while putting their differences aside and keeping emotions in check.  
• Organizational barriers such as strict rules and a lack of transparent communication channels can damage your teamwork by delaying information exchange. You can implement user-friendly team communication tools and include more people in the decision making to flatten internal hierarchies and remove these roadblocks. 

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Pumble helps you communicate your way toward more effective collaboration 

A powerful and intuitive communication tool is a key ingredient in any successful communication strategy. Whether you run a remote or on-site organization, your goal is to facilitate reliable, no-fuss communication.

To achieve that, be sure to give your team a straightforward, feature-rich solution such as Pumble that maximizes collaboration and simplifies communication using: 

• Video conferencing for more productive meetings, 
• Screen sharing for more effective presentations and brainstorming sessions,
• DMs and groups for quick, individual conversations, and 
• File sharing for real-time collaboration. 

So, try Pumble for free today and make your collaboration a breeze!