The paradox of team development.

Teams need, and rely on, communication to perform at their best. However, teams rarely, if ever, practice how to communicate. This is the paradox.

When I speak of teams I am referring to athletic teams, as this paradox has become a staple area of development in most corporate cultures. In athletics, however, there is virtually no attention given—at least in an instructive form—to communication. This is a problem and this problem starts with how we educate coaches.

If you coach a sport that has a governing body (ex. I coach soccer and the governing body is the US Soccer Federation), then most likely that governing body provides some sort of coaching development program. If this is the case, take a look at the materials used to teach coaches. How much material, if any, is apportioned to learning about and teaching effective communication skills within your team? My guess is little to none.

Stop and think about the absurdity of this: coaches are taught how to develop tactics and technique, psychology and physical fitness, but they learn little about THE vehicle of team development, communication. One of the many cliche refrains that define coaching is a coach telling his/her team to “talk more.” How is “talk” defined? Do you wish your team to chat about the weather? No, of course not, what is really being asked by that command is “please give more specific instructions to your teammates in order to optimize collective play.” The two keys in that directive are specific instruction and collective play. So how do we coach our teams in the process of giving 1) specific instruction and 2) for collective play? What is being described is a two-fold process that needs to be practiced, refined, and developed. Communication doesn’t just happen, it requires work to properly contextualize it for each unique team community.

The bottom line is this: teams need to communicate, not just talk. Teams need to hold generative dialogues on a whole host of topics that ultimately define their collective culture. What are we doing to help these teams? How do we coach our teams on how to communicate? How are we helping coaches learn about the power of communication and giving them the tools to facilitate such communication?

Taken from Bushe & Marshak (2014b) here is a list of 27 different examples of ways dialogue can be used to develop your team:

The tools are out there. Do you know how to use them? Do you know where to find them? If not, I can help. Contact me.