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Team Building & Communication

By Robert F. Abbott

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 03Sep2007
Word count: 508
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Teams and team building are great. When they work. But, they won't work without a sense of cohesiveness. As you may know, cohesion generally refers to the shared commitment that members feel to their group and to each other. And, as we'll see, communication is critical for cohesiveness.

Starting with the cohesiveness factor, we know that leaders within the armed forces, in every nation and throughout history, work hard to build cohesion within their military organizations. Boot camps, for example, use the principle of replacing a recruit's existing value set with a new one that reflects the values of the military unit. It's a cornerstone of that type of team building.

No doubt you've also seen the desire for cohesiveness become an issue in companies and other organizations. It can be anything from birthday parties for members of a department to a top-down, organization-wide initiative to increase morale.

And as you can imagine, cohesion and team building cannot take place without communication.

Members of a group can only develop a sense of belonging when someone communicates to them that they are a valued part. Sometimes, that communication comes formally, in an initiation ceremony, for example. Or, it may be informal, as in the sense of allowing new members to participate in group activities.

In team building, those who become members of a group must reciprocate, of course. They must signal to other members that they value the membership they received. That may involve expressions of gratitude, or it may involve doing something, even if distasteful (as in a fraternity) or criminal. For example, becoming a member of a street gang or an outlaw motorcycle gang may involve the commission of crimes.

Leaders intent on team building must be acutely aware of their communicating role, and consistently evoke or invoke the shared values that hold the group together. To do that, they may speak of shared experiences or shared dreams. In some unfortunate cases, it may involve scapegoating individuals or groups that are unlike them in some way.

There's also the issue of the group communicating its cohesiveness to those outside the group. Members of Little League baseball teams wear team jackets, for example, and members of fraternal orders and service clubs wear vests or badges.

In talking about cohesiveness, the experts also, and invariably, mention the downside of this togetherness. They refer to groupthink, for example, which sees organizations make bad decisions because they put unanimity ahead of a good debate about the pros and cons of an issue. Members of the group think it's more important to avoid disagreements than to reach the right decision.

Groupthink also involves limited input from outside the group, meaning that important facts or opinions may not get to the group before it makes its decision. Most often, the outside information that does get in supports existing beliefs.

In summary, good communication, is always a cornerstone of any team building effort. And, we can see the connections, from communication to cohesiveness, and from cohesiveness to team building.

Robert F. Abbott specializes in business communication, and his work includes the booklet, 3 Easy Ways to Power Up Your Writing. You can read more of his free workplace communication articles at Workplace Communication on the Communicate-with-Confidence website.

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