Team with communication problems - exercises?

[Asprogata]

Hi,

I have inherited a notoriously difficult team. They are managed by a manager who I now manage who is relatively new in post and very brilliant.

We are making a lot of headway around old behaviours - mainly around some management versus team assumptions.

However there is a real clear communication problem amongst the four individuals. They cover seven days a week and there’s always a combination of them in every day, but they each hoard their individual knowledge and don’t share. It affects the business.

I am leading a meeting later this week to talk about ways they have improved - and they have!

Does anyone have a go to exercise or “thing” that can help them reflect better on their communication?

Can add further detail if required.

By "reflect", do you mean "see things my way"? What if they reflect and decide there is a legitimate reason for their current style and they don't want to change?

I'm not sure there's any activity you can do in a meeting that's going to change long term habits.

You need to uncover the reasons why there is no knowledge sharing, find a way to make it clear what the expectation is, make sure that the knowledge sharing is part of their annual goals and that the amount of bonuses might depend on how well an individual is demonstrating the expected behaviours

Or whatever the incentive might be in your organisation

Agree with Crumpet, in that it sounds most likely they view themselves as in competition with each other. If they literally are - say you implement individual rewards that outweigh any team rewards - you'll need to reconsider whether the system incentivises the kind of results you want.

If not, did they have an earlier boss who singled some out for praise & status, downgrading others? Or it might even be that you've ended up with a team of highly competitive go-getters who, even without rewards, go home thinking happily about how they beat John and plotting to bring Dave down a peg.

Ask them!

Just promise you won't say "There's no 'I' in team" 😂

You need some sort of team incentive which is bigger than their personal incentive.

What sort of job is it?

So more detail. Catering team, local authority, heavily unionised. Green book rates so 18 per hr on a weekend., 13.77 weekday. Answered union questions and mostly fixed - a lot of this was around management communications.Service amongst team 10-28 years.

They’re worried about outsourcing. This is currently a real prospect as they’re effectively a state funded service at a visitor attraction.

This is not helpful. Why take the time to post?

Well. outsourcing will be more viable if they don't pull together and work as a team.

They need to show that they are more than the sum of their parts.

Just let the tail continue to wag the dog then?

Management are supposed to take the decisions, not the staff. It isn't up to the staff to decide that they don't want to change; if they are told to do so then that is what they should do.

Answered union questions and mostly fixed - a lot of this was around management communications ... They’re worried about outsourcing.

It sounds as though they've become paranoid due to poor management and fear. Would it be possible to explain clearly:
~ Why team working will improve results, and by how much
~ Why this improvement will remove the threat of replacement
~ How you recommend they approach this?

~ And ensure you always feed back on good outcomes, maybe introduce some form of team treat for meeting objectives.

If you can get the union to support you, all the better. Is the rep a team member?

Do they use Slack or similar? Do they know one another? Could try an away day?