Communication Is What We Need…..
By: Luke Bryant
Tags: Customer Service, Communication Skills, Communication

Any professional team is and always has been built around the multiple skills, talents and personalities of the various people within it, or at least it should be. We are all very different and bring a different mix of these things to any team we are a part of.

In the past few years and throughout the progression of my career, the two key words I mentioned above (Communication & Team) have come to play a bigger and more significant part in my day to day life and work. As a younger man, I really didn’t understand the implications of what they actually meant. Now, as a more ‘mature’ person I have a clearer idea, although it’s still a work in progress.

I’ve been on my fair share of both corporate and state run ‘team building’ courses and exercises and to be honest I used to believe they were all a bit, well…..’all show and no substance’.

Being stuck in a disused gym and being told to catch a guy falling backwards whilst wearing a blindfold, a person to whom I had no real personal or professional connection with, was frankly laughable at the time. The whole ‘I’ve got your back, you get mine’ just didn’t ring with mex especially as was not given any real context. For me, this was not the right way to look at it, only being there for someone at the absolute last minute. To be absolutely truthful with you, the main reason I even attended these events (back in the day) was because of the free food and a day out of the office.

It took me a lot of thought and learning to find out (at least what I believe to be) the ‘right way’ of doing things and to gain a real understanding of what ‘team work’ and ‘communication’ really meant and ultimately what it could help you to create.

Fast forward twenty something years, three European countries, a wife and family and a fair amount of career progression through different jobs and industries and believe it or not my opinion on this…..has not changed.

Let me explain.

I am currently in a position where I get to ‘lead’ a great team of people and coordinate with many other teams for the benefit of both our clients and the company team as a whole. I love it. We all have the same goal, to provide a great product and service for our client(s) and we work hard to achieve this.

But over the years I have learned (mostly I’ve learned the hard way) that we shouldn’t be preparing ourselves to be ‘caught’ by other people or to ‘catch’ others. We should be communicating our successes, failures, issues and challenges deeply enough that the requirement to be ‘caught’ does not exist. We need to be there for each other — professionally and personally. Please don’t get me wrong, emergencies will always happen, sometimes things will go really wrong and it’s important to have the confindence that the team you work with will be able to step up and assist. Of course. But, in my opinion we should aim for a ‘prevention is better that cure’ approach. Meaning that if we could put in enough ground work and communicate effectively, these bigger issues should lessen. And in the case that these issues do happen, their impact and recovery should be much quicker.