Grade a team's communication and raise its weakest part

1. Why communication

As you scale, you add teammates, and more teammates means more communication. Communication that scales badly brings endless meetings, low morale and team effectiveness that falls fast. The framework on this page is meant to prevent that. It works on raising energy, engagement and exploration, which are said to have been found to be the three main ingredients of high-performing teams. Better communication is said to lead to more work, and better work, from each teammate, and the framework is called a must as you scale.

The question behind it: why do some teams and teammates keep exceeding expectations while others struggle to meet the minimum? The conclusion offered is that it comes down to their communication habits.

• The terrible communicator. Someone who is unresponsive, slow, short or vague gets labeled by it. You cannot see past it to tell if they are a high performer. And if they are, it is unlikely you care much, because their communication harms the team.
• Confusion. Good communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity. If you keep leaving the people around you confused, odds are you are not their favorite person, and they probably avoid you. The question put to the reader: can you think of a time you were confused that was not down to poor communication? The answer offered is no.
• The silent one. Some people barely communicate, only when it is absolutely necessary; otherwise you would not know they were on the team. They are often the company's shining stars, but you would never know, because they lack confidence, are shy, or would never boast. That is no better than leaving people confused. Instead of confusing people, they stay away from you for fear of causing discomfort or anxiety.

The study cited

A university study, read about secondhand, looked across a wide range of industries for workplaces with similar teams whose performance varied. It took in innovation teams, post-operation wards in hospitals, customer-facing teams in banks, back-room operations and many others. Team members wore electronic badges that recorded how each person communicated: tone of voice, body language, whom they talked to and how many times, and more.

• Across the board, the data confirmed communication as the most critical factor in building a successful team, and specific patterns of communication were the most important predictors of success.
• Communication was a better predictor of success than the individual intelligence or skill level of the team.
• The two best predictors were the team's energy and engagement with each other outside formal meetings. Together, those two explained 40 percent of the variance in dollar productivity among groups.

2. The three parts

Most books, courses and articles describe good communication only vaguely. The complaint, made over the years, is that everyone preaches communication but never says what it means or how to do it. The framework below is one found, in one practice here, to lift communication, collaboration and so business growth.

• Energy: the number and nature of interactions among team members, counted the same if they are verbal or nonverbal.
• Engagement: how energy is spread among team members. Take a simple team of three: engagement depends on the average energy between A and B, between A and C, and between B and C. The more members of a team speak up while a decision is being made, the more profitable or successful the decision turns out to be. So the more you speak up, the smarter your team as a whole becomes.
• Exploration: communication that teammates have outside their core team, with other teams. High- performing teams correlate with collaboration with other teammates and departments. Exploration is called the multiplier: once energy and engagement are right, you explore, that is, multiply, the good communication already built.

3. How to raise energy

• Be a fast communicator. Slow communicators are known for making teams worse; the speed of communication has the closest correlation with energy. Picture someone who runs slowly beside someone who runs fast: which has more energy? Think of great communicators: do you wait days for them to reply? The view here is that you do not.
• If you see something, say something. In one practice here, a block at the end of each working day on the calendar is labeled "praise". In it, the practice is to reach out to anyone noticed doing something cool, difficult or impressive that day, with a message sent before bed. The saying behind it: never let a good gesture go unnoticed.
• Vary how you communicate. The best communicators do not have one way of communicating. They are often the teammates who fill up the Zoom chat on calls, message you on Slack, send you gifts and comment on your social posts. To raise the energy of communication, encourage people to use different ways of reacting to teammates, even a simple emoji.

4. How to raise engagement

• Pull people in during meetings.
  • If you are the boss, or even an ambitious peer, privately message the teammates on a call who do not speak up much, encourage them to, and praise them when they do. When training someone to lead or to communicate better, the practice described is to use the private chat to feed them lines to say to the group, until they are comfortable doing it on their own.
  • Make each team member responsible for one piece of the presenting at the team meeting. That builds a process for spreading talk time and engagement evenly, and it builds their public speaking.
• Buddy up. When two teammates rarely interact, put them on projects together on purpose. It improves communication, and the more a team communicates, the less it needs its leader.

5. How to raise exploration

• Collaborate across teams.
  • Set up cross-team or "special" projects where people from different departments work together. Does a project need two departments? Maybe not, but you will benefit from it, and so will they.
  • Have team members join projects or groups outside their usual role, for new insights, ideas and collaboration. In one practice here, teammates from the media team join calls outside their own department once a month, so they see what goes on in other departments and communication keeps flowing.
• Casual events.
  • In one practice here, the teams like each other's company but are seldom all in one room. Something said to have worked really well: monthly game nights, pizza parties or lunches, so every team spends time with the others.
  • Once a year, a full-team meetup where seating and activities are mixed up on purpose, so that for 2 days nobody interacts with their usual team.

6. Grade, then choose one part

1. Share it with your leaders. Give them this page and ask them to grade their teams on each part, on a scale of 1 to 10:
   • How would you grade your team on energy?
   • How would you grade your team on engagement?
   • How would you grade your team on exploration?
2. Ask your team. Ask the team how they want to act; you do not have to come up with every idea on your own. Give them this page and have them grade their own team. Then ask them which part of communication is their worst, and what they want to focus on to lift it. The advice given is to focus on ONE part, no matter how bad or far off you may be.

7. What this page does not decide for you

• What a grade means. This page gives no figure for a grade that counts as weak or strong.
• How often to grade again. Not established on this page.
• How long the praise block runs. This page gives no figure for the length of the end-of-day praise block.
• How the three parts are measured on your own team, beyond the leaders' grades of 1 to 10. Not established on this page.

8. The checklist

Part	What it is	How to raise it
Energy	The number and nature of interactions, verbal or nonverbal	Reply fast; an end-of-day praise block; vary the channels you react on
Engagement	How energy is spread across the team	Draw quiet teammates in on calls, privately; one piece of the meeting's presenting each; put two teammates who rarely interact on a project together
Exploration	Communication outside the core team	Cross-team and special projects; join groups outside your role; monthly casual events; a yearly mixed-up meetup
Grading	Each part on a scale of 1 to 10	Leaders grade their teams; teams grade themselves and choose
Choosing	ONE part, the worst	Focus on it no matter how bad or far off you may be

9. What this page does not cover

The weekly meeting where sales, marketing and customer success review one call together is SOP 135 — Run the cross-department call review. Planning each week on the calendar so a manager can see the load is SOP 137 — Run the weekly time-blocking ritual.

The standards support reps hold to with customers are SOP 144 — Hold support to five service standards and grade each rep.