It goes without saying that communication is important, right?
Maybe not. A quick google search reveals an article on the "Importance of Team Communication Skills", Inc.com has an infographic on the importance of internal team communication, and there are a number of sites promising to improve team communication here and here.
There's even a Ted Talk about how to have a better conversation.
So what? What does this have to do with leadership?
I'm glad you asked.
Franz (2012) claims team communication can be improved with trust and active listening.
It makes sense that trust and communication go hand in hand and a good leader knows this. Facilitate one, and you'll develop the other. Why would we trust someone who didn't listen to us? Why would we share ideas with someone we don't trust?
If you want your team to communicate they have to trust one another... and build trust, there needs to be communication. And this isn't just Franz (2012) who saying this.
Countless articles talk about the relationship between trust and communication, such as Boies, Fiset, and Gill's, "We contend that effective leadership stimulates communication among team members,and that, through increased communication, team members are able to acquire important information about their teammates, such as personal competence" (2015, p. 1083).
A good leader gets their team communicating and facilitates conversations when things get tough.
Now what?
In my leadership class we have a group project. The problem is that there isn't much communication happening... Without communication, there's no trust building... without trust, it is difficult to get the conversation going.
In hindsight, we should have done additional introductions to start the conversation instead of jumping directly into "What group do we want to choose for our project?". Moving forward, we are trying to meet via video which should lead to better communication, and hopefully, more trust from here on out.
