Team Ingredients #4

Communication Skills and Conflict Resolution: What is natural is to avoid conflict, jump to rash conclusions and not communicate what you are thinking. What is unnatural yet necessary is to make your thinking visible, fill in the “white space” for people, identify your assumptions and resolve conflicts.

Actions: The team needs to have specific tools to communicate; otherwise the strongest and most senior voice wins out.

• Part of the expectations should involve communication guidelines.
• Most teams need some kind of skill training for communication, like how to listen better, inquiry versus advocacy, summarizing what was said, ladder of inference, and left hand column.
• Leaders can assign a devil’s advocate role to enliven the conversations and protect against “group think.