Team Communication in the Workplace

Abstract

In today's organizations, team and group communication is an essential part of work, and it is loaded with expectations. Despite the expectation that teamwork offers an answer to the intense demands of today's dynamic, ubiquitously digital working life, taking advantage of its benefits is neither simple nor well understood. Teams represent various types of collaboration. Teams can be understood by observing their structures, practices, and processes as well as their functionality and goal achievement. This chapter provides an understanding of the multifaceted reality of groups and teams as it manifests in interaction.The chapter analyzes a variety of team phenomena in order to enhance and develop team performance in the workplace. Although teams can have a designated leader or coordinator, team members can also share leadership. Teams can execute long-lasting, permanent tasks, but they can also be formed for short periods to perform explicit, nonrecurring tasks. The chapter also outlines the practical implications of the communication factors that contribute to team performance and goal achievement in the context of constantly changing working life and the manifold requirements of successful teams. Understanding Team CommunicationIn knowledge work, working in teams is an established practice. Teams are usually formed to accomplish a certain goal, function, or project (Lipnack & Stamps 2000, 58). Team members often share a sense of responsibility (Kirkman & Rosen 2000), and every member plays an important part in achieving shared goals (Scott 2013). In team communication, shared meanings are created and roles, norms, and rules are constructed (Hollingshead & Poole 2012). Team members produce the team and its characteristics as well as coordinate their performance in communication. Teams communicate both face-to-face and via several kinds of communication technology, from email and chat to video conferencing tools (Gilson et al. 2015). Teams also use social media, enterprise social media, and other web-based communication platforms in their interaction. Teams can be geographically or organizationally dispersed (Lipnack & Stamps 2000), but team members also commonly use communication technology when they work at the same physical location (Kirkman, Gibson, & Kim 2012). Communication technologies enable members to communicate asynchronously and synchronously and to use text-based, audio, or video tools in their communicationor all of them at the same time. Communication can also be mobile. Furthermore, multicommunication, in which a person carries out parallel conversations with several individuals at the same time (Valo 2019) is enabled by tools such as instant messaging, social media, and email. The use of all these technologies to communicate in teams has become common or even expected in the workplace (Gilson et al. 2014). Synergy, knowledge management, the quality of collaborative decisions, and work commitment are advantages of teamwork (Harris & Sherblom 2011). Naturally, teams do not always perform as hoped, ...

Yliopisto-opiskelijoiden näkemyksiä etäopetuksen pienryhmätilanteista

“…Ryhmäviestintäosaamisen merkitystä on syytä korostaa yliopisto-opiskelijoille, sillä se on tarpeen niin kasvokkain kuin verkkokeskusteluissakin. Etäkeskustelut ovat oivallista harjoitusta työelämää varten, sillä sekä etätyö että tiimimäinen työskentely sekä kasvokkain että verkossa (Raappana & Horila, 2020) ovat tulleet jäädäkseen. Ryhmäviestintäosaamisen kaikki ulottuvuudet -tiedot, taidot, asenteet ja motivaatio -olisi mielekästä huomioida opetuksessa.…”

”At worst it leads to madness.” A phenomenographic approach on how early childhood education professionals experience emotions in teamwork

“…Communication plays a key role in effective teamwork. Interaction is more multi-initiative in a team than between two people and effective interaction in the team requires relational expertise (Horila & Valo, 2016;Raappana & Horila, 2019). In multi-professional teams, the aim is to share power, knowledge, and competence with the aim of achieving something that one person alone cannot achieve (Karila & Kupila, 2010).…”