ISACA COBIT 5 – Team Management (BOK III) Part 2

8. Team Communications (BOK III.B.3)

Hey, welcome back. In this topic of team communication, we will learn the basic model of communication. We will learn the type of communications, the channels of communication, and we will be talking about communication plan as well. But one thing you should remember that as a Steam leader you need to create the right environment where people can openly communicate. Because communication is important to any project or any improvement project. You need to encourage communication because if people are keeping to themselves, that is not going to serve the purpose of your project.

So make sure that people communicate and there is an open environment of communication. Before we talk anything further, let us understand the basic communication model, how communication works that we will be doing on the next slide. So here we have a basic communication model. In any communication you need two people, one sender and one receiver. So we have a sender here and we have a receiver here.

So communication has to go from sender to receiver. A thought comes in the mind of a sender or the message which the sender wants to convey. The first thing that needs to be done is to encode that message. Message needs to be coded. Coded in terms of verbal message, coded in terms of a written message, coded in terms of a different sort of language is what language to be used or if it is a signal that needs to be encoded. So that message will somehow get encoded.

Once that encoded message is there, that gets through a channel to the receiver, receiver receives that and then receiver decodes that. After decoding that. Decoding means putting into the way this receiver can understand that message. So decoding into something which receiver can understand, receiver can make sense out of that. So that decoded message is received by receiver.

So if you see that a message was this and it was received something like this and why that happens, why message gets distorted from sender to receiver. The reason could be noise. So here is a noise. Noise could be anywhere which could distort the message. Noise could be a physical noise. Let’s say it’s too warm a room, it’s an uncomfortable place to talk.

Or it could be a mental noise as well. The noise could be because of a language problem. The language of both of these people are not the same. That could be noise or noise could be just the simple plain noise as you understand in English means there’s a lot of noise. You are sitting in a public place and that might be the reason your message gets distorted. So as a team leader you need to make sure that how to minimize noise so that the right message is conveyed from the sender to receiver.

And the best way to do that is to have a feedback mechanism. And this is where we have a feedback. So once a message is transmitted, then the receiver sends the feedback which is received by sender and that with that sender can understand whether the right message has been conveyed or not. And this feedback could be simple noding, let’s say oh yeah, I understand that sort of a message which the receiver can convey or the feedback could be through asking a question or rephrasing what has been told to the receiver. These things are important. So if you rephrase what has been sent to you and give the same message back then the sender can be assured that the right message has been received by the receiver.

So feedback is quite important in communication. So this was the basic model of communication, how message from sender to receiver gets encoded, goes through channel decoded and is received by receiver and then receiver sends the feedback back to the sender. So earlier we talked about communication channel. When we talked about the basic model of communication, the channel could be anything, this could be face to face communication, this could be a video chat, telephone, email and letters.

These are something which probably could be one to one. If you are conveying a message one to one you could have a face to face message, you can have a video chat with that person, you can call that person on phone, send an email or send a letter. But once you have a one to many which many times the CEO or the senior management of the company does, is from one to many CEO sends a message to all the members of the organization. In that case you can have channels such as newsletter, intranet, postal team meetings and many others.

So these are few examples of communication channel which you can use depending on your need. You need to understand that what channel works best at what time. Many times it is said that face to face communication is best because you can convey verbal as well as nonverbal messages as well when you have a face to face communication, if it is not possible then probably you can call a person through using telephone. In telephone your voice, your tone can still convey much better than what you can convey using an email. And many times when the message is formal, for example from contractor to client, then you might want to use a letter, a formal letter as a channel of communication. So it all depends on what sort of a need you have. And based on that need you can pick a right communication channel depending upon the complexity of your project.

You even might want to have a formal communication plan for your project. When I say formal communication plan, informal communication plan as you can look at this slide, this gives that what sort of a communication will happen, what will be the medium, what will be the frequency, who will receive this communication and who is the process owner of this communication? What sort of a deliverable it will form all these things can be listed as a part of your communication plan. As a communication plan for your project. So once you have agreed to this, then there’s no doubt that what communication will happen at what time?

For example, if you are starting a project, the first thing will happen is a kickoff meeting. Then you have a team meeting then you prepare weekly reports, then you prepare monthly reports what all will be in that report, who will be the owner of that, what will be the frequency of that, how that message will be conveyed? All those things are listed as a part of communication plan in a complex, bigger project where you need to communicate with number of stakeholders you might want to consider to have a formal communication plan for your project. With this, we complete our discussion on team communication.

9. Team Leadership Models (BOK III.B.4)

Hey, welcome back. Coming to this topic of leaders role during team lifecycle. When we talked about team lifecycle Tuckman’s model, we already talked about this. That what team leader needs to do at different stages of team. So if the team is formed during formation stage, the role of leader is to direct. When it comes to the storming stage, the role of leader is to coach to provide one to one coaching help team members to understand each other. And once the team reaches the next stage which is norming, then the team leader takes the role of a facilitator to help team to take their own decisions and supporting from the back.

And once that team reaches the performance stage performing stage, at that time the role of leader becomes to delegate. Leader will just delegate all the decision making to the team and will ask the team just to provide the feedback what’s happening that’s all team need to do. Take your own decisions but keep me informed. And then once it comes to adjoining stage, the role of team leader is to reassure the team and reward the team members. So more or less everything was already covered in the previous slide when we talked about team stages.

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