Effective communication techniques for leading team meetings

¶ … Leadership

[Author Name(s), First M. Last, Omit Titles and Degrees]

Effective leadership is gained through strong communication skills. People assume a good leader is smart, brave, and capable. While this is true, there are also several communication barriers and hurdles effective leaders must overcome in order to develop cohesion and harmony within a team or group. Leaders are charged with keeping a team or group together, demonstrating a positive persona that those in the team or group can emulate, and be the source of stability and balance. There are some techniques and approaches that any potential leader can take to become an effective leader. Such techniques could involve something as simple as a conducting a meeting and understanding internal and external communication.

When a person is tasked with leading teams and group meetings some may see it as a difficult task. Techniques offers ways a leader can handle the dynamics within a group or team while keeping things professional, structured, and organized. Some approaches focus on the need to understand the need for participation and clarification, for example teams that do not have active participants cannot grow and progress towards handling goals. Other approaches attempt to address basic problems faced when dealing with the differentiating dynamics within a team or group (Achua & Lussier, 2010, p. 49).

A basic issue people put into the leadership position face is being able to notify people on what kind of meetings they will be attending. For example, when a manager has to bring in his or her sales associates, he or she has to let them know what is expected during the meeting in terms of behavior and participation and what the manager wishes to achieve when the meeting is over. Identifying the rules of the meeting and the subject matter to the sales associates lets them know what is expected of them and how to behave while attending the meeting. Furthermore, adding whether the meeting is mandatory or voluntary helps make sure they see whether or not the meeting is important or not.

Meetings is an important topic to cover because that is where the bulk of team management comes from, are when teams get together for meetings. Meetings typically entail some kind of decision making process, are when a leader can set goals, and provide avenues of communication for everyone from team to leader (Gopal, 2009, p. 124). A universally seen decision-making process that frequently leads to successful meetings is identification of opportunity or issue, generative alternatives, assessing alternative, planning and setting a course of action, identifying an implementation plan, as well as establishing mechanisms that show whether such processes are working or not. Although this seems complicated, it can be quite easy.

A real world example is a jewelry store manager and her sales associates. She calls them in for a monthly meeting to assign sales goals based on a sales associates last performance. She then discusses team sales goals for the month, and introduces any potential new employees that may come in as season or not. She assigns people that could train these new sales associates. She asks if anyone has any problems with customers or anything else. Then she provides anonymous feedback sheets or a suggestion box to make sure employees have a voice in the store when it comes to how things are run. This gives employees a sense of a compassionate and fair leader and allows them to fully grasp what they are responsible for in the store.

2. Effective communication has always been and always will be the key to meeting any demand successfully within a business. A successful business involves the collaboration of people and their desire to aim towards a goal and unite under the goal to achieve it. If businesses have any level of miscommunication, such business experience lower productivity and witness an increase in various issues that involve supervision and assessment. That is why communication that is comprised of nonverbal, verbal, written, external, and internal communication can allow people within a business to not only understand the effects of communication, but also how to improve communication when interacting with others.

Examples of written business communications that businesses use to educate and train employees or notify them of changes are employee handbooks, emails, advertisements, and even text messages (Guffey & Loewy, 2010, p. 82). The digital world makes communication far easier than in the past. Emails and text messages are just part of a much bigger section of computer literacy that allows people to communicate effectively across continents, from video messages to Skype calls. Understanding the effect, the online platform has on communication can help boost and unite a fragmented team or group.

Nonverbal and verbal communication are seen as critically useful for a business, especially in the areas of management and sales. Managers specifically, must have excellent verbal skills to conduct successfully business meetings and delegate duties to subordinates. A big hurdle when dealing with verbal and nonverbal communication is the reluctance to value body language and the lack of effort in customer service. Nonverbal communication involves reading body language and include active listening, eye contact, and handshaking. Proper nonverbal communication enables bonding through social interactions and allows people to feel more comfortable in a professional setting. Verbal communication, like speaking to customers, speaking to personnel, this involves a varied amount of behaviors that not only provide people with a better atmosphere, but elicit a higher level of participation from others (Guffey & Loewy, 2010, p. 101). For example, refraining from using harsh language and loud voices can help those one is verbally interacting with from feeling threatened or harassed.