Team communication — all communication — is an attempt at the impossible… To implant in your brain, all the way over there, exactly the meaning, the message, the nuance and intention that I am holding in my brain and to receive the same from you, all by using this clunky toolkit called language.
That’s hard.
No wonder we so often fail.
The Hidden Cost of Miscommunication
We’ve all had this conversation:
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Well, it’s sure as s#!t what you said!”
Sound familiar? This conversation is like a cockroach—for every time you’ve had it out loud, there are a hundred times it’s gone unsaid. And each instance represents a crack in your team communication that’s costing you time, trust, and effectiveness.
The Communication Mirage: Why Team Communication So Often Fails
Between what we intend to convey and the meaning others take from what we’ve said, there’s almost always a gap. Playwright George Bernard Shaw captured this perfectly: “The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
While we can’t completely eliminate that gap, we can narrow it significantly. Here’s where we get tripped up.
The temptation: We’re all in a hurry. We want to move from communication to action NOW!
The reality: Every time we rush, we find ourselves fixing missteps later.
As our client Travis Moore, President of Jemco, recently reminded his team: “Efficiency means nothing if it’s not effective.”
Breaking Through the Illusion: Your 2025 SUPER-TOOL
Among the 8 Principles of Legendary Communication that we teach our client teams, one stands out for its immediate impact: Be Obvious.
This game-changing principle has several powerful implications for team communication, collaboration, and leadership. Here’s one:
Nothing goes without saying.
It suggests, you’ll significantly narrow the team communication gap if you actually say the thing that you think goes without saying. You’ll be amazed at how often what’s obvious to you is news to others.
And that’s just the beginning.
Advanced Team Communication: The Power of Observation
Here’s a more advanced—and shockingly powerful—application of being obvious:
Name what you see.
Most teams operate under an unspoken (and unwise) rule: We can only respond to WHAT people say (to the transcript), not to HOW they say it, and certainly not to what they only subtly and inadvertently signal.
Breaking this rule transforms team communication. You’ll almost seem psychic when you do two things: NOTICE and INVESTIGATE
1) Watch for Non-Verbal Signals:
- Body language
- Facial expressions
- Tone
- Breathing patterns, etc.
2) Investigate:
- “I noticed you just sighed… Tell me about that.”
- “Looks like you just had a thought?”
- “Seems like you may have an objection…”
- “You’ve looked at your watch about 5 times… Need to be somewhere?”
How often does this kind of investigation happen in your workplace? Almost never, we’d wager. Yet it’s exactly what transformed our client BizX’s team culture. As CEO Bob Bagga shared: “We were walking on eggshells with each other. Now we’re telling each other what we need to hear.”
The High Stakes of Even Small Team Communication Gaps
Time and resources go down the drain when we don’t slow down to ensure effective, thorough communication. Passive aggression becomes normalized. Trust erodes. And without trust? Relationships falter. Teams struggle. Work slows down.
People end up pulling the rope in opposite directions, burning time and resources in the process.
Consider what your team will accomplish in 2025 if you change nothing in the current status quo of your team’s communication… Are you satisfied?
Now imagine what becomes possible when you replace the illusion of communication with effective, transparent team communication…
Transformation Timeline
The transformation can happen faster than you might think.
Patti Kibbe, CEO of Evergreen Business Capital said, “My company got an overnight communication skills upgrade!”
Contrary to conventional wisdom, culture change doesn’t have to be slow.
Try an experiment. Unilaterally… Just you…
Implement these super-tools consistently in your own team communication. See what happens.
My bet: You get greater transparency, catch miscommunications before they can waste time and resources, gain more trust from your team.
This WILL happen if you practice this — with one caveat.
If you do this to catch people out… To be a better spy… It’ll backfire because you’ll come across forceful and invasive.
You’ve got to do it with compassion. If you bring care and appreciation to your communicating this way, you and your team will love the results.
Want training for your team in this tool and others like it? Let’s talk about whether and when your team may join the ranks of the teamified.