Being an effective, transformative leader means being an exceptional communicator – it’s a lifelong, work in progress skill. I don’t think anyone ever reaches an end point in good communication. Well-crafted communication skills mean being able to fluidly move though a spectrum of tones depending on context. Or equally, to navigate terminology from different disciplines or departments. Often, in specialisations beyond your own.
It’s the ability to deftly call out the need for improvement while still motivating the team. In a multidisciplinary setting, communication and language can be the thing that unites and galvanises or completely breaks the team apart.
And when you understand the importance of language, there are cues and signals you can look for as a leader to get a quick health-check on the status of your team’s rapport.
Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) have a knack for raising the stakes. They are proven to be more effective and innovative than homogenous or siloed teams, driving organisations further, faster. But they also come with inherent challenges. In a team made up of different specialists, each with unique knowledge, perspectives, culture, and expertise, the importance of communication is intensified.
Throughout my experience and research with MDTs, language consistently stands out as being key to high performance.
I remember sitting with a prospective candidate and another member of our team. We were talking about our culture and what it would be like to work with us if this person joined the team. At one point, my colleague acknowledges how important it is that we can talk about how we communicate with each other. The confidence and vulnerability that comes with being able to have a conversation about communication style, intention and assumptions, words, and meaning is so important. Those comments stayed with me for a few days and had me thinking about the level of closeness and connection that high performing teams operate at. That it’s a positive differentiator and enabler.
Effective teams focus on developing common language. Less effective teams believe it will develop over time or never address it. Like any important aspect of a team’s cultural dynamic, team language must be actively fostered through intent and dedication.
When I say ‘common language’, I mean a water-tight, almost telepathic alignment in how key terms and phrases are defined and used. This eliminates wasted time spent debating definitions and ensures teams are ready-to-roll every time they collaborate. It also removes the need to keep managing your own ‘status’ every time you come together with your team. In other words, you can lose some layers and still feel fully intact, maybe even more empowered.
David Epstein’s book, Range, offers a great example in application. He talks about US special forces teams. These teams are so well calibrated, language wise, they don’t even need to finish sentences. In a mission, team members only need to say a word, or a couple of words, and the team collectively understands what’s coming next or what the person intends to say.
Imagine a team is moving through a hostile area. One member might say ‘left corner, two…’ and stop there. The rest of the team is immediately aware of two potential threats around the left-hand corner, without resorting to the full: ‘there are two potential threats located ahead, around the left corner. We need to proceed with caution.’
Professional services is not as high-stakes or pressurised as combat. Regardless of context though, the ability to communicate quickly and effectively empowers the team to focus on the work at hand, rather than deliberate on how they’ll work together.
In the United Kingdom, researchers Maurizio Passariello and Carolyn Tarrant have published a paper looking at Psychological Safety in an ECMO team. ECMO is a shorthand acronym for Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. An ECMO retrieval team is multidisciplinary; they initiate ECMO therapy for someone suffering severe acute respiratory failure. The team helps transfer patients experiencing these symptoms to specialised treatment centre.
ECMO teams are comprised of highly trained, highly specialised individuals working in changeable environments with high-risk, unstable patients. They are exposed to high pressure and unexpected, fluid situations. The nature of their work means the team must discuss problems as they arise and quickly find solutions to keep the patient safe.
Success—and often survival—for the patient depends on this team working well together. Here, team language can literally be life or death.
Passariello and Tarrant note the importance of language in their research: both being able to speak socially and build bonds together, as well as the language used while transferring a patient. Notably:
In the context of psychological safety, the team is aware of the language they use with one another. Teams that use deliberate, inclusive, and psychologically safe language create an environment where members feel comfortable to share ideas, ask questions or voice concerns, discuss failures with a view to improvement, and take calculated risks knowing they will be supported in their decisions.
Armed with this knowledge, there are simple things you can look for—or encourage—to improve the performance of your team.
If you need support in building, measuring, coaching or getting the most out of an MDT, I’d love to help. To kick things off with an initial chat or check my schedule and availability, get in touch here.