What To Look for in Team Communication
Critical thinking for team patterns and systems.
Who does the talking?
Pay attention to relative speaking time across various types of meetings, informal communication, and even in digital speech.
Is the manager talking most of the time, giving little room for other people on the team to share their thoughts, opinions and other contributions? Are there certain members of the team who do the majority of the talking, and if so, what are their characteristics? i.e. are they mostly men (typical in male-dominated groups), mostly white? Are more introverted, less boisterous/overly confident or non-domineering members of the team given a chance to talk too? What about junior workers? Are there people on the team who aren’t talking at all?
Significant differences in the amount of “speaking space” members of the team can indicate dysfunctions ranging from subtle sexism and racism, to narcissistic management that doesn’t listen to its employees, to value systems that prioritize confidence and volume over experience or logic. What are the risks, missed opportunities, and long-term consequences of these inequalities?
How is conflict handled?
Conflict is a normal part of human and team dynamics.
If conflict isn’t occurring on your team, that can be a warning sign in itself: are people too fearful, dominated, disinterested or disempowered to surface and resolve conflict?
Think about how your team handles conflict when it comes up. Is conflict — whether disagreements about direction and strategy, interpersonal dynamics, or breakdowns in communication — openly discussed, or gossiped about in private?
If it isn’t being addressed openly, what are the root causes (i.e., conflict-adverse teams/management, fear of retaliation, etc.)?
When conflict is surfaced, does it result in aggressive arguing, passive-aggressive lashing out, or maybe long periods of coldness and disengagement?
Ultimately, poor handling of conflict can contribute to long-term and intractable trauma on teams. Conflict resolution should be one of the major concerns of a team, as it is both inevitable over time and difficult to navigate.
What does the flow of information look like?
How is information asymmetry functioning in your team? Do managers or other members of a team hold vital information back, or use information asymmetry as a powerplay?
Who is always the first to know, who is always the last to know, and how quickly or slowly does important information flow across the team? What information is achieved directly vs through a grapevine, gossip or other indirect channels?
Where does information on your team come from? What data or context might be missing? (i.e., is lots of information coming via third parties instead of directly from customers? Does your team get lots of information from one group in the company but not from others?)
How is information relevant to your team displayed and shared? What information, data and context is easy for your team to get to, what information, data and context is difficult to get? What ISN’T displayed or shared in useful formats? What information is explicit vs implicit?
Information flow across a team is critical to efficient and successful decision-making, equality and fairness across team members, and the speed and quality of overall team communication. As such, it is an extremely relevant topic when looking at team dynamics.
What are the isolation vs integration dynamics on the team?
Looking at the communication dynamics WITHIN teams is not sufficient. Teams need checks and balances, contact and context, with and from other parts of the company and other parts of the management structure.
How much does your team work with other teams? Isolated teams can lack critical contextual information from the rest of the company, and may eventually become unable to effectively collaborate across the company.
In the case of serious team dysfunctions and instances where management is ineffective or abusive, lack of access to the rest of the management structure can mean that there is no visibility or recourse for people on the team.
Who is getting micro-aggressed and by who?
Especially in the white male-dominated teams of the tech industry, it is best to assume that microaggressions are occurring against marginalized and underrepresented groups — however, microaggressions are not limited to these groups.
Overall levels of microaggressions functioning in the environment may reflect other issues on the team as managers or other team members use microaggressions to address conflict, process tension, assert authority, gain a sense of security, or punish team members for dissent.
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