Keeping your finger on the pulse of your technical team’s communication

As a manager or leader, it can be difficult to pick up on communication issues as they happen, or identify that there's a lack of healthy communication in your team. You'd think that by working with your team every day would mean that you’d have your finger on the pulse of any communication issues. Unfortunately that’s not always the case.

You see, good communication relies on two parties - the speaker and the listener. Whatever your thoughts on evolution, the reality is we were all born with two ears and one mouth, and logic would imply that we should probably use them in that proportion. But in reality, we tend to speak twice as much as we listen which means that our messages aren’t always received they way you intended them to be transmitted.

Let's take an example. In a one-on-one meeting with one of your technical experts, you set a task for them to complete. You outline detailed instructions, and they nod, say 'mmm' and 'uh-huh' which makes you think they've understood. A few weeks later you check in with them about the task and realise that they didn’t quite understand your instructions. What went wrong? They didn’t play the message back to you.

Our busy workplaces make it hard to slow down, ask the questions and do the listening. People often draw incorrect conclusions when it comes to communication because we rarely check with our listeners about what they've heard from us.

With the right techniques in place, you can prevent these communication issues, establish effective communication loops and create a healthy working environment where messages aren’t lost in translation. Here are a few tips from us.

Our 6 tips to improve your technical team’s communication

1. Speak up when you don't understand. People won’t always say what they don’t understand. As humans, we feel embarrassed and hold back from asking questions when we don’t understand something because we fear it will make us look incompetent or unintelligent. As a leader, you can’t rely that your team will always let you know if they ‘don’t get it’. It’s more socially comfortable to say “I know what you mean” than it is to say “I have no idea what you’re talking about” - so your first step as a leader is to acknowledge that no questions doesn’t necessarily mean that your team have understood. Then lead by example by stating that you don’t understand when connecting with them and with others in the workplace.

2. Play back messages to each other. In healthy environments, people reply back to show understanding. A good sign that your team is on the right track is a practice of repeating instructions or messages back to you to demonstrate that they’ve received the message loud and clear. The Navy has been using this technique for years, with sailors consistently repeating back any order given with an aye or a sir on the end to acknowledge and let the order giver know that they’ve heard and understood. We don’t quite need the same level of repetition in office environments but if you’ve spent 20 minutes explaining something, ask your team to repeat back to you what they’ve heard to make sure they got the message right.

3. Recognise that miscommunication multiplies in larger teams. Talking to three or more people exponentially increases the potential for misunderstanding. If you’re leading a large team, be deliberate in your speaking style and remember that if you don’t communicate effectively, you’ll cause frustration. Check in with some of your team after a meeting to gauge their perception of your messaging and get a feel for how the meeting went.

4. Write it down. Technical experts often put more weight and trust on written evidence as opposed to verbal communication and hearsay. As the Chinese proverb states; “the faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory”.

5. Show vulnerability. Be real, be upfront, don’t avoid tricky questions and be honest when you’re not sure about something, so that your team feels safe and encouraged to do the same.

6. Build your network of ‘smoke detectors’. Identify the people in your team who know what’s happening on the ‘shop floor’ level. The perspectives of these team members are respected by their colleagues, but aren’t necessarily the people to offer feedback straight away. Building connections with a network of trustworthy people who who have the team’s and the organisation’s best interests at heart will give you a much better chance of being on top of communication breakdowns.