The context of this blogpost is captured here. In short, this is a part of Q & A i did with Women Testers website recently on the topic of careers and beyond. The questions were asked mostly by people who were at the early stages of their career. The series can be located at: https://www.womentesters.com/q-and-a-with-anuj-magazine-part-2/
[Anuj] You can do all sorts of team outings and team games to improve teamwork and communication among the team members but most of the times such events just give a momentary feeling of accomplishment and not make a long term impact. Why?
Because most such events fail to touch the foundational elements that impact team communication. What are these elements? How do these help better communicate?
1. Focus on building trust:
Trust is at the very foundation of the way human beings operate. Lesser the trust, lesser the communication. More the trust, more the meaningful communication. There are no two ways about it.
Being well-intentioned, being an unconditional giver, helps build trust.
2. Understand the personality differences.
Introverts draw energy from within. Extroverts draw energy from other people. Both communicate differently, both respond differently to different situations. Like these two personality types, there can be many different ways of classifying personality. Most of the personality assessment tools won’t be accurate but do give an idea.
Being empathetic towards personality differences does help improve communication.
3. Inculcate Intellectual humility.
Intellectual humility is having courage to recognize that you might be wrong about what you believe. People are naturally drawn towards someone who is willing to admit her mistakes openly.
Being intellectually humble makes one authentic. Authenticity in conduct does make it easy for others to approach you.
Q) What are some of the ways in which we can build the team towards being better at communication? a) between testers and b) between testers and the others in the team?
[Anuj] You can do all sorts of team outings and team games to improve teamwork and communication among the team members but most of the times such events just give a momentary feeling of accomplishment and not make a long term impact. Why?
Because most such events fail to touch the foundational elements that impact team communication. What are these elements? How do these help better communicate?
1. Focus on building trust:
Trust is at the very foundation of the way human beings operate. Lesser the trust, lesser the communication. More the trust, more the meaningful communication. There are no two ways about it.
Being well-intentioned, being an unconditional giver, helps build trust.
2. Understand the personality differences.
Introverts draw energy from within. Extroverts draw energy from other people. Both communicate differently, both respond differently to different situations. Like these two personality types, there can be many different ways of classifying personality. Most of the personality assessment tools won’t be accurate but do give an idea.
Being empathetic towards personality differences does help improve communication.
3. Inculcate Intellectual humility.
Intellectual humility is having courage to recognize that you might be wrong about what you believe. People are naturally drawn towards someone who is willing to admit her mistakes openly.
Being intellectually humble makes one authentic. Authenticity in conduct does make it easy for others to approach you.
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