Open Communication Unlocks the Best Out of Your Team

Communication is part of your Social Skills- a component of your Social Competence.

While Social Skills, in general, are related to your adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others -Communication relates to your ability to listen openly and sending convincing messages.

People who have this competence usually:

•    Are effective in giving and taking
•    Register emotional cues, by attuning their message and response.
•    Deal with difficult issues straightforwardly
•    Listen well and seek mutual understanding.
•    Welcome sharing of information in a full and clear manner.
•    Foster open communication and stay receptive to bad news as well as good ones.

On a business level, it is of utmost importance to have an open and honest channel of communication -  otherwise, you might always ask yourself: "are they telling me only what they want me to hear instead of what I need to know?"

In business, creating an atmosphere of open and honest communication, allows brilliant ideas to flourish - it unlocks the value and potential of employees and everyone involved within an organization. When you communicate openly, you open the possibility of getting the best out of people; their energy, their creativity.

Acknowledgement of accomplishments is also another important part of communication - communicating with positive emotion and rewarding success; on the other hand keeping cool and composed when results are not as expected.

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Using Heartfelt Emotion to Increase Team Creativity

Get into the habit of drawing on “heartfelt emotion” to increase creativity within your team.

Drawing on your own, genuine emotions doesn’t just keep things positive. Ultimately it deepens the impact of positive interactions. Creativity is going to come that much more easily.

“Strong heartfelt emotions can halt our rational mental processes and connect us to people in a much more profound way than relatively mild feelings, such as relief or satisfaction or thankfulness. Heartfelt emotions make our hearts sing, and they set fire to our cognitive and perceptual abilities – traits that every business prizes.”

It seems obvious that heartfelt emotion should create more positive feelings and therefore drive creativity but truthfully, few of the companies take this approach, most likely out of ignorance.

“When team members experience heartfelt emotion, their creative ability ratchets up a notch. That’s why primal team leaders try to deepen team emotion.”

Have you ever worked for someone who exhibited such heartfelt emotions?

Motivate Your Team Using the Chase

Remember, it seriously is all about the chase

When it comes down to happiness and energy, don’t think you have to provide a constant slew of rewards for a job well done. Sometimes, the real reward really is in the journey.

We get a bigger thrill from the chase than from the capture. The very act of chasing, seeking, or pursuing the wild boar motivates us much more powerfully than cooking and eating it.

You get a thrill out of pursuing or seeking a goal, but once you achieve it, it doesn’t seem so attractive. What does this mean for the team leader? First, you should bear in mind the extreme pleasure people derive from activating their seeking emotional system

when a stimulus arouses our seeking system, it activates our frontal neocortex, prompting us to work out innovative strategies and solutions.

What does this mean for you as a team leader? It’s an easier solution than you might think. It means use novelty to motivate.

It also means it’s about new chases!

Now this is the cool part: when a stimulus arouses our seeking system, it activates our frontal neocortex, prompting us to work out innovative strategies and solutions. Logic doesn’t make us do that; emotions do. The brain’s neocortex, the source of our human analytical intellect, serves our emotions, not vice versa. A team that embarks on an exciting new journey not only feels strongly motivated to succeed but also works smarter. When our seeking system comes to the party, we feel as though we can accomplish anything. Negativity evaporates; fear takes a vacation. We feel confident we can conquer the world.

A fairly easy way to create novelty within your team is to switch up their responsibilities.

If I took charge of a team working at a warehouse, I’d try to keep people fresh by periodically shifting their responsibilities. I’d transfer Jeff from driving a forklift to running the shipping/receiving desk and move shipment expediter Martin into that slot. The change of scenery and routine will spark a little more energy. Yes, each much learn a new role, but learning itself fulfills the appetite for seeking novelty, and the extra enthusiasm sparked by doing something new should more than make up for any loss of productivity caused by traveling the learning curve and getting up to speed in a new job.

Another thing you can do is give people opportunities to get involved in improving company processes. This is a good idea if you don’t feel like there’s a huge amount of variation in roles and it still gives them an opportunity to do new and different work.