Quotes About Communication

I think we need to start having a Headline News every day, for five minutes. We could call it a Daily Check-in or something. That means we should get together in a conference room, standing up, and just announce what we're all doing.

Teams have to eliminate ambiguity and interpretation when it comes to success.

All too often in life, we see people do what we want them to do and we say nothing, assuming that the behavior has become natural for them, an easy standard.

The key ingredient to building trust is not time. It is courage.

Employees know that they ultimately pay the price when their manager doesn't get along with or cooperate with managers of other departments, leaving the staff to navigate the treacherous and bloody waters of organizational politics.

The key to all of this, then, is to teach team members to get comfortable being exposed to one another, unafraid to honestly say things like "I was wrong" and "I made a mistake" and "I need help" and "I'm not sure" and "you're better than I am at that" and yes, even "I'm sorry.

The leader is going to have to be ready to not only light the fuse of good conflict but to gently fan the flames for a while too.

when team members reveal aspects of their personal lives to their peers, they learn to get comfortable being open with them about other things. They begin to let down their guard about their strengths, weaknesses, opinions, and ideas.

The first dysfunction is an absence of trust among team members. Essentially, this stems from their unwillingness to be vulnerable within the group. Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust.

Building a team is hard

This failure to build trust is damaging because it sets the tone for the second dysfunction: fear of conflict. Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments.

Team leaders must give members a reason to care at the beginning of a meeting or discussion. They must raise the anxiety of the team about why the issues about to be discussed matter, and what could go wrong if bad decisions are made. By doing so, they immediately get everyone engaged

Because of this lack of real commitment and buy-in, team members develop an avoidance of accountability, the fourth dysfunction. Without committing to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team.

Failure to hold one another accountable creates an environment where the fifth dysfunction can thrive. Inattention to results occurs when team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development, or recognition) or even the needs of their divisions above the collective goals of the team.

And we have to stop focusing on agendas and minutes and rules, and accept the fact that bad meetings start with the attitudes and approaches of the people who lead and take part in them.

The fact remains that team, because they are made up of imperfect human beings, are inherently dysfuctional.

Clients don't expect perfection from the service providers they hire, but they do expect honesty and transparency. There

decisions never seemed to get made; discussion were slow and uninteresting, with few real exchanges; and everyone seemed to be desperately waiting for each meeting to end.

Now imagine if I were to ask a room full of executives which they enjoy more: meetings or movies? They would probably think I was joking. And yet, meetings should be more interesting than movies because they have more inherent potential for passion and engagement than movies do.

moments of truth ... are best handled face-to-face

The truth is, the only thing more painful than confronting an uncomfortable topic is pretending it doesn't exist. And I believe far more suffering is caused by failing to deal with an issue directly—and whispering about it in the hallways—than by putting it on the table and wrestling with it head on.

I see a trust problem here in the lack of debate that exists at staff meetings and other interactions among this team.

commitment cannot occur if people are unclear about exactly what is being committed to.

teams should commit to doing Daily Check-ins for a set period of time—perhaps two months—before evaluating whether or not they are working.