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Team Spark: Adapt to Encourage Growth
Adaptive communication is a skill that is also critical to organizational growth. Keeping something the same just “because this is the way we have always done it” hinders an organization from innovating and progressing. Adaptation taps into employee skill sets and allows people to utilize their diversity to improve upon old “songs”, making a new version that supports growth.
Team Spark: Assess Your Communication Style
When communicating with others, particularly people from other countries, it is important to recognize when your communication style has become outdated and when it is time to upgrade to a new technique.
Team Spark: Be Open to How Work Gets Done
Being open and flexible about how work gets done, especially on diverse teams with many different perspectives, invites healthy collaboration and the collective pull of the entire team towards the end goal.
Team Spark: Check Assumptions Before Judging
When judging the “dance” of another person, especially across differences such as culture, be careful about making judgments based upon what you think is important. Focusing on their “feet” while communicating may mean you are missing the most important part of their dance.
Team Spark: Cheer on Collaboration
An outside energetic and supportive cheerleader can prove essential to the success of the team by offering words of encouragement, and if needed, expertise, suggestions, or technical support.
Team Spark: Collaborate Outside Of Your Team
By collaborating with someone outside of their team, employees bring a broader view to their work. With a more diverse perspective, new insights are gained and the chances of success are increased.
Team Spark: Collaboration with Skill
Courting a business partner from a different country or cultural background may require research on their cultural views on business relationships, developing trust, negotiation, and communication styles.
Team Spark: Compromise For A Common Goal
Compromise during collaboration can create the strongest and most compelling outcomes when working on teams, projects, and organizational challenges. The best results come from everyone being willing to compromise in order to achieve the end result.
Team Spark: Craft Your Message With Purpose
Communication across differences is often done in a similar fashion. However, taking time to think about who, when, and how a message will be received allows the sender to craft a much more effective message that will produce much better results.
Team Spark: Create Structure to Help Bridge Barriers
The lack of face-to-face interaction reduces the team’s ability to adjust and adapt as quickly as a team that is located all at one site. In situations like this, having a clearly defined structure detailing everyone’s role and responsibilities is a key to success.
Team Spark: Cross-Pollinate to Spark Innovation
Within companies and teams, employees have the important role of sharing ideas between groups, departments, and teams. This “cross-pollination” of ideas helps to unlock the inherent creativity and innovation that lies within a company, but may need a spark from another source to bring it to life.
Team Spark: Cultivate a Collective Instinct
Collective effort can result in outcomes that are impossible when attempted as an individual. When working collectively with people from diverse backgrounds, we have an even greater pool of resources and expertise with which to successfully navigate times of great challenge.
Team Spark: Find the Common Beat
Similar to a band with many different instruments playing together, a diverse team consists of many different personalities working together. While this diversity allows for innovation and creativity, it also makes it more difficult for team members to keep the same tempo. It is the role of the team member with the drummer personality to keep everyone communicating and completing tasks on time.
Team Spark: Honor Unique Contributions
The individual brilliance of an employee is not always realized until a group comes together to collaborate. Working with other employees on diverse teams helps each team member to tap into their creativity, often producing ground breaking products and services that could only be discovered through collaboration.
Team Spark: Invest Time to Build Trust
When working on diverse teams, developing trust may take longer due to background differences and different views on what trust means and how it is earned. Building confidence helps to resolve communication issues that may impede team progress. A trusting team will be able to function as a cohesive unit when critical decisions have to be made.
Team Spark: Leverage Broad Expertise
Like building a skyscraper, collaboration on large projects works best when you bring together a team with diverse areas of expertise. On-going and continuous collaboration among disciplines helps to ensure that your project achieves all of its goals when it is completed.
Team Spark: Mix Diverse Personalities
When combined haphazardly, people can clash instead of cohere, resulting in a “failed launch.” Creating a team comprised of diverse individuals may require a more careful balancing of components, but in the end provides the opportunity for brilliant results when done with careful thought and respect.
Team Spark: Pay Attention To Nonverbal Communication
Colleagues in the workplace communicate both verbally and non-verbally. Understanding how to interpret their nonverbal communication can be a great advantage. The meaning of body language and facial expressions may vary from culture to culture, so it is always good to check for understanding.
Team Spark: Proverb - Be Creative
Spark team communication around supporting team members when they choose to set their own course in how they complete work.
Team Spark: Proverb - Be Patient
Spark team communication around being patient and giving a project time to move forward - allowing for greater creativity or innovation.