Gettin' good players is easy. Gettin' 'em to play together is the hard part~ Casey Stengel

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Communication in its most general form, is conveying a message from a messenger through a medium to the intended receiver. In the context of a team, effective communication would essentially mean enabling other team members to perceive or understand how the messenger intended his message to be regarded. However, both the sender and receiver have equally important roles to play in order for that to happen. The sender on his part has to take the background information of his audience into consideration before paraphrasing his message according to their prior knowledge of the subject. The listener also has to be attentive in order to decode most accurately what the intended message is.

Teamwork, on the other hand is a word that is full of nuances. To a layman, it may simply means working together in a team. However, I believe it is but a fleeting explanation. It should encompass the synergy of the different behavior, attitude & mindset of each individual person in the team. Teamwork should also comprise of cooperation, cohesion, trust and rapport between each and every member, all of which are built upon via effective communication. Lacking in any of the aforementioned qualities would reduce a team to no more than a mere group where there is a lack of common goal and everyone is for himself.

Hence, communication and teamwork are correlated interdependent elements that are vital to the functioning of a team. Communication can be seen as the link between every team personnel whereas teamwork is hinged on the comprehensive effort of the team as there is no one man show in a team. I personally believe that only when the two components coexist in a team, will it be a force to be reckoned with.

5 comments:

  1. Well written and well edited... But I feel you could've made it a bit more personal. You could've included some examples or instances to show how important communication and teamwork are to you... Other than that I suppose it's good.

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  3. Hi Roger,
    The content for communication and teamwork is well-paragraphed.
    I agree with the part about communications on a verbal level, communications can be done through verbal gestures as well. I think besides being a good listener, we should be able to interpret gesture signs given by others during interaction so that we can notice any slight difference in the behaviour of any. I think its communication on a more interpersonal level which we often miss out.

    I agree with the point that lacking all the qualities important in a team would reduce a team to merely a group. A team being interdependent of each other has to interact with each other and through communication then we can truly understand each other better.

    Perhaps you can add a picture to make it more interesting?

    Regards,
    Alden

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  4. Hey Roger!

    Your post was very interesting and I felt that you had a clear idea of what you wanted to put across to the readers. The use of language was simple and to the point which is good. However I feel that maybe you should have stated why communication is important rather than explaining the process of communication.
    Overall a very entertaining post.

    preeti

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  5. Hi,

    excellent work for summing up the key ideas of our 2-hour-lesson into 2 short paragraphs. I like your conclusion which portrays communication as a link to teamwork. Perhaps, adding an illustration of it would make the a deeper impression of it on the reader.

    Good job!

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