Team communication patterns: key lessons from nature
Stumble It!From studying nature's bioteams it seems there are 3 dominant patterns of communication which can be used in a biological group. All three also have their place in the electronic communications we use in our human teams. However one of them, if over-used, can be destructive or indicate the absence of crucial group support structures.
For simplicity I will label these three dominant patterns of communication:
- The Shout (one-to-many)
- The Whisper (one-to-one)
- The Gossip (one-to-some)
Let us look at each in turn:
Shouting
Shouting involves communicating with the whole group.
This is the main pattern of communication used by the social insects. It is a 1-way broadcast communication, not requiring a reply. In nature it is achieved in the case of ants through scent trails (pheromones) and for bees via dances such as the waggle dance.
Human groups need to be able to do 'replyable broadcasts', for example to schedule meetings, conduct polls or obtain feedback. However I would suggest that it is even more important for human groups to learn to use 1-way broadcasting much more. The current addiction to 2-way messaging is one of the ways a group gets slowed down unnecessarily.
Whispering
Whispering is a 1:1 private communication pattern.
This also happens frequently in nature as ants and bees can communicate 1:1 by stroking each other or by exchanging fluids.
Human groups need to be able to whisper too. Not all conversations can be transparent - some are simply not relevant to the group and others are inappropriate. A simple practical example of the need for whispering is on a web-conference where you need to get the adminstrators attention to say you wish to speak. Similarly the administrator may need to get your attention to tell you discretely you are talking to loudly, too quietly or too much.
Whispering is also a vital group 'grooming' activity between team members where trust and rapport is built through regular 1:1 conversations.
Gossiping
This third pattern of communications, gossiping, which I define as a private communication to some but not all members of the group is the one we need to be careful about.
Generally ants or bees do not use this form of communication.
Adhoc and random gossiping can be quite harmless and entirely useful in a group. However the danger arises when the gossiping recurrently involves the same subset of team members. An obvious risk is that a clique is being nurtured within the group which may, at some point, undermiine the transparency and trust in a high-performing team.
Alternatively gossiping may indicate that you are missing a sub-group or a leadership ring. In the interests of transparency these structures should be made explicit to all and not kept a secret.
Conclusions
So there are 3 main patterns of electronic communication within groups - shouting, gossiping and whispering.
We need to keep a note of how much each pattern is used in our teams to ensure we use the right one at the right time and be particularly careful about gossiping as it may point to cliques forming or missing structures.
About the Author
Ken Thompson is an expert practitioner in the area of bioteaming, swarming, virtual enterprise networks, virtual professional communities and virtual teams and has published two landmark books:
Bioteams: High Performance Teams Based on Nature's Best Designs
The Networked Enterprise: Competing for the future through Virtual Enterprise Networks
Ken writes the highly popular bioteams blog which has over 500 articles on all aspects of bioteams (aka organizational biomimicry) - in other words how human groups can learn from nature's best teams.
Ken is also founder of an exciting European technology company Swarmteams which provides unique patent-pending bioteaming technologies for all shapes and sizes of groups, social networks, business clusters, virtual/mobile communities and enterprises. Swarmteams enables groups to be more response and agile by fully integrating their mobile phones and the web with bioteam working techniques. The latest Swarmteams implementation is SwarmTribes which helps musicians and bands form a unique collaboration with their fans for mutual benefit.
Tags: pheromones, rings, waggle dance
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Bioteams Books Reviews
When collaboration goes bad
Poor organisational intelligence leads to 'coblaboration' instead of collaboration.Harvard Professor, David Perkins, in his latest book, "King Arthur's Round Table : How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart Organizations", discusses the importance of "organisational Intelligence" and "developmental leadership" and how the absence of these leads to coblaboration rather than collaboration in organisational teams.
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