SUBMITTED BY

NANDHAHARISH.N 35024
KANNADHASAN.M 35076
SIVA.K 35094
SREYAS SAIRAM 35095
YUGEASH KUMAR.SM 35113
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INTRODUCTION
Good communication is an important skill in any environment with human interactions. However, when
it comes to communication in the workplace, good communication is an integral element to business
success.
In the workplace, good communication isn’t just about mitigating conflict (although that is an important
benefit of communicating effectively). Good communication is also an important factor in client
relationships, profitability, team effectiveness, and employee engagement.
1 – Good Communication Mitigates Conflict
One of the times an organization is most likely to seek communication training is when there’s clear
tension or conflict in the workplace. Regardless of the conflict, communication is usually an underlying
factor.
Conflict typically comes down to:
Misunderstanding/feeling misunderstood. Even when someone feels like they are communicating
well, if the person to whom they’re speaking has a different communication pattern then there may be
misunderstanding. With communication tools such as identifying communication patterns and making
small communication adjustments, new information can be dispensed in a way that is easy and clear to
understand, and the listener can better communicate their understanding.
Not understanding how others communicate. Miscommunication also comes down to
communication patterns. When someone who hasn’t undergone an individual or team communication
program, they default to presenting information using their own communication pattern instead of
considering the communication pattern of the receiver.
Someone feeling their emotional needs are not being met or are being disregarded. If an employee
feels disrespected, taken advantage of, or disregarded, then it may lead to tension or conflict. A better-
communicating team lays the groundwork for expressing and understanding needs, which also increases
employee engagement and performance.
2 – Good Communication Increases Employee Engagement
Communicating is more than just talking. It’s about connecting with people. One of the most powerful
benefits of better communication in the workplace is more engaged employees. Employees are more
engaged in their work and can better align with company objectives and goals when a culture of good
communication is established in a team or workplace.
Communication can improve employee engagement in the following ways:
 Gives you tools to better understand the needs and goals of your employees.
 Allows you to better understand what motivates and fulfills the employee.
 Better understanding of employees’ talents and skills that may otherwise go unnoticed.
 Ability to cultivate talents and skills in a way that develops them in line with company goals.
 Improved connection between co-workers for a more positive and satisfying work environment.
 Better relationship with managers and leaders

3 – Good Communication Creates Better Client Relationships

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This one is a biggie if you have client-facing employees, since client interactions are usually the
difference between a satisfied customer and a disgruntled one. When your employees are trained to
communicate more effectively and to connect with others they can better:
 Mitigate and resolve conflict
 Understand needs
 Help the customer feel understood
 Present new information in a way in which the client will be more receptive
4 – Good Communication Results in a More Productive & Talented Workforce
Employee engagement is a significant factor in the productivity of a workforce. But besides contributing
to increased employee engagement, communication skills can also help foster a more productive and
talented workforce in many other ways:
Understanding team talents & skills. In a company culture focused on connecting with others,
managers better understand the talents and skills of their workforce. Some communication patterns
aren’t forthcoming with their talents and skills, or express them in ways a fast-paced or high-level-
thinking communicator won’t naturally notice. Mastering the identification of communication patterns
empowers a leader to better understand the skills and talents of their team.
Achieving more buy-in. With the right communication tools, a leader can influence initiative buy-in
from their team.
Innovation and creative thought. A workplace that communicates more effectively establishes a
“safe” place for people to think creatively and express their ideas. It helps employees feel more
comfortable taking ownership for challenges and projects, and typically results in more creative
brainstorming or problem-solving initiatives.
More strategic team building. Understanding communication patterns gives a leader more
information about their employees, and often information they would have otherwise overlooked. This
powerful insight lets the leader make more strategic decisions on delegation, employee development,
team development, and strategic initiatives to drive business success.

BACKGROUND RESEARCH
Teams feature prominently on the organisational landscape, being considered one of the most
effective and efficient methods for achieving organisational tasks and goals (Sinclair, 1992). It has
been noted with some concern, that teams occupy a central and unquestioned place in organisational
reform (Sinclair, 1992), but without consistent empirical evidence to support their widespread
application (Glassop, 2002). Communication is often assumed to be central to the successful
performance of teams. Yet, this assertion is not necessarily supported by the existing literature.
Communication is broadly defined as the exchange of information and the transmission of meaning
(Katz & Kahn, 1978). It is central to the way in which teams go about identifying, collecting,
discussing, interpreting, and evaluating the information they have at hand in order to reach a decision
or complete the task(s) required of them. Irrespective of the type of team and its tasks, all team
members need to interact and exchange information in order to achieve their goals.
For decision making teams at least, it has been suggested that the quality of the communication that
takes place within the team is one of, if not the most important factor determining decision making
success (Collins & Guetzkow, 1964; Gouran & Hirokawa, 1983; Hackman & Morris, 1975; McGrath,
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1984; Taylor & Faust, 1952). However, despite this suggestion, for teams more generally, the literature
provides little consensus regarding the impact of communication on performance. It has been found that
factors such as team size and demography have a more influential role in team performance compared
to communicative factors (Steiner, 1972). Alternatively, communication is argued to be integral for
teams as it provides the means through which information and critical resources can be pooled
(Barnlund, 1959; Marquart, 1955), errors identified and poor suggestions rejected (Shaw & Penrod,
1964; Taylor & Faust, 1952) and collective effort exerted over decision preferences (Reicken, 1958;
Shaw & Penrod, 1964). The lack of consensus in the research literature could be due to a range of
factors such as inconsistencies in approaches to measuring constructs and the application of different
team tasks, etc. But it also implies that the relationship between communication and team performance
may be contingent on other factors. Put another way, communication might be important for team
performance in some circumstances, but not as important for performance in other circumstances.

RESEARCH PROCESS
The research process involved eliciting answers from five different people. We decided to do this via
mail conversations primarily. The reason behind is the officials whom we decided to contact cannot be
reached via phone regularly. Each one of us chose one person from our previous workplace who
unanimously had an experience of more than five years in their respective jobs. It happened to be that
the chosen people were our team leaders or bosses in our previous workplace (someone with whom we
enjoyed a good acquaintance). So we mailed the set of questions to be asked to them and requested
them to fill it out in their free time. In order to follow up on the responses we will call them once in a
while (mostly in evening) to remind them or to clarify any queries related to the questionnaire. We had
to make multiple calls and follow ups to get the questionnaire filled. We also had to reword most of
the questions while retaining the essence of those questions. This was done for better understanding and
clarity sake. Two of the selected five people ultimately ended up giving answers to these questions over
phone calls whenever they were free (as they hardly found time to fill up the questionnaire). So it was
a sort of telephonic interview or conversation that we had in those cases. Since all of the selected five
were known to us in some way it was never difficult for us to elicit answers from them. Rather they
were quite cooperative.
In the process of data collection we also had standby resources. They were other people like our friends,
relatives or parents. So each of us had one standby resource just in case the desired person fails to give
any response. So we collected data from our standby resources as well. This was primarily through
phone calls and the task of eliciting answers from secondary resources was much easier (as they are
well known to us). So we will call these people (standby) in our free time and have a very casual chat
with them. In that process we will ask questions which they will answer. We note the responses in a
notebook or a piece of paper (very rudimentary). But our first preference was data from primary
resources as we considered that to be more authentic than data from the secondary resources. We started
work on the project around 3rd of March and we got all the answers from both the resources on 22nd of
March which by practical means is not a long drawn process. So that is a gist of how the interview with
the selected 5 happened.

ANALYSIS
From the data collected by us in the process we came to understand a few things with respect to
conversations. It is understood that conversation is a way of interaction between the team members and
that it is an important tool for conflict management in teams. But conversation has more to it. It is not
just a fun chat or a professional talk, which enables work and manages conflicts in a team.
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It must be impossible to live life as a human without being involved in a team at some point. It is
unreservedly pervasive in life—so many tasks in academics, in the professions, and elsewhere are best
accomplished with more than one person. That being said, its ubiquity almost abstractifies the concept.
Despite us all having worked in teams before, we might not know what makes a team function best
beyond the obvious notion that every member should pull his or her weight.
Many managers believe that it’s a good thing to quickly cultivate a consensus within their team about
the right course to take. To be sure, once a decision has been made and is being implemented, getting
everyone on the same page is important. But the process of making that decision in the first place will
benefit greatly from being influenced by a wide range of diverse views. Conversation plays a vital role
in convincing, hearing, brainstorming and concluding with the final course of action. Basically the
members of any team will contribute their share and give their inputs to the problem at hand. While
assessing the solution for the same, the team must get involved in a conversation or an interaction where
they assess each possible solution, discuss the pros and cons of those listed solutions, and finally come
up with an idea to proceed. This involves a high level of interaction and rational persuasion to bring all
the members of the team to accept a common ground.
Conversations need not be professional and work related all times. There are daily work conversations
that involve personal life, and personal sharing a great deal. We as employees discuss our daily issues
with colleagues to get some peace of mind. But it is to be noted that conversations need not be positive
always. They can be restraining teams or people from moving forward in the work front. Such
conversations pull down the performance of teams. From our interaction with the selected people we
came to understand that they face a big bag of restraining conversations daily. Some of them handle
these situations by simply diverting the topic. A few others go with the stride. Upon our interaction we
also understood that the executives preferred the organisations to prescribe some regulations with
respect to conversations. A few executives were open in stating that the current state of their teams was
utter disengagement(although they did not wish to share the reasons behind such disengagement). But
we were able to guess the answer to this question from another question. Their teams were
underpaid(not grossly). So it is important to understand that there needs to be certain level of monetary
motivation to people for them to become engaged in work. In fact one executive gave a very raw
response to this question stating that “we work for money and whatever the organisations give in place
of that, the employees will remain unsatisfied.” So it is obvious that monetary benefits play a major
role in influencing people.
There are many more than just few problems with team communication issues and the evils listed here
may not make your own list. But basically, these are the things that keep workforce teams from
operating efficiently or impact the team as a whole with respect to morale.

1. Focus or Listening Problems:

Inability of employees to interpret the information or provide adequate focus leads to team
communication issues. The gap in age, the hole left by a boomer generation retiring, and other societal
weaknesses make this communication barrier very real.
2. Failure to Listen
The inability to listen is a huge problem. Often you will see co-workers interrupting speakers or
planning what they will say next instead of effectively listening. Other distractions are when team
members roll their eyes at comments or just discount their worker’s premise; and still others just forget
to pay attention, they are too distracted or have a short attention span. Obviously these all reflect on
their failure to listen.
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3. Locale or Distance to Office

Due to the high incidence of globalization, distance learning, or freelance contributions, many
communications are conducted by email, memo, or short video conferencing. When offices are located
away from its contributors, the detachment and inability to interact is a huge communication barrier.
Projects get stalled or are often misunderstood.
4. Authority or Hierarchy Problems
A worker may feel reticent about approaching and talking to their manager. Someone may be quietly
stewing about an issue and never broach the subject. Another may think that the discussion is too
personal.
5. Attitude & Ego
Too often teamwork stops because of someone’s ego. They refuse to admit they might be part of the
problem.
Conflicts also arise because of inequity, and rather than make the situation more equal, someone
becomes defensive instead of taking responsibility.
6. Culture Differences
The office has become a melting pot stocked with people of diverse backgrounds and cultural customs.
People tend to “hang" with others familiar to their culture or habits. When these individual groups
assemble, managers face the challenges of small group dynamics and team communication issues.
7.Knowledge-Inadequate Knowledge:
Group functions may suffer setbacks due to ineffective education or lack of understanding or other
inadequate knowledge foundation.

CONCLUSION
From the study that we conducted we came to understand a few things. Any manager needs to have a
few skills to strike a balance between engagement and communication for better performance of their
respective teams. So the skills we identified from this study are – people management, resource
management, ego and attitude problems (control), empathy. So we understood that if all the team
members exhibit these characters in their workplace there will be a good synergy of team engagement,
healthy conversations and hence improved communication. As we have observed earlier we know that
once a team starts having healthy conversations amongst the members, the engagement will increase.
If the engagement increases, the team performance increases. So we conclude that there is a direct
relationship between team conversation, team engagement and team performance. Hence members of
any team must strive towards achieving that. Below mentioned are the responses we received from the
five executives whom we interacted with. It’s for your perusal.

RESPONSES

Response 1
Questions:
What are your strengths? What do you do best?
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A: Understanding requirements in short duration. Deploying the same.

What talents and strengths do you use in your current role?

A: Programming skills. Quick learning.

What do you believe is your unique contribution to the team?

A: Delivering a robust/clean code to the program.

How can I help you use your talents and strengths more in your role?
A: Enhancing the skills by gradual learning.

What do you enjoy most in your current role?

A: Coding.

Are there activities or other parts of your role that you want to do more frequently?
A: Yes, review or testing the program code.

Do you have talents and strengths that you would like to use more often?
A: Yes, adapting to changes in work environment.

What do you believe you are paid to do?

A: Dedicatedly working

Are there things that get in the way of meeting the responsibilities of your role?
A: Yes, the short timelines.

How can I help you be successful in your role? (think me as ur manager)

A: By providing me proper guidance in my role.

What parts or activities of your current role energize you?

A: Appreciation for the good work.
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What do you want to accomplish in the next month? What about the next six months?
A: Complete the assigned work with complete satisfaction. To get promoted as a software
architect.

What do you think I expect of you this year?

A: Getting promoted to next level.

What do you expect of me as your manager this year?

A: Provide me more opportunities to prove my skills.

When you achieve your goals, how do you like to be recognized?

A: By providing appreciation in the team.

Which of your talents or strengths boost (or contributes to) your performance?
A: Dedicatedly working

What is the greatest challenge you are facing at work?

A: Continuous changes in the requirements.

Which of your talents or strengths could you use to help you address this challenge?
A: Enhancing the knowledge needed to meet the requirements. Learning, undergoing training
for the newer technologies.

Are there opportunities you would like to pursue to help you learn and grow?
A: Yes, pursuing a management degree.

What is the best way for you to measure your progress? How can we track your
development?
A: Time taken to complete the assigned activity. Decrease in the time taken to deliver the
work.
How often should you and I meet to discuss how things are going?
A: Once in 6 months.
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Response 2
What are the unique talents and strengths that you bring to the team?
A: Ability to convert concepts into reality and ideas to execution. Running an end to end
program by managing different stakeholders - engineering & business teams to achieve a
common goal : Client Centricity & Business Value

What are some of the most valuable contributions you make to the team?
A: Innovation, Ideating, People Management, Mentoring, Building a focussed goal oriented
team

Are there any “missed” opportunities or areas of value that you or your team is not using?
A:No

How can others on the team draw out the best you?
A:Technical roadblocks and architecture decisions
What are our collective strengths as a team?
A:Diversity in terms of skills

What are our potential blind spots?

A:Carried away by short term wins

How can we use our collective strengths to achieve our performance goals or address the
challenges we face?
A:Trust in each other and take work more seriously

What can other team members count on you to bring to your role?
A:Succeeding client engagements
----

How engaged is our team right now?

A:Disengaged, Not much clarity in terms of product roadmap
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How do we define each of the engagement items as a team?

A:Client Success, Successful Pilots with Case Studies

How does this item affect our team’s ability to reach our performance goals?
A:Technical enablement, Platform Stability etc.

What are the things that positively affect this engagement item?
A:Seeing something working in real what the team has worked

What are the things that get in the way of positively affecting this engagement item?
A:Attrition and Lack of Leadership support

What elements of our work culture are facilitating growth in engagement?

A:Flexbility and Freedom to innovate

When we achieve team goals, how would you like to be recognized?

A:Monetary Benefits

What do you think I expect of the team this year?

A: 3-4 client pilots

---

What are the most important performance goals or challenges that we need to achieve or
overcome as a team?
A:Platform Stability and Technical Superiority

What are three to four critical tasks that we need to complete to achieve our performance
goal?
A:Fix technical glitches in platform
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In which area do you think you can have the greatest effect?
A:Technical Platform and Platform Sales

Which of the tasks are aligned to your talents and strengths?

A:Client Centricity and Team Management

Looking at our collective team strengths, are there any partnerships that can be created to
help us complete the tasks?
A:No

What else can we do to facilitate success in reaching our performance goals?

A:Nil

Response 3
What are the unique talents and strengths that you bring to the team?

A:Delivering end to end program by managing different stakeholders - engineering &

business teams to achieve a common goal : Client orientation & adding value to business.

What are some of the most valuable contributions you make to the team?

A:People management and initiating and assigning tasks appropriately.

Are there any “missed” opportunities or areas of value that you or your team is not using?

A:No

How can others on the team draw the best of you?

A:By interacting

What are our collective strengths as a team?

A:Workforce capabilities

What are our potential blind spots?

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A:Monetary benefits and short term success

How can we use our collective strengths to achieve our performance goals or address the
challenges we face?

A:Healthy conversations and trust in each other

What can other team members count on you to bring to your role?

A:Succeeding client engagements

----

How engaged is our team right now?

A:Sort of disengaged.

How do we define each of the engagement items as a team?

A:Satisfaction of Client, satisfaction of team members.

How does this item affect our team’s ability to reach our performance goals?

A:Clear allocation of resources, technical acumen of team members.

What are the things that positively affect this engagement item?

A:Perks, personal breaks, and brainstorming.

What are the things that get in the way of positively affecting this engagement item?

A:Lack of clear vision, disengagement among team members.

What elements of our work culture are facilitating growth in engagement?

A:Flatter structure of organisation, access to speak to people from top management.

When we achieve team goals, how would you like to be recognized?

A:More salary

What do you think I expect of the team this year?

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A:Collective performance and better engagement

---

What are the most important performance goals or challenges that we need to achieve or
overcome as a team?

A:Meeting deadlines

What are three to four critical tasks that we need to complete to achieve our performance
goal?

A:Fix technical glitches in platform

In which area do you think you can have the greatest effect?

A:Platform Sales and technical platform

Which of the tasks are aligned to your talents and strengths?

A:Client Centricity and Team Management

Looking at our collective team strengths, are there any partnerships that can be created to
help us complete the tasks?

A:No

What else can we do to facilitate success in reaching our performance goals?

A:Nil

Response 4
What are your strengths?
A:Effective communication, Logical thinking Quick learner

What do you do best?

A:Finding solution by myself without any extra help from another team player
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What talents and strengths do you use in your current role?

A:All

What do you believe is your unique contribution to the team?

A:Quick turn around time

What do you enjoy most in your current role?

A:Challenging tasks

Do you have talents and strengths that you would like to use more often?
A:Yes

What do you believe you are paid to do?

A:Deliver the products with excellency

What parts or activities of your current role energize you?

A:Recognition from higher level management

What do you want to accomplish in the next month?

A:Expertise in my current role

What do you think I expect of you this year?

A: 85 percent

When you achieve your goals, how do you like to be recognized?

A: Rewards – Monetary hike.

Which of your talents or strengths boost (or contributes to) your performance?
A: Quick Learning Skill

What is the greatest challenge you are facing at work?

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A: Nothing as of now

Which of your talents or strengths could you use to help you address this challenge?
A: Nil

Are there opportunities you would like to pursue to help you learn and grow? Yes
A: What is the best way for you to measure your progress?

How often should you and I meet to discuss how things are going?
A: Weekly

Response 5

What are the unique talents and strengths that you bring to the team?
A: I am good in approaching solving problems logically and technically. I can create technology and
can influence ppl using my way of talking about technology

What are some of the most valuable contributions you make to the team?
A: building a good team and guide them towards the vision I have

Are there any “missed” opportunities or areas of value that you or your team is not using?
A: providing solutions and finding ways to navigate the project without any stoppers

How can others on the team draw the best of you?

A: by motivating the team by being a part of the team and getting your hands dirty by working along

What are our collective strengths as a team?

A: the project(product) tat you build gets life and becomes a manufactured product

What are our potential blind spots?

A: Money orientedness.

How can we use our collective strengths to achieve our performance goals or address the
challenges we face?
A: only things tat don't demean the passion