Communication is key for Teamwork
One of the main things I’ve learned from working here at Get Carter is the importance of effective communication.
When I first arrived as a naïve, fresh faced, millennial; I had an aura of childlike ignorance that surrounded me for an annoyingly long time. I automatically assumed that everyone who worked in the company would obviously know the same as me, or a lot more because they were older - that age was the defining feature of knowing a lot of information about various things.
But, it isn’t.
Age brings valuable experience, of course. But it doesn’t automatically mean that you know more about any given subject just because you’ve grown a year older. For example, my mother knows next to nothing about putting a computer together, and just because her birthday is coming up doesn’t mean that she’ll naturally understand where a CPU chipset will be installed on a motherboard…
People only truly know about a subject when they’re passionate about it, and everyone has different passions in life.
I vaguely remember being confused during many of my first meetings within the company, as we’d strategise about the usual business stuff, and I was always left feeling like no one had mentioned choices that were glaringly obvious. The thing is, they were only glaringly obvious to me, because of a combination of: what I’d been brought up with, what I’ve experienced in life, and what I studied over the years. The issue wasn’t with my team, it was with me - as I assumed others should have known, I didn’t speak up, and I didn’t offer unique advice.
All school boy errors.
Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash
Recently, during our weekly training classes (or Fab 15’s as we like to call them); Our Managing Director, Matthew, delivered a session on “Blind Drawing”. Blind drawing is a team building activity that requires small groups to become “communicator” and “artist” – one has an image that needs to be drawn, and the other must draw that image from the other persons instructions. It’s a fun activity that shows how hard it really is to give clear instructions without proper communication. It may seem like an easy task, but you must be clear, precise, and universal in your instructions or else you could end up with a mess.
As I’ve worked on improving my communication over the years, it was very humbling when myself and Mark Gregory worked together effectively and won the activity, with me being the communicator and him being the artist.
Here’s our work of art:
So, take it from me - if you’re not part of a team that communicates well, then you’ll never achieve the targets and results you want. If there’s no communication what so ever then I’d advise you open up, set up team building activities and help create your perfect team - so they can help you achieve your targets, visions, and mission.
Eric Wansell
