Communication: A Team Effort or Not?

Communication: A team effort or not?

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the positive and negative aspects in team communication.

The paper highlights the importance of developing an understanding the impact of size gender make up, personality types, cliques, and cultural diversity of and within teams, nurturing a clear view of the impact of working as a online learning team member and recognizing approaches that can improve the working environment, sharing experiences and recognizing the best performances while resisting the temptation to 'reinvent the wheel', exploring various communication challenges connected with leading remote teams and recognizing appropriate methods that will guarantee effective team communication. (Pollitt, 2006)

Communication: A team effort or not?

Communication is difficult between just two people, how do you think it would fair between teams of people? There are several factors to take into consideration when dealing with communication in a team setting. The factors include but are not limited to the size of the team, the gender make up of the team, the personality types within the team, cliques within the team, and the cultural diversity of the team members. Wordnet.princeton.edu (2007) defines communication as the activity of conveying information by or to or between people or teams (para.1). The essence of good communication skills can make an online learning team successful or can break the team into non-cooperative segments and cause failure.

Communication Challenges

One communication challenge encountered by teams is online learning. There are benefits to online learning. For example, when in an online environment team members may be dispersed geographically and in this particular environment, the flexibility and opportunity to save financially is tremendous not to mention the time savings from a classroom to classroom commute. It seems that this is the primary reason for the recent growth of online learning communities. There are some disadvantages that come along with this type of learning also. While this type of remote learning "often appeals to people who are very individual and enjoy managing their own workload some of the most common remote working issues include dealing with isolation, maintaining or losing trust, communication, misunderstanding and suspicion." (Pollitt, 2006)

Cultural Diversity

One of the most important factors in achieving excellent team communication is being sensitive to Cultural Diversity. Although having a culturally diverse team provides numerous benefits; there are some hurdles that need to be overcome just to begin working together. Benefits of a culturally diverse team include a higher level of cross-cultural knowledge. The negative aspects of a culturally diverse team are as follows: First of all, the language barrier is a hurdle, but it is probably the easiest to overcome. Secondly, there is the cultural lifestyle of each individual. This is extremely important because each culture is different and to work together individuals have to have a comfort level in which to work. (Group Dynamics, 2006).

Cliques

Unfortunately, discomfort can become the norm if cliques form within the team. In the online learning environment this may happen among the team members who are geographically located within a closer proximity than the other team members. Looking at this in a positive light if managed carefully by the team leader can be used to the team's advantage by allowing concentrated innovative ideas that can be shared with the entire team. However, in the negative aspect, "if the team leader loses control, the cliques go their own way and reduce the overall effectiveness of the team". (Pollitt, 2006)

Gender bias: does it exist?

Another important factor in achieving excellent team communication is the gender make-up of the team. This is not the same as cultural differences, unless you insert a culture that views women as being subservient to men in the mix, but that is reasonably easy to overcome. For example, a study by a group in the Netherlands used two specific occupations that were team based. One was a male dominated field and the other was a female dominated field. The male dominated field was police officers and the female dominated field was nurses. Although one is clearly a female dominated occupation, both fields were considered disadvantages for females.

As this particular study states "As women move into male-dominated police forces and men gain employment opportunities in the female-dominated world of nursing,

who faces the greatest resistance? The answer from this study was the women police officers." As the minority gender in each field representation changed in the positive, the following changes in attitude were observed: "The attitude of the male majority changes from neutral to resistant, whereas the attitude of the female majority changes from favorable to neutral. In other words, men increasingly want to keep their domain for themselves, while women remain willing to share their domain with men." (Group Dynamics, 2006).

Of course there is also negative communication which revolves around the issue of sexual harassment. This is one of the most devastating problems we face in society today. Some of the perceptions regarding sexual harassment can and has created hostile work environments.

Can personality determine your team participation?

Another factor in achieving excellent team communication is personality types. According to Myers-Briggs personality quiz, you are one in each of these sets. Introversion & Extroversion, Sensing & Intuitive, Thinking & Feeling, Judging & Perceiving. These will make up your individual personality in the following ways: "Favorite world: Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or on your own inner world? This is called Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I).